Reduced XP for Freakshow now
doesn't matter. powerlevelers use AE farm to power level now.
oh well. like to see an EXP multiplier reduced in AE please.
Whining about everything since 2006.
Ammo switching for Dual Pistols was my idea:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=135484
Dollhouse, is that a Cruxshadows quote in your signature?
Awesome, if so.
Paragon Unleashed, Unleash Yourself!
they have zero ability to change anything in the game world.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
In the entire history of the game is there one example of players flocking to content that under-rewarded? |
Here's a few:
Badging. Time-consuming, occasionally influence-draining (market/crafting badges) and relatively unrewarding aside from an "i did it" marker. Giant Monster Hunting Yes, we've lamented that the rewards are weak, but many monsters are still hunted, despite this. Rikti Dropship Takedowns Only reward is the "I did it" pride. Positron's Task Force No reward is sufficient for that pain Zone Events I'm looking at Steel Canyon's Fire Alarms. Many of the participants I encounter there would see all the hellions conning grey, yet they continue to participate. PvP Even games with no PvP "rewards" have PvP participants. Many of the best PvP turnouts we have are in tiered competitions where very few of the participants get any reward at all. Costume Creation Hours upon hours often spent experimenting and trying new looks, even when there isn't a costume contest reward... for nothing other than looking "good*" |
Here's a few:
Badging. Time-consuming, occasionally influence-draining (market/crafting badges) and relatively unrewarding aside from an "i did it" marker. /snip |
some small % of players will do just about ANYTHING just to do it, that's part of the appeal of the game and the value of having a wide range of activities available, whether or not they're equally rewarding. As I noted badges are great for them because they soak up gameplay hours of a devoted demographic for an insignificant investment (of course, MA was a GIGANTIC investment).
But ask yourself this- are there more people hunting GMs now than there were when they gave phat XP?
When you have two paths of advancement and one is demonstrably more efficient than the other, that is where the bulk of your players will go. That's why "everyone" is camped in MA now. It's why "everyone" would leave MA if rewards were gimped too hard.
Unless they want MA to be a dusty mausoleum like the Arena they'll keep its rewards in line with the 'real' game.
I believe you're significantly underestimating the number of people that wouldn't care if the XP per minute from Architect Entertainment wasn't quite on par with other forms of gameplay. |
1) A great deal of people did things other than farm the previous Max-XP farm available. They chose not to chase after the fastest available XP but play other parts of the game. A great deal of people would continue to do just that, sampling AE as one part of the wider game, when something else takes the FOTM farm. |
But very few people are going to accept gimped XP.
2) Yes, MMOGamers, in particular, may be achievement-focused, but don't forget that for the past few years, the one PC game title that dominated the top-10-sellers with WoW was "The Sims." |
That's an apples and oranges comparison.
I had players on my CounterStrike server who decidated hours of their lives to racking up kills with the lamest weapons available (the TMP being one favorite- mine was the Mac 10, before they ruined it by making it accurate).
That doesn't mean that 99% of everyone who logged on didn't buy the "best" weapon they could afford.
I honestly think your own attitude is more "fringe" than you believe if you think that 99% of the playerbase gravitate toward your way of thinking. |
I mean, you've presumably played a lot of games, seen how MMO communities act. I'm not sure how you can look at the evidence and arrive at any other conclusion.
You think the concerns of "only finding AE farms" and "AE ruining the game" are just 1%? Those are only the vocal ones, and I still see them holding good numbers against any "AE is fine as it is" defenders. |
I have no doubt that the "NO XP" crowd is a substantial minority, but a "Half of the current farmable XP" group would probably be much more sizable |
I'm talking about underperforming compared to the rest of the game.
Not everyone cares about hyper-efficient levelling, true.
But most everyone cares about not feeling like they're stuck in the mud compared to everybody else.
I don't claim the total would be 99% on my side.... but I'd bet it'd be close to a majority. |
There's no way more than a handful of people would opt for reduced rewards in MA when they could get full rewards from the 'real' game.
That isn't how the general public is wired, and it is even less how MMO gamers are wired.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Just curious....but which of the nerfs do you oppose? All of them? One or more? Seriously, in intelligent discourse, there should be a distinction between nerfs and balance.
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*The "problem" is 4+ years old, but only now do we see a "fix" for the alleged exploit. If the alleged exploit is that bad, would they wait 4+ years to fix it? Nope. So this means the "exploit" was pretty small potatos.
Why annoy people with a nerf over small potatos? Would not more customer goodwill be generated/maintained by just leaving the "problem" alone? This is specifically in reference to the Hover nerf, although this Freak thing is similar.
*The "problem" has never once been mentioned on the forums or in the game as an exploit or a problem, but the minute a nerf is announced The Usual Suspects begin high-fiving each other like their favorite candidate just won Class President or something. I find this behavior childish in the extreme.
*Some things that actually need fixing in the game [need I mention the bugged LRSF tech and the bugged Arachnos Repairmen in the STF?] never, ever get fixed, but by gorry we nailed those Freakshow to the yardarm, mateys! I find this more annoying than I can say.
*A majority of players are hit with a nerf generated by a relatively few players. Need I mention "fixes" related to PvP? Someone whines about getting Assassin-Strike'd in Warburg and *POOF!* everyone gets nerfed. Wow. Some kinda fair. This is less an issue nowadays, but the ill-will it generated in days of yore will linger in the memory a very long time.
*A fun SF/TF that I love to run is totally robbed of fun for me over someone else's "abuse" of the system. Rewards are removed or reduced to all but nothing. That's one less fun thing for my level 50's to do, and I don't like it. Especially when I did nothing wrong in the first place: in a perfect world, evildoers would get smacked with the Punishment Stick and those of us who enjoy fun and rewards could keep doing what we do, guilt-free.
These reasons and more are why the mere mention of the word "nerf" raises many hackles. As these small issues pile up, they create increasing ill-will and I consider this accumulating ill-will dangerous for the long-term stability of the game. This is an unpopular view amongst those who view all nerfs as good nerfs, but there you have it.
*The "problem" has never once been mentioned on the forums or in the game as an exploit or a problem,
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No ? Then the above statement is simply wrong.
You may not have seen it mentioned, but I I have here, in game and over voice chat with SG mates.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
You have the complete chat logs from every server ? And every single post on the forums ?
No ? Then the above statement is simply wrong. You may not have seen it mentioned, but I I have here, in game and over voice chat with SG mates. |
I find this concept in general to be hair-splitting for the sake of someone looking for a fight. Not to mention, we have only your word for this: for the sake of argument, I could say you are lying simply for the fun of being oppositional. "No, U!" you might shout in return, and the chase would be on.
Prominent problems in the game are repeatedly discussed in these forums - often to the point of dead-horsedom. This repetitive rehashing of an issue, often over literally years may denote an actual serious problem. However your supposition that someone mentioning something somewhere in the dead of night in a thread few people see, lends legitimacy to a nerf that affects everyone, I find to be specious. I do not feel that one person's complaint should lead to a nerf for all.
Besides, even if you did hear one person in Vent complain that Freakshow xp is an exploit, [for instance], maybe another person somewhere disagreed and said Freaks give too little xp because of rez/Dull Pain issues.... or over another unrelated issue. How do you know this didn't happen? Which one of them should get their way in changing the game for all of us? Rhetorical question only.
Let's work on the actual problems in the game *before* we continue the seemingly endless stream of nuisance nerfs. Y'know, these problems that we see thread after thread after thread about, with people begging for fixes that somehow never materialize. It is not about to happen, yet hope springs eternal. I will give the developers credit for good fixes they have actually implemented such as fixing the Personal Info biography tab. Let's see more useful stuff like that and set aside these stupid nerfs.
You are a villain; I know you are tough enough to handle it.
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No U!
Paragon Unleashed, Unleash Yourself!
Nethergoat said "under-rewarded", and that is the most important word there. "Flocking" is the second-most. Everything you listed there is its OWN reward, a feeling, not something that can be quantified. And if it could, and the pleasure of finding that exploration badge was somehow on the chopping block to be diminished, you'd see the same or more hell raised. (Well, more, actually, this particular outcry is very mild.) Taking down enemies is only its own reward until about the 20th time to most people, after 100 times there had better be something else on the table.
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I'm not talking about "half of farmable XP".
I'm talking about underperforming compared to the rest of the game. |
-If you look at per-kill levels, yes, a substantial reduction in XP reward in Mission Architect would appear underperforming and drive off players.
-If you calculate in the whole experience of one evening, people testify time and again that Mission Architect is capable of rewards that are substantially over and above the rest of the game. That's one of the reasons that it's so central to so many players.
As you noted in another thread, MA has no low-xp delivery missions, no insane cross-zone travelling, and no in-zone traveling for that matter. With "ticket" rewards, players don't have to worry about taking a moment to sell to make room in inventory when full either. There's no 'return to contact' wait either.
There advantages keep the reward/hour significantly high, even with the steps the devs have already taken.
I really am "casual" on the XP metric. I never really looked to optimize and only casually use MA to follow arcs of people I know. I never "bridged" and the closest I've had to a farm was doing nothing but RWZ missions to get enough Vanguard tokens for a full costume without doing a mothership raid (still don't have the damn helmet). I'm not saying this out of a sense of moral superiority, I'm saying this to stress that I'm NOT a good judge of how great MA rewards actually are right now because I don't really care. I'm relying on the testimony of others- people that USE and LOVE the MA's rate of reward and rave about them.
The way they talk, it seems that your typical farm-friendly arc would be better (overall) than the typical dev-created content even if it dropped 25% less XP per kill. The way most of them talk, even a 50% drop would appear to take things just a little under norm, but people are prone to exaggeration so I know 50% would be too much.
The trick is, without SOME adjustment that focuses on the overall experience, then you'll keep having the dev's content be just as irrelevant as you seem to fear MA becoming.
But beyond that, custom critter experience is just being decimated (in the ACTUAL sense of the word). I just caught a thread about it on one of the test forums (I forgot which) detailing how only Extreme/Extreme critters are worth as much experience as normal critters in the game (while being VASTLY more powerful) and how simply removing a power from what Normal suggests, even if you add a several much more powerful powers back in, reduces critter experience EVEN MORE.
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Look, I know all you "Play the real game!" content whiners are pissy that so many of us are playing the AE and not out there giving you teammates for your precious "normal content" (Which mostly blows, to be honest. Yes, I said it.) but the AE is vastly more fun for me. I play this game to be a superhero beating up bad guys. Nothing more, nothing less. The AE is more fun than the rest of the game because I don't have to run around zones I don't care about, do fedex missions for obnoxious, arrogant, useless Freedom Phalanx members, or anything else that gets in the way of what I play for: Fighting.
The combat in this game is the game for me. Why can't people understand that?
Honestly, I think it's bad enough that they're nerfing boss farms. And you can ***** about how I'm a powergamer all you want, how I'm leveling too fast, or anything else. I don't care. The reason I don't like the change is that all boss missions are about the only thing in the game that's challenging enough to be fun in an 8 man group.
Switching to factions with minions and LTs means I might as well just set my difficulty to view me as an 8 man team and run it solo. Seriously.
So you're ruining my fun. I know I'll still be able to run 8 man boss farms if I want to, and just not get much experience. I know you'll hold that up as a reason why it's not a bad change, and I'm just whining. But you're completely ignoring how hard it will be to actually find 8 people willing to do so for basically no experience, inf, or tickets.
As it stands now, AE farming is a very egalitarian practice (Though there are probably still some idiots on Freedumb who are farming filled missions... Glad I don't play there). You can walk in to the AE building at level 1 and get on a team with 50s. Because the exp and rewards are good enough that no one cares if they have someone too low to really contribute much. And hell, you'll be level 20 in an hour anyway, and can help then.
After the change it'll go back to being an elitist practice like the old days of farming before the AE. Even with all the changes they're talking about, they won't get rid of it, or even slow the really hardcore farmers down. They'll just have them return to not teaming with anyone but other leet level 50 farmers. And that's sad.
The change to custom mob experience is a horrible, horrible idea. Half the fun of the AE is fighting all these custom mobs. I mean, for people like me for whom the fighting (Which is, let's face it, the only real gameplay in this game) is the point of the game, the variety of things you can fight in the AE is a huge part of what makes it so awesome. Making a change that discourages people from fighting anything that isn't already a standard mob somewhere else in the game is stupid. The devs are idiots to do that.
And to all those of you who whine about how I and others like me are not out there in the "real game" playing through the dull and tedious content with you, and begging the devs to force us to do so: **** YOU. You are ruining my game.
I have to say I'm probably the first person to flock to a fun but not very rewarding activity (I fight Steel Canyon fires, for Pete's sake!) and I'd always pick a cooler story or a more novel one over a very rewarding but boring one. And yet, even I have to say that playing missions with vastly inferior rewards would deter me from trying them. Once in a while, perhaps, when I consciously devote some time to burn. But as long as I'm playing, I can have fun in many ways, and so it doesn't make sense that I'd pick the one which gives no reward as my baseline. It's just not worth it.
I don't mind people playing the Architect too much. I, myself, am just not a fan of the setup and the fan fiction, but I still play there from time to time. If this goes through and Architect experience tanks even worse than it does now (no Patrol Experience, no end-of-mission bonus, various less-experience enemies, allies steal experience and so on), then I'm afraid I will simply never find playing it worth the time. If I could find some amazingly brilliant content there that blew my socks off, I might be tempted to try, but I wouldn't be tempted to LOOK for it.
If anything, I wish there were a way for the developers to castrate the massive abuse of the system without slicing the whole system in half. It's a good idea, limited, realistically speaking, only by the measures put it to prevent abuse. Pity.
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I really don't think that people outside the farmers will even notice the changes.
I have to say I'm probably the first person to flock to a fun but not very rewarding activity (I fight Steel Canyon fires, for Pete's sake!) and I'd always pick a cooler story or a more novel one over a very rewarding but boring one. And yet, even I have to say that playing missions with vastly inferior rewards would deter me from trying them. Once in a while, perhaps, when I consciously devote some time to burn. But as long as I'm playing, I can have fun in many ways, and so it doesn't make sense that I'd pick the one which gives no reward as my baseline. It's just not worth it. |
The real problem is that no matter that the forum police give the impression that the majority of players don't play just for XP by shouting down everyone else... The fact is the opposite. The vast majority of players are influenced by rewards. Significantly. To the point that if this change goes through the only way you'll be able to play the AE missions is solo. Because good luck trying to find anyone to join your team.
No "forum police" actively goes around shouting down people that suggest XP is the driving factor for most players. Some members of the community don't do things solely for XP, some members of the community don't understand why XP can trump story, but otherwise you're just making things up.
The changes to XP on custom mobs will most definitely have an effect on how likely players will play any arcs with custom mobs. Especially if they don't implement a method to indicate when a custom mob is going to generate reduced rewards.
My Going Rogue Trailer
Virtue (blue) - Wes The Mess
Virtue (red) - Jess The Best
@Razoras
We all agree to disagree, we get it.
People will always play the game they want to play it, and thats quite probably the way it should be. So, shall we just leave it at that?
Ah, who am I kidding? I might as well ask Nemesis to hand in his staff and come quietly
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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No one in these forums or playing the game has complete chat logs from every server, nor have they read every single post on these forums [nor do all people have access to all possible Ventrilo channels]. Only the developers have access to that stuff, as should go without saying, Vent to the side. Knowing all possible information as the basis for logical dissention on these type of issues is therefore not a reasonable expectation. You know that already.
I find this concept in general to be hair-splitting for the sake of someone looking for a fight. Not to mention, we have only your word for this: for the sake of argument, I could say you are lying simply for the fun of being oppositional. "No, U!" you might shout in return, and the chase would be on. |
As I said, you may have not seen it raised in game, in which case say EXACTLY that. Make your points honestly and people will listen more, make silly hyperbolic points and people will happily dismiss THAT as well as any message you may wish to get across.
i.e. Don't make the broadest claim when its clear you don't have evidence to back it up, not could anyone.
(The same holds true in other situations. I loathe people saying 'the majority of the players think X'. When the mean 'I think...', or maybe at the most 'I and a few friends discussed this and agreed that...')
Reactions from the people I know well who use their untimed Dreck maps to PL their alts can be paraphrased as , 'well its about time'.
Longstanding bugs and balance should be addressed not ignored. (eg PSi-Shockwave, but THAT required a whole AT examination) I have my own theories about why this relatively simple tweak is occurring now, but at least part of it is resource related.
Personally, I think 0.8 for the minions is going a touch far (0.9 'feels right' to me). The bosses at 1.0 are significantly easier than many of the other bosses that get a bonus currently, and so that is spot on in my book.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
And yet, even I have to say that playing missions with vastly inferior rewards would deter me from trying them. Once in a while, perhaps, when I consciously devote some time to burn. But as long as I'm playing, I can have fun in many ways, and so it doesn't make sense that I'd pick the one which gives no reward as my baseline. It's just not worth it.
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Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
No "forum police" actively goes around shouting down people that suggest XP is the driving factor for most players. Some members of the community don't do things solely for XP, some members of the community don't understand why XP can trump story, but otherwise you're just making things up.
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*sigh*
Musashi and Bad, I'm going to respond specifically to you.
If you actually excercise some reading comprehension, even the people who you decry as the 'forum police' and the 'usual suspects' are saying that yeah, this nerf is a bit on the heavy-handed side. They're not actually disagreeing with you. However, based on my own personal reaction, they likely object to the whole calling the devs idiots, screaming that the game is dying, this change has doomed us all, nerfs are always evil, blah blah blah blah blah...
Take the doom and shove it. This is a relatively minor change, even as overnerfed as it is.
EDIT- You know, my suggestion to the devs would be: FIX the old, busted, dull, fedex-to-hell-and-back, random-zoning, muddled-ordered content from back in the day before trying to shove people out of the AE buildings. Some of the 'classic' content is great (I just finished the Freaklympics again, and it's still a ton of fun), but other bits of it... well, let's hold up Quaterhell as the most egregious offender. You do, quite literally, the same mission (on a large, four-level map) three times in a row, identical in every way at least once, and other missions are cloned liberally throughout the TF. That's just shoddy design. If you want people to play dev content, a focussed effort to rework it so that it's all fun, rather than just rare gems here and there amidst the endless sea of barely-better-than-radio-missions-if-that would go a long way towards that.
"A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head." Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates
MA Arcs: #12285, "Small Fears", #106553, "Trollbane", #12669, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"
In the entire history of the game is there one example of players flocking to content that under-rewarded?
Badging.
Time-consuming, occasionally influence-draining (market/crafting badges) and relatively unrewarding aside from an "i did it" marker.
Giant Monster Hunting
Yes, we've lamented that the rewards are weak, but many monsters are still hunted, despite this.
Rikti Dropship Takedowns
Only reward is the "I did it" pride.
Positron's Task Force
No reward is sufficient for that pain
Zone Events
I'm looking at Steel Canyon's Fire Alarms. Many of the participants I encounter there would see all the hellions conning grey, yet they continue to participate.
PvP
Even games with no PvP "rewards" have PvP participants. Many of the best PvP turnouts we have are in tiered competitions where very few of the participants get any reward at all.
Costume Creation
Hours upon hours often spent experimenting and trying new looks, even when there isn't a costume contest reward... for nothing other than looking "good*"
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.
1) A great deal of people did things other than farm the previous Max-XP farm available. They chose not to chase after the fastest available XP but play other parts of the game. A great deal of people would continue to do just that, sampling AE as one part of the wider game, when something else takes the FOTM farm.
2) Yes, MMOGamers, in particular, may be achievement-focused, but don't forget that for the past few years, the one PC game title that dominated the top-10-sellers with WoW was "The Sims."
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.
I have no doubt that the "NO XP" crowd is a substantial minority, but a "Half of the current farmable XP" group would probably be much more sizable (particularly if it had been done that way at launch). Heck, half of current farm rates might be better reward-per-hour than 90% of the dev content, when you figure in travel, delivery missions, and whatnot.
I'd even go so far as to speculate that quite a few of the XP-maximizers would have PREFERRED such a reduced-reward system, as it would've made AE exploits far less extreme, possibly allowing for more moderate Dev remedial action than we've seen...
I don't claim the total would be 99% on my side.... but I'd bet it'd be close to a majority. From the numbers I see in AE, if 50% of the people gave up on AE to chase after the next great farm in-game... AE would still be doing phenomenally with the remaining 50% just visiting occasionally as they meandered around all the different content the game offers.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm not using "farm" in a condescending way here. I'm just saying that if the people focused on farming AE for rewards will gravitate to the next hot-spot, if max-XPPS is so critical to them. They did before AE, and they'll do again.
If you think that kind of play is the majority of the playerbase, do you really think the devs want all those people just farming the same few missions in AE when then new (dev created) content in Going Rogue is available? They WANT the rest of the game to be a viable option, if not slightly preferred.