Reduced XP for Freakshow now

Knockup/back/down.

Though, with the bug that allows Behemoth Overlords to use Healing Flames while knocked down... I don't know if it affects Freaks or not. I'll have to try to find a way to test it.

I did forget about Fire. Although, I could modify what I said by adding that there are pool powers with status effects (KU, KB/D, Stun), but I won't. That's a kettle of worms which I neither want to bob for apples in nor, in good conscience, would agree with.

No, you were right, I failed to take a few builds into account. Though I will say that those few builds which do lack any status effects also have sufficient other resources (meaning, pure damage output and/or high personal defense) to make the question of whether they could would have to be concerned about Freaks using DP a moot point. Make Dead/Make Dead builds don't tend to be terribly bothered if the occasional critter takes an extra 1-2s to make dead.

Amusement.
Fun arcs.

Those are two biggies right there. The Freakylimpics could give 1 XP for the whole thing, and I'd *still* do it. (And have, getting 0 XP, on a character I'd had it on and run with friends for a while, outleveling it when I had it.) Doc Buzzsaw's arc is funny in its own "mad science" way. I look forward to *it* at 30 (which, given the XP "speed boost" to 20, I'll have to remember to turn XP off for now) more than the costume, aura, etc.

If you play just, or mostly, for numbers... whatever does it for you. *shrug* I play for fun and amusement. If I were that heavily concentrated on the numbers, I'd be firing up Excel every night, not COH. (Yes, I'm aware some people try to min/max every ounce of the game, from build to XP and Damage per second. Not saying it's illegitimate... just not my thing.)

See my Guides and Tutorials

This should end the thread right here, in a perfect world. But alas, perfect this world is not.

See... To me, missions are missions. I've played through the game on 100 characters, at this point I click through the text and just go beat up bad guys.

To me, the combat is the game. Making up new characters, both concept, background, cool costume, and powers, and then putting them into combat to see how they will do. That's the game. There's nothing else. Arcs are arcs, and to be fair to myself, the way the "story" is told in any MMO including this one is not terribly engaging or interactive. It's... blocks of text between bashing people over the head.

So "fun arcs" doesn't work for me.

All I care about is how challenging and fun to fight a group is. Anything with end draining mobs is automatically not fun to fight. Freaks are annoying to fight. Sure I guess they're challenging... But I'd rather fight something challenging in a different way. Like Redcaps. And I want to get rewards commensurate with the challenge I take on too. If I'm fighting Redcaps, I should be getting more exp and inf and better drops than people who are fighting say, the Warriors.

And if I'm fighting something as annoying as the Freaks, I should definitely be getting a bonus. Not that that would get me to fight them much, but at least there'd be a greater than zero chance of ever getting me to fight them again.

Well, except for the Sister Psyche TF. Damn the necessity of getting all the badges.

I don't play just or mainly for the numbers, in terms of making mad exp and inf. I play for the numbers in terms of min/maxing characters and seeing just how uber I can make them, and how heavy of a challenge I can make them equal to, yes.

But above all I play to be a superhero beating up bad guys. That's the fun of the game for me. The context of the arc plots is something I just ignore at this point.

There are bad guys, therefore I will beat them up. I don't really need more of an excuse than that.

Not this tired old silliness again.. Yes, I have been on servers other than Freedom/Virtue lately. In fact, I am on one every day. And I have zero issues on my "ghost town" server, Protector, forming or joining teams.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger 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.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Ah, we have another one of these imaginary facts. Guess what, Mr. Doom. NONE of the people I see and know farm, nor have they ever, and all of them, in one way or another, have quite convincing reasons why they don't. Unless you want to quote actual statistics about how many farm and how many do not, then kindly AVOID inventing facts out of pure fiction.

And besides, suggesting that farming be viewed as a feature of the game and designed around is absurd in the extreme. Whether or not many people do something is in no way a measuring stick about how good for the game that thing is.

And I don't even agree with the Freakshow experience reduction! But, like I've said before, if one frankly insignificant (albeit overzealous) change is enough to make people quit in droves... Let me just say there are deeper problems than Freakshow farms.

And, you know what? Before the Architect, there was farming, yes. That has always been there. But before the architect, this subculture of audacious farmers who DEMAND the game be made such that they can far as much as they like didn't exist. People kept things to themselves, their friends and a closed circle of other people. A lot of these farms were ignored because, while there WERE people farming away, it was never a wide-spread epidemic like it is now. History has shown, time and again, that changes targeted against powerlevelling, farming and so forth don't really happen until these things become glaringly obvious and a major factor.

Guess what the Architect did.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

No there wasn't. I already explained this before in another thread, but I'll state it again just for fun.

What is farming? It's growing food for harvest.

What do you do in the "normal" game content? You hunt down pre-existing "food" in a small artificially enclosed space. Guess what that is? RANCHING!

Yup, before AE, all players could do was ranch.

Now they can make their own mobs.... they can "cultivate" or "grow" their own food for later harvesting.

Thus AE finally introduced actual farming, YAY!

Don't bother testing. They can. My SM/ElA brute has them do it while they're being juggled all the time. 5 KD abilities and they can still cast it (chance for KD in Ball Lightning from Mu Mastery)

Mostly I find it piss annoying to have to go back and re-clear one guy. Or do they no longer block kill-all missions? I think they used to, though I might be wrong since I could just be finding the spazzes who fly all over the friggin map at sight of an enemy.

Freaks need to keep their mod because they're just too annoying. If they didn't rez, this discussion wouldn't be happening. It really means the devs have their risk:reward framework setup wrong. They're looking at per-mission or something.

I'm pretty confident that the rikti portal farms, behemoth summoning portal farms aren't ranching.

Freakshow are easy from the time they start appearing at level 20 until level 50 where they're almost free exp. I've fought them with all ATs and I've never gotten a Freak mission and said, "Ugh..." I have with other villain groups in that range.

Considering that Rikti portal Conscripts and Behemoths that come out of portals give ZERO XP.... yeah, have fun with your "farming" of those.

And they are at half Endurance. Which is nice for any character with End-drain abilities.

I'll still fight Freakshow at lowered XP. If they still are weak to energy damage, and still have the same drop rates of $Inf/Salvage/Recipes/etc., then my time spent fighting them will be even better for my wealth:level ratio.

Freakshow are one of the groups that I find fun to fight. They are certainly having fun fighting you, and you gotta respect that.

I also refer to that as HP-DeBuffing.

I've been watching numbers all weekend. Once upon a time it was common for me to see 400-500 villains logged in on a Friday night. This meant that therre were 800-1000 heroes logged in for a total Pinnacle login of 1200-1500.

Last night I saw the total was under 300.

All servers green.

Is this proof that nerfs drew people away?

Of course not. I-16 is on test. Lots of people ARE checking out CO. Satan knows that when Mechwarrior goes live I'll be disappearing again.

Are the servers ghost towns right now? Comparatively, yes. Is now a stupid time to be checking population levels? Of course it is. Let's check again two weeks after I-16's go live.

There is truth to this. I have to agree that we lose people and we gain people, and undoubtedly we lose people of mountains out of a mole hill. How people can cite that as THE reason we're losing people as opposed to basic attrition, other games, Test server absences and all the other possible reasons I will never know, but I guess when someone is bothered by someone, it's natural to extend that to others not content and assert their discontent is caused by the same thing.

And I am SICK AND TIRED of listening about ghost towns. The servers are not ghost towns, and I'm on Pinnacle right now. Let's stop with the exaggerations. That is, by the way, in agreement with you, Bubba.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville 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.

Do you think using powers that do a lot of damage qualifies as an "exploit"?
I'm halfway interested in finding the limits of your mania for defining the word.

So your perfect world is populated solely by gamers who share your exact playstyle preference?
Sounds tremendously boring to me, but whatever.

Yeah, what else could complaints about freaks giving .8 xp mean?
sheesh.

I don't buy the 'they're easy so their xp should be nerfed'.
They *can* be easy. They can also be a PITA.
And again, at the high levels what faction isn't almost free exp?

Freaks aren't a group I seek out or consciously avoid right now, which feels like balance to me. The farmers disagree, clearly liking that 1.2 exp modifier and their widely resisted damage type.

I can agree they shouldn't be worth more xp than other factions, but I don't agree that they should be worth less.

And that is all some of us are saying. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I didn't even realize until this weekend they were worth MORE than standard xp per mob, I just thought the "extra xp" people talked about from Freaks was due to the self rezzing.

In my opinion they simply are not weak enough to justify being worth less than standard xp. That's all I'm saying.

Dear Crashing Facepalm of Unnecessary Rudeness:

Nowhere in my post did I say that Freaks were using Dull Pain multiple times per mob when I fight them: you pulled that fable out of your head unassisted by me. Hyberbole for the sake of making a point: learn to recognize it. And gear down before you pop an artery.

My point being [before you go off on another rampage of unprovoked snark/self-righteousness] that Freaks are not horrible to fight, but if they are worth LESS XP to fight combined with their tendency to rez and Dull Pain, that given the choice between them and another enemy-group, I will most likely pick the other group.

I do this with Clockwork now. Clocks are not an invincible challenge for me, I am not afraid of them. I DO find them extremely annoying and for that reason will never run an arc featuring them. If I am told a contact specializes in Clock missions, I don't choose that contact. I find them to be more trouble than they are worth.

As for "ZOMG IF THEY GET UP YOU GET THE XP AGAIN!!!!!" deal, I find it annoying. I'd rather move on than fight five Stunner Freaks twice in the same spot. I feel that this slows my progression through the mission. If you love doing this for reduced xp, well enjoy. There's where we differ.

Speaking of Clocks, I understand that they give more xp than other groups of that level. OOPS. They'd better fix this exploit pronto...!

Were you using /search to check the numbers? I believe that with the new granulated /hide allowing people to hide from Search without hiding from friends and SG-mates, a higher percentage of people may be hiding from Search (and thus Blind Invites and the RMT'ers who are trying to add names to thier mailing lists).
So there were quite probably a fair bit more people around than you counted.

I agree with your points.

I thought it might be fun to toss my evil farmers perspective on these mobs in, just in the interest of having a complete point of view, especially since Yuri was nice enought to list them all.

I like The Lost, especially at low level. They spawn a lot of bosses, even on low difficulty settings, and have an iconic distinctive look. I seek them out on characters with early Status protection, and avoid them on squishies, except for Dominators, who can use Dominatiom to break Mez effects. Number 1 reason I would avoid this faction is if my character has no mez protection other than Break Frees. Number 2 reason is that Lost like Caves, and I don't. Number one reason I would seek them out, high boss concentration makes them a fun challenge for characters that dont get mezzed every time one of them sneezes.

Rikti on the other hand are different. They dont tend to hang out in those annoying winding caves I hate so much, which is a huge plus. Also, by this level I have knockaround effects under control. Almost all of my characters enjoy fighting Rikti, which makes the RWZ one of my favorite zones. Plus, Vanguard Merits make my evil farming heart scream for joy, doubling up my potential rewards. Number 1 reason I would avoid Rikti is if I am playing a Stalker. Damn drones. If I wanted to be detected by every mob I'd play a Scrapper and cut my health in half! Number 1 reason I would seek out missions with Rikti is that they are awesome.

I don't really mind The Tsoo. I know lots of people hate them, but they're cool! Mystic tatoo ninjas with real ancient sorcery in their hands. Yes the Sorcerers were annoying, until I got my Nemesis Staff that is! Now I just back up and brain them, then finish them as they're sprawled across the floor. Easy Peasey! Plus, they drop Arcane Salvage! Their slows are a bother, but everyone has to have some tricks they can do, and these really aren't any worse than anything else. Even so, I tend to avoid them more than my praise of them would indicate. Why? Tsoo love caves, and Blood Spectre hates caves. It's a Shakespearean tragedy all right. Number 1 reason I would avoid this faction; the caves. Eph Yew Caves! Number 1 reason I would seek this faction out; Darrin Wade. His missions are awesome, even though they're infested with bosses and Tsoo. But only the good Caves!

I hate these guys. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they're dull as dirt, no pun intended. Every encounter it's the same damn thing, kill the boof pet, swing away at the big dumb rocks until they die. Everything looks the same, and most times after I get a kill I have to deal with 2 or 3 little senseless pissants that slow me down but give *** rewards. Number 1 reason to avoid this faction; BOOOOOOOORING. Number 1 reason to seek them out; uh... I got nothing. Sorry, I'm not the big fan of Vernon Von Grun that everyone else seems to be. Well, I guess the Devoured are kind of cool looking. Or maybe they just seem that way next to how dull everything else in that faction is.

I love these guys! Wish there were more of them redside, but it's still just the one mission from Diviner Maros, plus Bloody Bay and Potter's Field for them. Maybe I only love them because they're underexposed. Number 1 reason to avoid them; I outleveled Maros without thinking about it. Number 1 reason to seek them out; awesomeness.

Oy, these guys. I love their background, I really do. And they look awesome. Except for the little Behemoths. Those look stupid. Anyway, these guys are more trouble than they are worth all the way through the game, until level 40, when all of a sudden they become weak sauce nerds for the herding. Number One reason I'd avoid these guys, I'm level 39 or lower. Also Caves. Number One reason I would seek them out, I'm level 40 or higher.

I was pretty excited when they added these guys to the redside paper missions, but I'm over it now. They're just really boring. They shoot you with a bow. Sometimes. Then they run up and wait for their slow charging smashing or lethal damage to land. They can hit kind of hard, but they are just so dull to fight. You know, now that I think about it, they're not much different than Maniac Slammers. Number One reason I'd avoid these guys; boredom. Number One reason I'd seek them out; self loathing maybe?

Big fan of the 300 knock offs. They have their own strengths, excellent mez protection and stacking defence buffs that can make them challenging. I love them though because they are one of the only factions that will actually melee with me at high level. Number One reason I'd seek these guys out, I'm playing a Brute. Number One reason I'd avoid them, I'm playing a Dominator without any Confuse abilities.

The baseline of all factions I think. A nice mix of melee and ranged mobs, lots of variety in powers, nothing too over the top, nothing too weak. Also, back when I cared about badges, they give out a couple of good ones. Number One reason I would avoid this faction; gawdamned Marskmen. Number One reason I would seek them out, Council Bases are slightly less annoying to navigate than caves.

Boring, boring, boring. And the Paragon Protectors dont spawn often enough. On the other hand, do they all need a tier 9 power? I actually enjoy Crey in the pre 40 range a lot more, when they have a nice variety of minions in the spawns, rather than just having everything be a cryo tank of a voltaic tank. 4 layer maps with only 2 enemy models is bad design geniuses. Number One reason to avoid these guys; tedium after level 40. Number One reason to seek them out; some day I'll unlock Viridian. Some day.


Ah the much maligned Longbow. Bane of dedicated villains everywhere. The complaints against the candy stripers are numerous, and I wont repeat them here. I'll just say that I actually like fighting them. A pro active army of heroes with a superiority complex is quite satisfying to bring ruin too. Here's the big design flaw in the faction though. Outside of a few Warden builds, there is no dedicated melee specialist in the faction. Which means every fight against Longbow consists of them backing up, shooting/ lobbing grenades, and you chasing them down. That gets tedious in a rush, and combined with their over exposure as a faction, I think leads to players getting frustrated with them. Number One reason to seek out Longbow from my perspective (aside from the fact that they are all but unavoidable in redside content), I'm playing a natural character between level 22 and 46 and could use some free SOs. Number One reason to avoid them; sick of looking at them.


Yeah Longbow and Arachnos are the keystones of villain content really. There's no way to avoid fighting a lot of these guys throughout your career. Which doesnt bother me much, except between levels 16-19 when endurance issues are reaching critical mass, and the mutherephing Mu are everywhere in Arachnos missions. Arachnos at least has a wide variety of tactics they use against you. Exotic damage types, stealth, end drain, highly durable mobs, ect. They're a decent challenge that doesn't really bother me, but because they're so omni present, I dont feel a great need to seek them out either. Number One reason to avoid this faction, overexposure to them. Number One reason to seek them out, free SOs at the levels you might want them.