Farmers Adapt.

You say that as if it hasn't happened already.

I doubt that. As much as I enjoyed the XP afforded to me in I14 and I15, it was very much out of line with what standard content provided, and the I16 changes were a step toward fixing that. Whether or not they went too far is another matter (in my opinion, they did - the custom critter XP changes are ridiculous).

@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."

Not really. Farmers will always farm. its what they find fun, and the devs wont exactly stop them. All the devs watch out for is abusive ways of taking advantage oif it. Though their current fix reeks of bill roper boat-ism imo.

Yep. I pulled down my 2 MA things that had custom critters. They just aren't worth it reduced that much no matter how much fun they were to me. It's not like they were very rewarding to begin with but now they were as painfully bad as the high level family mission. And they were as legitimate a custom groups as I could make (minions, lts and bosses with real powers chosen).

I even got comments that they were too hard from people who ran them.

Someone get it back on topic of what? Announcing publicly what manners we are using to overcome as much of the i16 changes as we can?

Not bloody likely. You want to know how to farm or how to make a mission to farm, then go to the MA and play with it and try it out. But most people are going to be smart enough not to make a post here for you that say "I found map X lets me us alot of ambushes, and i can make characters like this YY that barely hit you and gives good damages."

I swear Darn Newb Farmers just want to stand there and let everyone else work for them. LEarn2Farm the game newbs!!!

@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."

No, see here's the intent: Just play normally. You know, find a mission that sounds interesting, play it, rate it, move on to another. Play, rate, move on. Play, rate, move on.

Making your own mission with no plot (just lots of bosses), publishing it, and doing nothing BUT playing that mission? Kind of goes against the spirit of sharing interesting new stories.

You'll EVENTUALLY make enough tickets for a gold roll by playing normally. In fact, at 1500 a mission*, a 5 mission arc can probably give you a gold roll's worth of tickets! You don't NEED to farm!

*of course, most story-based AE missions aren't specifically designed to ticket-cap you every mission, but that's where difficulty settings come into play.

What mixed messages? Seriously? Removing everything that was being farmed isn't enough of a "no farms" message?

Now, the devs don't mind small-scale farming where there's some risk involved. Look at Cimeroria, there's a big wall with like 60 dudes... but 60 dudes with mez resistance and high-damage lethal attacks that kill defense buffs and they have self-healers and patrols mixed in. That and you have to share the fun with everyone else.

Having THAT is NOT the same thing as "Go ahead and waste space in the MA by making a boss-only mission full of guys who can't possibly hurt you".

The enhanced difficulty options are for people who like a challenge. And yes, it enables farming, but at least people aren't spamming broadcast and tells for pads. Also, now you can farm existing missions easier instead of wasting space in the AE mission list.

And a few probably WILL. I seem to recall there being a "MA stories and Lore" sub-forum that's popular enough, though I DON'T see a "MA Farmers" sub forum anywhere.

Look,, people arent going to play your fricken mission no matter if every farm was removed fromm the AE or not. There is no problem finding real missions, ifyour mission is being overlooked or ignored, maybeit just sucks balls and people quit it rather then finish it and are just trying to be nice by not having to rate it 1 star.

See that is just as likely a reason for why people are not finding or playing your mission as would be that they cant because of all the farms.

Oh and there was a discussion thread on farming as a sticky long beore the MA was ever put into the game. There have dev comments on farming players that openly admit to doing it, common misisons used for it that have still not been altered or prevented from farm use. Hell the devs are the ultimate PLers they make a new power set thye push a button and play it at whatever level they want on internal servers.

Stop acting like you speak for the devs on what is ok or what is not. The MA has been around for quite awhile now, prob what 6 months. I dont see farming missions getting removed, i dont see players being banned left and right. So perhaps your opinions are just yours and dont represent what the devs do or dont feel as you seem to claim personal knowledge of.

The MA is there, its going to be a tool used by farmers no matter what. And if its nerfed to th epoint that it cant be, then it will be as empty as a pvp zone in the middle of the cities. And still no one will play your missions because the endless whinning and ******** by those like you will have removed from the mechanic the one thing that 95 percent of the players play for. Reward and level advancement.

My best advice to all, pay attention to your own computer screen and play your game and have fun. And extend that same curtousy to those around you. They might find fun in ways you dont. It doesnt mean its wrong or unintended.. I could just as easily argue that being that hundreds of posts told the devs the possible implications of rewards and custom mobs in the MA back during closed i14 beta, that lauching the system with those mechanics must meanthat using them was INTENDED. I dont make those claims, so why anyone else should claim that rewards were never intended i dont know. From the moment i first read about the MA it was discussed as being a leveling tool. I would love to know where the info comes from that says that it was never intended to have rewards.


Oh and your opinions are also clearly showing you have no clue to farming. I have farmed the wall in Cim. I used my dominator against those mobs you claim pose a threat due to -def, healing, status resistances etc. I barely get touched. Even creating custom bosses in the MA pose more a threat then anything short of a giant monster i face in the real world. Anything people farm, be it in the MA or the real world is farmed because it poses no threat, or a small enough threat to make the rewards worth it. Now a custom enemy with no attacks? Sure exploit, but your judging that all farms are exploits. Yes i made a fire tankers dream farm. It can still kill my fire tanker. There is still a threat. So what is the difference to you if my 3 slots in the MA are taken up with Maps or missions that i find fun, any more then it matters to me ifyour three slots are taken up buy missions you find fun. Fun is subjective. Should i then get to petition to have your stories locked or removed simply because i find them to have to much to read, rather then to little?

*clops off to sniff around for teh seekret farmz*

I do this.
A LOT.

I treat mission ratings like rep- if I don't have something nice to say, I just skip it.

And even being fairly discriminating, I end up playing a lot of arcs that either flat-out blow, or that are way overpowered for the character I'm playing (hey MA authors, not *every* story you tell needs to be populated with ultra-powerful custom entities, do they?).

If I can make a constructive comment in the small space alloted, I do (like "custom enemies too hard for this arch/elec blaster"), but I don't use stars unless it's a mission I like a lot.

I believe it was in on the Test Server in Pocket D back when I13 was in beta... Hero 1 came in and started answering questions. He said MA would NOT have XP and that "custom enemies" would be in another build.

Cue over a week of people yelling on the forums about MA not having XP or Custom enemies upon release and how they wouldn't touch it. The Devs relented and pushed back the release of MA and repackaged I13 as "Power and Responsibility" and turned into a tiny "QoL" issue.


Domination kinda helps with holds compared to a Controller =) A Controller's mass hold will only hold if they get the "overpower" bonus. Then the rest get angry and start throwing pointy things >_>


... You know, i was beginning to respect your opinion until this. "Real world"?

Where did i say that all farms are exploits? I just want farms off the MA so that hitting "random" doesn't bring up a farm arc 7 times out of 10. Yeah, i checked.

Though while we're on the subject, it occurs to me that no matter what way you slice it, someone going from 1-20 in an hour is exploitative gaming. And the same way someone gets from 1-20 in an hour is the same way you can max out your tickets/hour. So any halfway decent MA farm worth its salt is GOING to be at least somewhat exploitative, even with the nerfs.


I'd like to see you try to report a MA arc for having a story. Go ahead, give CS something to laugh about =)

Now I'd like to not mind the fact that you build custom-missions for your own toons to go through, except it was the same general mindset that got the MA nerfed hard in the first place. See, if, for some dumb reason, no one ever thought to farm or exploit MA, we wouldn't have this "Custom groups need all critter types to be worth full XP" garbage. We wouldn't need to make all our custom critters needlessly difficult just to be worth the same amount of XP as a Dev critter that has 3 attacks. We'd still have healing enemies to add a touch of strategic challenge. And the Mission listing would only have 1000 pages instead of close to 3000 (most of which are for one person or abandoned or broken now).

But, people saw it as a farming tool, and now we have level 50s in Atlas Park asking where the train is. Prices on IOs are through the roof because no one was producing/selling salvage or rares. And because of the ups and downs of the MA, most people won't touch it anymore, even those who might have liked to play a few new stories... never know when a new nerf will come along and invalidate some random arc, which has completely negated the MA's original purpose.

So, go ahead and have your fun, hope you enjoyed ruining other people's with your thoughtlessness =)

After i16 was publsihed, I tried running a few missions with mobs that I knew gave higher-thank-standard XP (PPs). I added minions and bosses to the custome groups so the XP/Inf/ticket rewards would be 100%. I ramped up my difficulty to +0, x8, No Bosses for the duration of my testing.

After killing a few groups, I noticed that the rewards had diminished somewhat from what it was in i15. I tried a few more mobs like Fake Nemesis and some DE minions and lieutenants, but they all gave exactly the same infamy for their defeat as one of my hard/hard critters would.

Just to be sure, I ran a Liberate TV map with no bosses and the Fakes still gave higher than normal Infamy for the kill, albeit lower because of the reduced rank.

So my question is....

Am I doing it wrong, or did they go ahead and standardize all rewards in AE?

So...you're telling me to farm, okay. That's what farming is, doing the same thing over and over again. BUT WAIT!

So basically what you're saying is if I play like 10 different farm missions in sequence, it's not really farming since I'm not doing the same mission twice orrrrrr?

Oh! So if I made a Maniac farm with a plot, THEN it's not a farm since it has cool twists and plot devices! Got ya! I'll get to work on making a plot for my farm, then it won't be a farm since it has walls of text before and after the mission.

I didn't know there was an upper limit to AE's capability, it certainly never hit it during full swing. Besides that, it's certainly very easy to gear a character to farm wall cims, lots of lethal resist and melee/lethal defense pretty much makes it not very risky at all. I'm not sure if you've ever actually farmed a 54 slammer mission, but it's pretty risky without the right team setup...oh shi- kinda like a lot of the missions in the game or SF's/TF's huh? A good team makes anything trivial and riskless, while a crappy one makes running mayhems a veritable crap shoot as to whether anyone will survive. Like I said, the hardcore exploit missions, yea there's something wrong there, but diving into a mob full of 20 something +4 bosses doesn't sound very similar.



I think this thread just about covers it. There is a BADGE forum, and lots of badges are about farming, so there you go.

I dont consider chatter on the test server to be offical release notes. The first announcments of the MA that i recall from positron stated that leveling from 1-50 could be done off user content. Now it might not have mentioned rewards, but seriously, in an MMO that requires any type of gear, i wouldnt consider earning no rewards when you have reached level cap to be an acceptable alternative to standard content leveling. I do recall the complaints on the forums about custom mobs, i dont about lack of XP or rewards.




Ya and resistances help prevent damage, and def helps prevent damage, and status protection helps prevent being helpless, and radiation helps to prevent taking damage... so basicly your saying what? That if i ignored my powers that i could play at a higher risk level?



We play a game that takes place in a virtual world we are expected to see as being real. When out on the streets we are fighting crime or commiting crime in what is to be seen as the real world of COX. The MA is a virtual world within that virtual world. Akin to the Xmen Danger room. Hence real world is contact missions, virtual world is MA. But im pretty sure you understood the idea behind the comment and just couldnt think of another arguement for anything constructive.

First off, i tested it also. I asked for arcs of the medium variety, i got almost all story arc missions. Possible 2 that might have been deisgned as farms, or atleast would have been good farms maybe hidden in an arc.

And... Umm you said that farming was exploting right in the same post as a matter of fact. In the next quote bubble actually.
So basicly anything that increases levleing rate is exploitive gaming. Well dont farms do that? So anything that increases your tickets/hour is an exploit, again dont farms do that?
But let me highlight again....
And we continue...
I wouldnt, that was kinda my point. The missions you make are honestly not that special. Yes i played the arc in your signature. It was basic fair really. Get the traitor v. Archnos mobs... Click the blinking computer fight some custom energyblasters.....Rescue the ally and then let him fight the more rikti for you(oh and by the way your text says its a mission in a cave and its in a lab set map.) And then big surprise your contact turns on you and you have to go back rescue all the bosses you already fought and fight you contact.... Wow i have to say i dont see how my farm map is preventing anyone from finding such original content as they can find from just about any TF or SF or contact in the game.

Oh and to another extent, almost all your missions could very well be farmed easily with the right toons, and set to upper difficulties probably give higher then standard xp and tickets, so you should probably take own the arc.
See and i see it this way. The MA was going to get nerfed. We told the devs about these issues back in closed beta to issue 14. About the ability to make these maps, exploit having weak attacking enemies etc etc. They launched the issue anyway. And i find it hard to beleive they launched it not knowing that for a time people were going to abuse it. I find it easy to believe that much like this latest issue and finding a suitable ranking system for XP for custom critters that changing the system would delay the launch of the issue and they found that to be unacceptable.

Now as for the one rank groups, you fricken know that was gonna change. Even if the farmers had not embraced it, the players would still have realized that an MA mission was going to grant them more returns because you fought all Lts, or all Bosses. And just like now, people seek out missions with freaks in them why? (or used to) because they offered higher XP then other mobs. They used to seek out Family why? Because they offered standard XP with low risks. The conditions your complaining about were going to come to light and be changed be itnow or later.
Jesus this again "Level 50s that dont know where the train is...." Ya and we have 5 year vets in these forums that have never power leveled a toon asking about best builds for a new dominator, or brute. Seriously after 5 years they need help? Who the hell cares, either tell him where the train is or ignore him.

For IOs, i sold more IO peices on the markets after the MA went into business then ever before. Prior to the MA i usally deleted any common salvage i didnt need cause it wasnt worth therun to sell it. However the ONLY IOs i know of that went up in price were purples. Which were stupidly expensive anyway, and the only ones that couldnt be gotten through the MA. But what came DOWN in price were almost every other IO set peice that was in demand. LotG recharges were selling for 180 million prior to the MA release, they are around 100 million now. So lets see. You want a LotG.... Prior to the farming you would have spent 180 million on the piece, and maybe 1 million on salvage(i forget what rares it takes). But now your complaining that you can save 80 million on the recipie but you have to pay 2 times as much for the salvage? SERIOUSLY? This is your complaint?
First off I am not beholden to anyone else to make sure their life, game, time on this planet is fun. So its not thoughtlessness, its not my responsibility to begin with to not think about. But i would love to know how i have ruined your fun? I have already shown that missions to play are easily found. I have already shown that the effects on the market actually benefited more then they hurt, i have already said my belief is that there is no way that there werent intended changes to the MA long before it went live that farming or not were going to happen.

But since i am being blamed for it, then maybe i should contribute to your lack of fun. Im going to go run off right now, and make 5 more crappy storied missions with barely any content in them as they cannot be mistaken for farms. And then all 6 of my story slots will be full. Making it just that much harder for people to randomly find your arcs.

There now you can complain i ruin your game.

I already responded to your posts, and am no responding to others who are posting in the thread.

If you truely do expect people to post for your viewing the means by which they are overcoming the nerfs in i16, then your pretty mistaken. The true farmers in the game have played long enough to know that you dont go posting in open forums the ways by which you get the best results. Its the fastest way to another nerf.

As i said before, learn to play, practice making missions, practice against different toon makeups, you will find a sweet spot that is going to keep you happy. But if not for the off topic discussing your thread would be about 20 percent the size it is now, and would still have offered you none of the information you sought.

But fine lets keep it on topic then, Well Donna how have you adapted? How have youchanged your missions, what toons are you fighting, how do you fight them, how do you build you missiosn to max out your returns, what maps are you using? Oh thats right, the point of the thread was not for you to show us how you adapted but to simply gather info from others so that you could copy it.

You know im not really big on thinking this game is to complex. I think most people can understand the way it works, so i dont get hung up on that whole "level 50 not knowing where the train is" thing we have talked about. But you know, for somethings i do think that experience is key. I could tell you how to make a farm mission just like the ones i play. It wont mean you can play it. It wont mean you have a suitable toon to play it. So again, go play with the system for yourself and stop expecting others to figure out the world for you.

The "true farmers" know that the devs data mine this stuff and you can't hide a farm. It's just not possible. You make x reward in y minutes. If x divided by y is greater than the amount the devs intend, they will be aware that something is amiss. This is why the TV farm and demon farm are still around after literally years of being mentioned on the forums.

We're not trying to exploit the game or break the rules. We're trying to find the most efficient means of attaining a goal, typically wealth or xp generation. That's not 'cheating', 'abusing' or 'misusing'; it's playing within the letter of the law, whether you feel it's in the spirit of the law or not.

What people are looking for is a different farm, with a different group of enemies that's either less tedious or more entertaining. We could all go back to TV or demons and we'd make influence -faster- than we can in MA. That alone is tribute to the value of entertainment - dedicated farmers are still willing to experiment in MA despite rewards being reduced past the dev-made farms because they're more entertaining.

We aren't adding farming to a game that doesn't have it. We're adding entertaining farms as an alternative to boring farms. I want to write a farm full of limericks, puns, double entendre and comic nerd inside jokes. I don't want to write a standard MA mission; I want to write a farm. Why? At 50, I'm going to farm. I'd like to be able to show off my wit and wordplay while I do so, but without rewards that are on par with the /existing, dev-made farms/ in the game, I'm not going to be able to get the other farmers to come play with me.

Noone is trying to turn your RP tool into a farm. Some of us are trying to replace the stale farms that have been around for years with something new and fresh.

Imagine a mission with content that updates daily. I -did- this with my limerick farm, replacing an existing limerick with a new limerick each day. The devs just don't have time to dedicate that kind of effort to a single mission, and I wouldn't bother if I weren't running it a dozen times a day with groups of other people.

Ok wolf missions were not an exploit, you actually had to fight them. Dreck was not an exploit, you actually had to fight him. Family missions were not an exploit, and on and on. Yet they all got changed or axed some how. And you know they probably didnt find them off data mining. They datamined them because these forums filled up with posts like "doesnt anyone play anymore" or "all i can find is dreck teams" or"The begging in PIneeds to stop"

The devs dont have to time to data mine ever single mission being run in the game. Every level being made and how quickly its made. They do read the forums and when they do see several topics dealing with specific things, be it an exploit or not, then they research it. So go right ahead, post here how you make your missions, what enemy groups you use, how you get through the 8man spawns. Go right ahead and educate Donna, and the rest. And when the chatter becomes "Looking for a MA Hart mission" in atlas and everyone starts complaining again about the farmers using tactics like you, and that next issue nerfs something that is needed to do it, go ahead and tell us more cautious players we were wrong.

I'm not going to dive into the farm vs. story debate, but I will put in my friendly two cents on this point.

When I play an MA mission, I do not view it as a Danger room mission. It is just as "real" to my characters as dev content. Just because the official spin is that it's a danger room (to protect the "canon" of the game) doesn't mean the players have to view it that way.

I can understand your position, but Steele quoted "real world" to imply that QJ couldn't distinguish reality from a game. That was a pretty....obvious and unflattering move. My irritation was more that Steele was taking a cheap shot since his arguments are featherweights.

PS. Steele, in case you think that I'm being passive-aggressive, I agree with QJ and your arguments make you sound like you are looking for an excuse for why more people don't play your arcs. The CoX missions system (dev or player developed) is much better for clever, quippy dialog than it is for developed stories. I've played for a long time and the stories/plots are for the most part boring and/or predictable. A pen and piece of paper is a much better story-telling medium. War Witch and some others have very deft hands when it comes to snappy dialogue and those pieces really shine, even years later; that to me is what good MMORPG stories are about--cleverness that makes an impression in a very small experience space. But if you are looking to tell the story of "War & Peace" then CoX isn't the place to do it. Many people skip over RP missions because 1) many RPG missions are bad 2) many people play primarily for rewards. Beefing about farming/MA won't change those two things.

Personaly, since they killed off every one of my farming friends, we cant bridge anymore for regular farms or do boss farms, there is nothing I can do besides just leaving and find some other game I can lvl grind in, but for now its not coh. =p