So did the AE farm nerfs work?

You're always skipping content! There's too much content to possibly do it all without turning off exp gain.

It would be ridiculous of me to assert that AE was the only way to PL, or that PL has died with AE farms. It would be ridiculous and hypocritical of me to assert that farming or PLing is always evil, as I have from time to time done both. What I am asserting is that PI is just a bit more inaccessible to new players than AE was; that it is not the most immediately obvious path forward, the way AE was; and that therefore, it does not attract a large number of players who then never experience any other part of the game, the way AE did. I won't pretend that leveling by passing from zone to zone and taking missions appropriate to your level, teamed with other characters of level near yours, is the only way to enjoy the game. But I do think that it's a path that most new players will benefit from. Facing diverse challenges, learning how to use all your powers to overcome them, learning how you fit into teams where you have to contribute toward the team's success - these produce more skilled players.

And if you feel you've learned all you can from the regular game, and have grown tired of "the grind"... PI will still be there. In my opinion, if the only AE building heroside were in Portal Court, and the only AE building villainside were in the middle of the Fab, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

But, of course, all of this is my opinion, and I am nobody of note.

The behaviors are identical.
Farming is farming.

That's MY point.

There's no bias involved, it is a statement of concrete fact.

That was because they had to. But now you can get xp when exemplared so as long as there is some new character to be the leader at the lower level people won't have to.

I think someone should level up to 50 in the sewers to see how fast it can be done.

Don't look at me, I have never done the sewers and would die of boredom before I got to 50.

Missing does not mean skipping. For example my lowbie heroes always miss the other 4 origin contacts' missions at levels 1-5 but I am not skipping it. My villains always take Kalinda so I always miss Burke but I am not skipping him.

Our discussion is about MA farming vs. sewer farming, or unintended vs. intended.

You can shout "farming is farming" until your hoarse but it doesn't make it a fact. There are differences.

'intended' vs 'unintended' is irrelevant.
If they didn't want people farming MA they should have designed it differently. They didn't so it got farmed mercilessly.

And it's still being farmed.

I'm talking reality, not some dev Utopia where their rhetoric has any impact on player behavior.

Shhhhh!!!

Ixnay onay ethay armingfay inay A-M-ay.

I'm guessing the players that were banned and the players with characters deleted would say differently.

Guess it is relevant.

Especially the ones unintentionally tagged by the script.

It becomes relevant when they take ill-advised punitive actions, true.

Of course, their inability to provide meaningful definitions fatally undermined the moral authority of retribution against paying customers.

The reaction (or lack thereof) to bubble farms indicates they learned the right lesson from that initial fiasco.

I've started three new characters and it's the same for me.

Atlas, KR, Hollows or Steel/Skyway contacts and a bit of streetsweeping enroute missions to level 20. I've seen a lot more activity in these zones. It's great.

There's only one contact between levels 1 and 5. If you've made one character of each origin, you've run all the content there is at that level. There's also a fair amount of overlap in the missions for the low-level contacts. You're not missing anything if you skip that content.

Several of the arcs also include street hunts. At those levels just a few mobs will level you. These days, if you prevent Hellions from dealing drugs and harassing citizens on the way to and from your missions, you will level up several times on the street.

At level 5 you're eligible for the jet pack. You need to do three radio missions and the Atlas Bank mission to get that. By the time you're done with those four missions you're probably level 7-9.

There's only one contact per origin between levels 5 and 10. The first mission for all those contacts is to go the Hollows. If you do the Hollows missions you are level 12-15 when you're done, and you've outleveled the contact that sent you to see Wincott.

Ditto for levels 10-15. If you do the missions you need to get the contact for the Spelunker badge (required for an accolade), you're usually level 15 and have outleveled all the content again, unless you happened to be Magic origin, in which case you may have time for part of another arc before you outlevel the contacts.

Again, if you do radio missions and the bank mission for the temp power you've made another level or two. In fact, all the temp powers for the bank missions for levels 5-24 are extremely useful.

Your level 15 contact will usually send you to Faultline, and if you do those arcs you're level 25 before you know it.

The content that most people are missing due to steamrolling in the Sewers and farming AE are the level 1-20 arcs that came out in issue 1. Those missions involve a lot of street hunts and running around all over town. Once you've done them two or three times, there's no need to do them again. I find the Hollows and Faultline arcs more interesting and rewarding, especially with the revamp of the Hollows and the availability of the jet pack.

I prefer doing radio missions and bank missions for the temp powers that help you be more effective. But much of the level 1-20 original content is similar and eminently skippable, so I can certainly understand why someone would prefer to do AE missions for tickets and the sake of variety. And I also find it fun to steamroll through mobs on a big team. You hardly even notice the levels go by.

The only thing I don't get is why everyone is so obsessed with leveling up so fast. The low levels just zip by in a couple of hours. There's really no need to PL through them door-sitting. Even before AE and the latest changes you could easily get to level 20 and stamina in a few hours without PLing.

Uh, they opened up the Hazard Zones so that teams with SSK'd characters could get into zones where Hazard Zone gates had kept out mixed level teams before, but that has nothing to do with them wanting players to co-op farm in the Rikti War Zone.
Show me a quote where the DEVs have said that they have opened the Rikti War Zone for Co-op Farming.

The DEVs aren't pro-farming. I would like to see a quote where they say that they are. They have said all along that they are against farming because it decreases the longevity of play for some players because they find it boring. When the AE was released, they initially made it clear that they did not want the AE used as a Farming or Power-leveling tool.
Practically everyone that has been around the forums since the AE release knows about Positron's "ten-ton hammer" speech about the AE.
Now I can't easily track down those old - but clearly anti-farming posts by the DEVs, but I know you can't find one that says that the DEVs are pro-farming.

The ability to fill maps for 8-man teams was an attempt to stop farmers from tell spamming other players. This is not a pro-farming move, but, hopefully, a move to stop farmers from harassing other players.

Like when i see people in broadcast spam harassing other players that are looking to farm, by sending tells?

Show me a quote where they said they DIDN'T.

Quote:

The DEVs aren't pro-farming.

The devs are definitely pro-staying in business.
And farmers pay their subs like everyone else.


If you sent out a questionaire to every farmer in the game, setting your own spawn density would have been their most requested feature.


Your anti-farm ranting has become so disconnected from reality it's evolved into a species of neurotic performance art.

Once again, I don't believe the problem was the act of farming itself, but the scale at which it was being done. Sure, lots of farming went on in PI prior to MA even being introduced to the game, but farming in PI took a bit more effort and preparation than farming in MA, and it was a much more dangerous venture if a lowbie wanted to get PL'ed before MA was introduced.

When the majority of the server is compacted into a single zone, something needed to be done, and something was done. End of story.

I know you're going to claim this doesn't count:

I have to disagree with you on that for two reasons.

1) The low-level game is indeed tedious to all of us who have experienced it before. But you're not talking about vets, or even people who have played for a few months. You're talking about new players. As a new player, that low level content is absolutely not what you're saying it is. A new player is getting real missions for the first time, traveling through a busy city zone for the first time, introduced to new villains..... all of this is total tedium to us vets, but these are new players playing for the first time. You can't rate the content there using veteran criteria when it's a new player we're talking about. I'm sure if you asked all of the vets how they felt playing through those missions for the first time, you'll find that most of them probably thought it was fun and entertaining. Since it's the first time, it's new and interesting. The 2nd time? Most likely not since we've been exposed to high-level content. But for a new player who hasn't seen anything else yet, they'll find it a fun way to get their feet wet.

2) You used to advocate that people should be able to play the way they want to play (and farm or PL if they want). Now you've turned around and are recommending that anyone coming into this game play it your way. This is a couple times now where you're saying new players should only play a certain way.

Well other than the odd 1 dude I see in a AE building from time to time and not a SINGLE instance of seeing any AE teams looking for members since this issue went live, I'd say the desired effect was certainly had, it's just too bad AE can probably be put up there with street sweeping perez in terms of popularity now.

From my observation of seeing AE being the absolute thing to do in this game, to seeing it become a ghost town, it seems the vast majority of players were a lot more interested in the gameplay possibilities of AE rather than playing and creating stories.

I'm going to have to emphatically disagree with you on this. New players to this game aren't necessarily new players to MMOs, or RPGs in general. The early content in this game consists of fetch quests, fed ex missions, and multiple zone journeys to go defeat X and crew or get the Y item missions. In this day and age most other MMOs have seriously eclipsed this kind of content.

It's not even so much that the missions themselves are bland and boring, or that the long travels are tedious, but it's also the story content. There's plenty of cool story arc things to do 15+ plus, but there is absolutely nothing on the caliber of Faultline or Croatoa for lowbies other than The Hollows, which many new players can blow by on a sewers team without even knowing it. The early missions in this game are designed specifically to get players to run all over the damn place and figure out how to get to different zones, which isn't totally a bad thing. However, the way they are structured makes them boring and tedious. I didn't even like doing them when I was a new player, and I had never played an MMO before.

As far as I'm concerned, all non-story arc contacts are just a waste of time and are nothing more than mere filler content to pad time between the players completing one interesting story and getting on to the next one. There are just too damn many contacts in the 1-20 game that give nothing but filler pad missions that send you all over the city and way too many ways to totally avoid that kind of boring drivel and still level.

ok then. go for it. find me a post where they have said that they are against farming. you can't and you won't. and trying to say that because they said they didn't want AE to be used for farming will not work. they knew it would be used for farming and they have stated that they were against farming the exploits, which were removed already.