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Originally Posted by Prez1
Kind of the same here, but we let our accounts expire, all 4 of them. Once you get more than a few toons to 50 it becomes redundant and boring (our opinion) to level up the regular way again. Pre i16, MA allowed us to get there quickly and we enjoyed playing the game A LOT more at different levels/stages outside MA all the way up to 50 (we'd stop at various levels and play outside MA, then go back and level up again). It also allowed us to try out different classes quick.
When a game get as old as Coh/v, it becomes top heavy and that's where most of the game play can end up. So, being able to get there quicker than normal made it a great game for us to play. Too bad the silent majority doesn't speak out more but, because of the backlash on the forums whenever someone whispers they enjoyed playing the game by leveling quick or farming they don't. |
I don't care how you spin it.......no game condones powerleveling in that fashion. If they wanted you to level like that, they'd have set it up in a legit way!
Crying that the forum meanies are out to get you does not excuse you using exploits. Every game out there has folks like you trying to excuse clearly unintended behavior. Good Luck finding a new game that allows you to use exploits. You're on a long and lonely road jumping from game to game.
And here we go......
It's too bad that some can not express how they enjoyed playing the game, using the tools provided for such a long time, without being personally assulted. It's a game.
Keep proving me correct by attacking me.
And for those who are sure to post ..."well, if you don't play anymore, why are you still trolling the boards?" I say this; it is because I like the game, have enjoyed playing it, made some great friends in and out of it and still enjoy reading about it. I was not in it for any negative exploits (using MA to level up quicker was not an exploit - you can do it elsewhere in the game now) or for any destructive reasons that would have caused harm to the community.
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I say empty AE zones speak for themselves; extinct
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Originally Posted by Talen_Lee
I like how you presume that you represent an unprovable majority. And when called on it, you'll say 'well, me and my friends...'
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Pinnacle
Langar Thurs-Katana/SR 50; Hejtmane-DM/DA 50
Rogue Spear-Spines/DA 50; Hypnosis-Ill/Rad 50
Sir Thomas Theroux-DM/SR 50; Melted Copper-Fire/Shield 50
Byzantine Warrior-DB/ELA 50;Blade Tempo-50 DB/EA
Sad part being, the devs attempted to stifle and/or eliminate PLing through AE, that won't happen for the simple fact that it allows them to farm in Atlas/Cap Au Diable.
The real reason AE farming was as fast as it was, was the ability to set people to auto 45, and, SSK eliminated that, and standardized all farming, its pretty much all they needed to do.
@Whoever came up with the "Ridding your kitchen of ants"; In order to do that for good, you would have to, by logical extension, remove all ants from the world. Otherwise they will simply return in the not so distant future.
For the most part, MA buildings are now populated by the farmers who know it's still faster than leveling via standard content. Everyone else left and won't touch it, mostly due to the custom character changes.
@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."
"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."
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o.O|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
... but its easier than the "let me keep zoning to try to string newspaper missions that I get randomly together method while typing my own dialog in /local" method of creating custom arcs in game.
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who DOES that??
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
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I've done it. It's called "imagination".
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Originally Posted by Wavicle
o.O
who DOES that?? |
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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Me too. And in some cases, did most of a Task Force to get a unique map, then bailed out of the TF before the recipe to do the conclusion in another mission I had pre-set up.|
Originally Posted by Wavicle
o.O
who DOES that?? |
As for all the chicken-littles who want to wring their hands about how concerned they are about the AE buildings being empty and nobody playing any more, and blah blah blee blah, just stop it. You're not convincing anyone. Just give it up - you've had your toys taken away and all your whining about how terrible that is for the long term health of the kindergarten is not at all going to do anything about the fact that you were hitting people with it.
Personally, I like creating challenges for players; and I like rewarding them for taking the time to subject themselves to my flights of fancy.
I'm not a story nazi but I'm not a farm writer either. However, in order to keep my goal of keeping my arcs appealing (reward-wise); I'm having to use overlooked mechanics and filler critters.
IMO, MA needed to be released in a fashion that reflected good, solid hands-on by the development team and/or (emphasis on 'and') attention to playerbase feedback. But it seems that it wasn't. Not in it's initial presentation nor in it's rectified update. Hopefully, there's something in the pipes in the order of a more balanced approach but given the teams track record; it may not happen in a timely fashion. Although for something of this magnitude, it should be.
And I do take into consideration project, time and manpower constraints... so this is not a Dev-bash assessment.
Apparently, I play "City of Shakespeare"
*Arc #95278-Gathering the Four Winds -3 step arc; challenging - 5 Ratings/3 Stars (still working out the kinks)
*Arc #177826-Lights, Camera, Scream! - 3 step arc, camp horror; try out in 1st person POV - 35 Ratings/4 Stars
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Are we really gonna start talking about "My Fun > Your Fun" now?
Originally Posted by Talen_Lee
Maximizing levels is not the point of game options. Maximizing fun is.
"Fun" is a relative concept. To some, "fun" is exactly that: Leveling.
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People who want to level have a gazillion options.|
Originally Posted by Bright Shadow
Are we really gonna start talking about "My Fun > Your Fun" now? "Fun" is a relative concept. To some, "fun" is exactly that: Leveling. |
People who want to tell stories and make them available to the general game populace have one.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
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And?
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
People who want to level have a gazillion options.
People who want to tell stories and make them available to the general game populace have one.
I think that is exactly why AE is so empty these days (relatively speaking, of course). I have no argument there. Why? Because AE went from a multi-purpose tool (as it was promised) to a single-purpose tool used for story-telling and pretty much nothing else, at least to me and a bunch of people I know.
I'm not saying that's good or bad, mind you. That's just how things went.
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I want to see the dev quote promising powerleveling in AE...........
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Originally Posted by Bright Shadow
Why? Because AE went from a multi-purpose tool (as it was promised) to a single-purpose tool used for story-telling and pretty much nothing else, at least to me and a bunch of people I know. |
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I never ever said we should go back to powerleveling.|
Originally Posted by brophog02
I want to see the dev quote promising powerleveling in AE...........
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I never said AE should be as good as the best powerleveling boards.
What I am saying is why should a mission with custom mobs be harder and worth less than a standard news/radio mission.
Boycott Ncsoft if they close down Coh.
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I want to see a single quote in this thread that explicitly asks for AE to be a tool for powerleveling.
Originally Posted by brophog02
I want to see the dev quote promising powerleveling in AE...........
I never said such a thing, neither did anyone else. What I am saying, however, is that AE was promised to be something more than a tool solely designed for story telling. AE had far higher potential. Sadly, it did not live up to its promise.
I've always said this, and I will say it again. AE was a great feature that was just developed poorly and released without much prediction.
And it's fair. Come on. Show me another MMORPG that allows user-created content with this level of freedom/power. It was the first time any MMORPG developer decided to take on this, and it's perfectly justified if their final product just wasn't flawless.
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And if tool hadn't taken been essentially all of issue 14's deliverable and a decent chunk of issue 15's too, I'd be OK with that. But it did, and I'm not OK with that. I'm sorry, but I can't accept that dedicated story tellers are important enough for that kind of time investment.
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Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
People who want to tell stories and make them available to the general game populace have one.
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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Except you're still leveling by playing through other people's stories. Not as quickly as you would running papers or TFs with a decent team, but you are still gaining xp, along with inf, and tickets that you can trade in for enhancements, salvage, or recipes, in some cases low-supply high-demand recipes.|
Originally Posted by Bright Shadow
I think that is exactly why AE is so empty these days (relatively speaking, of course). I have no argument there. Why? Because AE went from a multi-purpose tool (as it was promised) to a single-purpose tool used for story-telling and pretty much nothing else, at least to me and a bunch of people I know. |
It's still a multi-purpose tool. It just isn't the best tool for some people's purposes. If you just want to level, AE isn't the best tool, but it's still a viable tool.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Quote:
This is misleading. There's no reason to compare "casual play" in the AE with "decent play" outside it. That's apples and oranges. We can keep this apples and apples.|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Except you're still leveling by playing through other people's stories. Not as quickly as you would running papers or TFs with a decent team
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If you play story driven content in the AE you are quite likely to progress more slowly compared to other content with the same players (or solo).
That's a big disincentive to a lot of players. It is so because of a social reinforcement loop that exists around such behaviors. People who are deeply concerned about leveling speed avoid the AE and claim it sucks. People who are mildly concerned about leveling speed tend to avoid it in part because they know the deeply concerned people avoid it studiously. The people who just want a team end up avoiding it because the other two groups do. The people who really want to AE may end up avoiding it because the other three groups do.
In the end, those reinforcing feedback effects force a rather binary transition, swinging the populace from "nearly everyone does it" to "almost no one does it" as you cross the XP equivalence point with canon missions.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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You referenced a quote on leveling. ((This board seriously needs nested quotes to function properly.))|
Originally Posted by Bright Shadow
I want to see a single quote in this thread that explicitly asks for AE to be a tool for powerleveling. |
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Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
People who want to level have a gazillion options.
People who want to tell stories and make them available to the general game populace have one. |
The only two options that you quoted were leveling and story telling. Therefore, unless you give another option, the "promise of multiple things" reads as those two. You need to be MUCH more specific in what they "promised" to keep it from reading as it did. ((If you have a fault here then you need to make things more clear.))
Leveling is still possible in AE, therefore the thing taken away is power-leveling. Therefore, the quote reads as a promise of power-leveling.
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If you play most story-driven content outside the AE you are likely to progress more slowly compared to filler content with the same players. That's why so many people run papers. That doesn't mean running story arcs isn't a viable method of leveling.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
If you play story driven content in the AE you are quite likely to progress more slowly compared to other content with the same players (or solo).
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Quote:
| That's a big disincentive to a lot of players. It is so because of a social reinforcement loop that exists around such behaviors. People who are deeply concerned about leveling speed avoid the AE and claim it sucks. People who are mildly concerned about leveling speed tend to avoid it in part because they know the deeply concerned people avoid it studiously. The people who just want a team end up avoiding it because the other two groups do. The people who really want to AE may end up avoiding it because the other three groups do. |
People who are deeply concerned about leveling speed and inf gain run outdoor maps full of easy enemies over and over. Should we petition for all enemies in the game to be melee focused, smash/lethal damage dealers with few resistances and few status effects and debuffs so people will stop avoiding those enemies that aren't?
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Shubbie
What I am saying is why should a mission with custom mobs be harder and worth less than a standard news/radio mission. |
It's a poor work around. The AE, from its onset, was supposed to limit exploitability. They took several measures early on to limit it, but just didn't completely understand just how far players will go to exploit a system (IME, they still don't properly understand that).
That doesn't mean you can't level through AE, and many users and SGs use it for that purpose. The interface, more than anything, is to blame for the difference between some AE missions and dev developed content.
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I agree with this. And no, this doesn't mean "that the game should cater to herd mentality". However it does mean that a feature that consumed so many resources to gather so many audience, for all intents and purposes, failed, from a usability perspective.
Originally Posted by UberGuy
This is misleading. There's no reason to compare "casual play" in the AE with "decent play" outside it. That's apples and oranges. We can keep this apples and apples.
If you play story driven content in the AE you are quite likely to progress more slowly compared to other content with the same players (or solo).
That's a big disincentive to a lot of players. It is so because of a social reinforcement loop that exists around such behaviors. People who are deeply concerned about leveling speed avoid the AE and claim it sucks. People who are mildly concerned about leveling speed tend to avoid it in part because they know the deeply concerned people avoid it studiously. The people who just want a team end up avoiding it because the other two groups do. The people who really want to AE may end up avoiding it because the other three groups do.
In the end, those reinforcing feedback effects force a rather binary transition, swinging the populace from "nearly everyone does it" to "almost no one does it" as you cross the XP equivalence point with canon missions.
Alright, let's argue semantics. Quote:
Originally Posted by brophog02
You referenced a quote on leveling. ((This board seriously needs nested quotes to function properly.))
The only two options that you quoted were leveling and story telling. Therefore, unless you give another option, the "promise of multiple things" reads as those two. You need to be MUCH more specific in what they "promised" to keep it from reading as it did. ((If you have a fault here then you need to make things more clear.))
Leveling is still possible in AE, therefore the thing taken away is power-leveling. Therefore, the quote reads as a promise of power-leveling.
You said POWERleveling. Not leveling. I never said POWERleveling, neither did anyone else. And POWERleveling is not the same as leveling.
When I'm referring to leveling, I'm referring to leveling at normal pace. I'm refering to foes that give 1.0 relative experience when compared to foes you fought outside of AE. I'm referring to global leveling. By your argument, you'd be completely okay if they removed all kill XP from all kills in the missions in AE and relaced all the rewards with a single point of experience at the end of the mission? You'd still be leveling, wouldn't you?!
Yes. You -can- level with AE at its current status. But as far as the generally accepted rate of leveling is concerned, AE is not a VIABLE option for leveling. It is a much slower, toned down version of leveling.
And again, I have to note, I'm not in favour of any side. I'm not saying AE is bad or good at its current state. There were many, more efficient solutions that could be implemented to solve the AE issues, and most of them would've required more resources than, I'm assuming, the developers were willing to sacrifice. So we get AE as it stands right now.
Arguing over this beaten, rotten, dead horse is just silly.
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Exactly. Why should the authors and those who play our arcs be punished for wanting to be creative and not using the same old boring (and often stupidly easy) mobs that the rest of the game uses. |
Originally Posted by Shubbie
What I am saying is why should a mission with custom mobs be harder and worth less than a standard news/radio mission.
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Standard/Standard should be 100% XP, it's supposed to be the damn baseline anyway. Anything higher should be worth more as you're taking a lot more risk when you start throwing around powers like Build Up and Energy Transfer.
All I have to say:
AE caters to too small of a group as it stands to be worth the developer time it took up.
-Not demeaning the section of the RPers or players that are story tellers, but simply saying that more people would use it if the restrictions weren't so obviously overkill. You know, an increase from maybe 3% of the players to like 13%?
AE Has too little reward for too much risk
-Pretty self explainitory, even patrol XP is disabled, furthering the dispairity between RC and AE. I should not have to deal with a power that does 5k damage to get full xp, I don't even think theres a GM that does that, although I have been wrong and prolly am.
In conclusion; AE as it stands, for all intents and purposes in reference to this game, is a failure, second only to possibly the CoP.
-All I beleive is that the devs need to give up the crusade against farming, they could lose an entire player base before they even get close to stopping it.
I like how you presume that you represent an unprovable majority. And when called on it, you'll say 'well, me and my friends...'