Farming and Power Leveling in CoX

I'm a fairly long-time MMO(RPG)er, and I have been wondering about this for some time. Why does it matter if people are farming or power leveling? I remember in the old days of EQ or SWG, where there were no instanced missions, that it could be a pain in the butt. I hated when all of my mobs were being wasted by high-level 'toons teamed with my-level 'toons. Although, for some reason, camping a spawn location was common and was considered to be okay. That always seemed strange, to me. And who remembers how big of a problem mob stealing used to be? In fact. . . I remember reporting players to the mods, because they stole the mobs that my group was clearly camping. The good ol' days. Heh heh.

Anyway, with all of the missions being instanced in CoX, those kinds of concerns really don't exist. So, where is the harm in making farming missions? I prefer not to power level, myself. But a 'toon that gets to lvl 50 in 3 days isn't any different to my game experience than one that gets there in 3 months. Or 3 years, for that matter. 50 is 50, however he got there. Seems to me that it should be okay to farm, if that's the kind of experience that the player wants.

I know this is still a sore spot in MMO communities, so I'm interested to hear what everyone thinks. Or if there's some technical reason that it's frowned on. Chime in, if you want.

Wow, this is like the deadest of dead horses.

Some people like to farm. Some people don't.
I honestly dont think it matters.

I honestly don't know Dave...why do people ***** and whine about anything in life?

IMHO I think people ***** just to *****.

I look at it this way,I don't care what you or anyone else is doing,if you wanna farm go ahead,if you wanna pvp,rp,or pretend your Barney the Purple Dinosaur...then good for you.You know why?Because,YOU pay for your fee every month and it is what you want to do.

Some ppl are jerks and think that they have the right to tell ppl what to do...just say what my pappy used to say "**** 'em".

Farming and power leveling are fine as long as you learn how to play and don't subject others to will full ignorance.

Exploiting is bad though.

Farming and PLing are more of a concern for the Devs than the players. They do not impact your gameplay *directly*, like the spawn camping you mention, but they do impact the game, and letting them go unchecked is bad for the overall health of the game.

1) Farming: Too much farming means too much game currency in rotation, which means higher prices. Also, farming is used by RMTers, and curtailing farming is one way of cutting down their profits. (Not all farmers are RMTers, but RMTers get their currency from either farming or scamming.)

2) PLing: Too much PLing means more clueless high-level players and more people going "I got to level 50 in two days and found there were no WoW-style raids, this game sucks and I'm leaving". Also, again, PLing is a service the RMTers can sell. (Again, this does not mean everyone who PLs is a RMTer.)

That's just a brief overview of the subject. It's a complicated problem, which, as you noted, causes a lot of heated discussion. (Sidenote: posting topics that "you know will cause heated discussion" is frowned upon by some posters and moderators.)

It all comes down to the fact that ever game designers' "X is a reward for Y" is some game players' "I hate that I am forced to do Y to get X, I *want* X so clearly I am entitled to some way of skipping Y so X can be mine".

Look, this topic is old.

There's a bunch of people who don't want to work for drops/money in this game and think it should be handed to them on a silver platter.

Then, there is a bunch of people who work for their drops and their ingame currency.

That is how it is. There is no discussion beyond that.

this thread again, eh?

For me; the issue of farming has not been the act of farming, or the people who farm, but the kind of content that promotes/encorrages it. Such content is invarriably broken; either with actual bugs, or with a borked reward metric. Such content also deforms the game around it, depending on how much more rewarding the 'farm-promoting' content it, people will feel 'obliged' to farm because thats what will get them the loot/level/rewards they want, rather than doing whatever they would rather be doing (because the rewards are so much lower).

Of course no game is perfect, and there will allways be content that is seen as more rewarding than other content, what it boils down to really is by how much; and if that disparity is enough to influence players to do things they would otherwise not do.

(I could go on; there is a lot more nuance and complexity to this, but my time is finite, and the above sums things up)

(it should be noted I do not currently see a farming issue in this game, as I fail to see any particular 'farm-promoting' content that offerers a large enough benifit over other content to affect a large amount of player behavior)