Farming and Power Leveling in CoX

Am I too late for the popcorn?

I havent seen anything that Farmers/PLers have done in this game, to really make me quit.


People just like to complain about this topic.

You know, "the next morning" you're trying to forget all the stupid things that happened last night and doing your best to NOT have to explain why you have your underwear on the otuside of your pants. Then a week later, everyone's moved on with their lives, forgotten all about it and life goes back to normal. Then suddenly someone strikes a conversation like "Duuude! You were, like, so wild at that party! When you started taking you pants off, it was like... Woah! Dude!"

That's kind of like how I feel with this thread.

Quote:

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.

Farming DID lead to a few high level missions having timers now that didn't used to.

It also got Family xp and influence values reduced.

PLing led to some of the most ignorant players I have ever seen in the game. Specifically AE PLing. A level 50 that doesn't know how to get to Steel Canyon is just sad. Thankfully the majority of those players have since A) learned how to play and became competent players, or B) whined that there was nothing to do and left.

They do affect the game, but most of the time they will not affect your individual play experience.

I personally PL my new characters past the low level content that I've seen hundreds of times before, but once I get to the late teens/early 20s I play normally from there on out.

I hate farming, but have no issue with farmers.

That's my stance on the whole thing.

I don't farm because I find it BORING.

However, if other people want to treat their game like a part or full-time job, they are free to do so. Just means cheaper stuff for me to buy in the future.

PLing? I don't see the point. I enjoy the entire game, from 1-50.

I PL. I also play the game regularly.

Oh, I speed TFs too. Just because I can, because it's fun. Sometimes it's for the merits, sometimes it's just to see how blisteringly fast we can do it. Do we die a lot? Oh yeah. It's fun though.

Again, I play regularly too. I don't mind going slow, and I don't mind doing regular missions. That's fun too.

Hitler loved to farm. From what I read on the Interwebz he was responsible for many a PL farmzexploitinz over the years.





Did it work??

A lot of people feel strongly about this topic, which is why it comes up a lot. I feel like both sides of the debate end up talking past each other.

What this debate is really about is not controlling other players but determining game direction. That's the reason game developers (of this game and of others) and many players find farming distasteful; it violates their sense of what the game "means." In a nutshell, even if an individual is not directly inconvenienced, he or she is still affected because a game heavy in farming changes in substance. A game is more than a sum of its environments, characters, and markets. There is a "spirit of the game" element that carries a lot of importance.

Personally, I don't blame farmers for farming. They do it because game design rewards it. I also don't blame the game developers for making farmable content. Writing content that promotes fun while avoiding power-grind mechanics is very difficult.

But I will say that it's frustrating that in the current state of the game, a lot of focus is paid to "steam rolling" content, with very few challenges that break this mold. What this has done is placed a lot of emphasis on certain very specific powers and powersets and, in a lot of ways, not only legitimized farming but devalued character types that can't do it. I think it is pretty disappointing that once a character gets to 50, the only way to realistically continue to build the character are either to play the market or farm, because the game is geared very heavily toward random drop rewards instead of activity-based rewards. There are merit rewards, of course, but outfitting a character using only merits is very difficult, and mission mechanics make it very difficult for teamed characters to get merits at all outside of Task Forces.