Discussion: Live Patch Notes - 4/7/10

If you feel your arc is too difficult to be cleared by most soloists, make your arc less difficult. Don't put in another moving part to compensate.

I only put allied mobs in my arcs when there is an actual story reason for them to be there, not as "helpers". If someone runs into something too difficult for them in a MA arc they can do the same thing they do in the regular game: ask for teammates to help them.

Many have just gone back to old school farming BM and Demons are back in style.

It is - these are common on a lot of farm missions that I've ran into.

You have got to be kidding me, lol.

I have seen countless AE Farms that do not use allies at all.

Just an FYI to the Devs...trying out peoples arcs without getting regualr drops sucks. The tickets don't even matter to me. I prefer an option between tickets and regular drops.

Another FYI...farming is more rampant in PVP these days. People are arena farming to get those newer pvp recipes that sell for a billion influence. I don't see you doing anything about that at all (and no...I'm not a pvp farmer; but I bet half the people against AE farming are).

There is a work around for that 3rd mission - pulling the generals to the first bridge usually helps reduce the lag - like a lot.

If I do that, it's not fun for groups anymore.

Apparently, all that'd take is re-building that entire map and changing the mob spawning, all from scratch.
Until a red name confirms/de-confirms that. *shrug*
Yes, I hate that mission and its attrocious lag too. No, theres nothing we can do about it. No, its not a game exploit, it's a bug. Yes, its a very annoying bug. Yes, there are multiple bugs still around. And yes, the Devs have to follow a timetable and structure, usually laid out by the Bosses, not them.

So, really, thats all there is to it.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

lmfao!!!

Im guessing it was due to being very easy to slaughter certain mobs (Freakshow) before they had even got up from Resurection, since it wasnt interuptible.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

They could be targeted and defeated before the animation ahd finished - it was technically several free hits without them responding with their own powers.
Now you have to wait for them to become targetable before you can defeat them again, which should help to slow people down a bit.

Nothing is fun for groups, they destroy everything in their path without effort or risk.

AE has been out for a year. This fix could hardly be called jumping the gun.

Filling missions with allies who only buff you and never attack has been an exploit since the beginning. As long as you can have one ally with no loss of XP, you'll be able to have one buff bot or aggro magnet with no penalty. That's completely reasonable.

An alternative change they could have made would be to disallow allies that have no attacks. That would have been more disruptive to story telling, though, so I think the implemented solution is better.

The problem with all of the these experience limitations, however, is that players have no idea when they select an arc how much experience it's going to give them. This is an overall disincentive to run AE arcs.

I'd suggest that the devs put an XP rating on each arc so that players can tell ahead of time whether an arc gives decent XP. I like a good story as much as the next guy. But I like a good story that gives decent XP even more, and there's no reason you can't have both.

I agree these limitations are annoying, but these AE exploits have real-world consequences that damage the market and the game's reputation, which can ultimately affect the number of players.

Yes, it was necessary, and again, agree, hopefully the loss for a couple allies isn't that great. Now that we've patched another round of exploits, can we look at normalizing XP in the AE again to increase appeal to non-farmers?

They already did nerf the PvP IO drops because people where farming them in arena, that is why they are 1 billion+ because the drop rate was drasticly reduced. Now farming them in arena is not the best way to PvP IO farm. As always farmers adapt.

Increase the mob level cap to 60. That should provide ample challenge.

Actually, essentially this feature was supposed to be in the AE from I14 beta. For some reason it never went in correctly. But this specific situations (creating allies specifically designed to assist a player in combat in the AE) is something that I personally a) warned the devs about *before* I14 went into beta, b) specifically warned the devs about *during* I14 beta, c) created several missions specifically to demonstrate the exploitability issue in I14 beta, and d) got assurances two fixes were being considered. One of them was setting the allies so that only one would assist the player at any one time, no matter how many of them there were (which I think ended up being problematic) and the other was setting the reward system to consider combat-capable allies "team members" which meant in essence you'd be splitting your rewards with them no differently than if another player was helping you.

Because of all the chaos surrounding the AE reward system after launch, I never bothered to go back and check to see if this issue was ultimately resolved until not that long ago. But I can say with absolute certainty that while something going on now might have reminded them to look at this, nothing that is happening now is especially new in terms of this problem.

Farm the last mission. It's better XP

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho

Their arcs have to pass balance metrics, reward reviews, content vetting, Q&A testing, and are subject to change due to datamined imbalances at any time over the objections of the content writer.

The players just have to make sure the little orange box goes away and they can upload the arc.

/these.

I'm all behind the intent of the nerf (those farms were just flat out stupid, you want to be unkillable, go find an FPS with cheat codes,) but some clarification would be nice.

Specifically, I have two arcs (older) that I'm wondering how they'll be hit by this - "Hero Corpse" and "Out of your Mind (pt II.)" Both of them have allies for one or more missions - not *many* mind you, and they are targetable and killable - but they serve a purpose in the missions they're used in (one are people you're freeing who help you out, the other are representatives of groups helping your "rebellion" - 4 or so allies at most, given that version of LR summons a small army, it helps.)

I have no problems with the devs doing this, it was certainly needed - but if anyone wants a good example of why I tend to not like farms/farmers (exploitive ones, specifically,) this is a perfect example. I'll put it along with dreck and war wolf timers, portal minions giving no XP and the like.

See my Guides and Tutorials

If the story is setup to where it needs a specific character, lets say "The Honoree", to be told correctly, removing him because he's to difficult would destroy the story it's self. If there where weaker version of them there wouldn't be a problem, but even to a solo character "The Honoree" is one tough cookie, and the two helpers I threw in there still wasn't a guarantee a solo character would win.

That being said I've got no problems with the reduced rewards for more helpers, my current missions are for story, not XP.

Few things that would be nice, don't start reducing XP until the ally's are actually freed, groups could then skip them. Also, make it so the author could mark an ally as dismissible (not needed for any further objectives), so the team could kick them from the mission (restoring XP) if they aren't needed.

Dear God, please.