Regarding Recent Changes to Architect
By
Aliana Blue,
Posted on: 2010-04-08 18:12 in Mission Architect
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^^This^^|
Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
I've seen a few mentions of folk using tickets to buy SOs and the like. I usually wait till I've got enough to buy a Pangean Soil or other rare arcane, then sell it for 5 inf and use the couple of mil I get to buy generic IOs for all my toons. I haven't needed to use DOs or SOs, let alone TOs since the AE went live.
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DOs and SOs are a waste of tickets. A DO costs 35 tickets. You need 20 or so at level 12. That's over 600 tickets.
A rare costs around 500 tickets. A quick check of the market will let you know which one sells for the most. Usually you can get around 2 million...enough to DO out your character ten times over.
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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Door sitting is an exploit? Good gracious sakes, man! You took such delight in previous AE farm arcs I guessed some specific farmer teed you off, or you got mad one day when you wanted a "real" team and could not find one - so you built up a nice case of nerd rage.|
Originally Posted by The_Alt_oholic
Yes.
Snip long rant |
But if you are calling door sitting an exploit - you need to quit the game. Really. Otherwise all that nerd rage you generate every time you play the game and see someone advertising a farm team will give you a coronary. That giant vein on your forehead will finally pop and you will die of blood loss.
There is already an elegantly-coded solution to the door-sitting problem. A big, blue "Quit Team" button. If people are bored, then can leave the team. If they are not, hell, door sit for 5 months. 10 months.
Yes, and real numbers are, bad, too. Nevermind people could figure it out with testing or using the posts on Red Tomax or Wiki. Somehow those real numbers have led to a terrible demise of the integrity of this game.
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So, wait, people do actually quit the game because other people can do things they in no way have to participate in?|
Originally Posted by IncredibleMouse
Thanks for the exploit fix.
My friend re-activated her account now that it's been fixed. |
Wow.
To the guy who mentioned some pages back that CoH sales are down 40% in the last year.
Yes, sales are down substantially, but to say "AE nerf=collapse of City" is likely simplistic.
For instance, the release of the MA also had a boxed set release. How much did that affect the numbers for the 2 quarters after release?
How much is the fact that there is now another MMO that's in something of the same territory, in terms of setting and concept?
How much is the fact that the economy is not real hot at the moment (and was worse last year)?
How much is the fact that the game is getting a hair long in the tooth? (and the announcment of GR has led many to take a break to explore other vistas, planning to return when GR hits)?
Honestly, I have no clue.
(All on Virtue)
Guidestar: lvl50 Grav/FF Controller
Madame Insight: Lvl 50 El/El Blaster
Astrolabe Lvl 50 Grav/Eng Dom
Too many others to consider.
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That right there said you didn't have anything else to say. Really, sorry. But you had nothing else to say. Thanks for trying though, have a cookie.
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Originally Posted by Aliana Blue
No, not really.
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Thanks for the cookie! Next time try getting past the first phrase of the posts. Reading does the body good.|
Originally Posted by je_saist
That right there said you didn't have anything else to say. Really, sorry. But you had nothing else to say. Thanks for trying though, have a cookie.
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We'll leave the part about understanding what is posted for after you manage such momentous feat. Baby steps.
I don't have a cookie to offer you, but I heard someone posted somewhere in the forums about upgrading to Windows 7. Off you go, the public needs you!
Players' Choice Awards: Best Dual-Origin Level Range Arc!
It's a new era, the era of the Mission Architect. Can you save the Universe from...
The Invasion of the Bikini-clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space? - Arc ID 61013
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Stopping it is probably not their ultimate goal.|
Originally Posted by Xanatos
The Developers will never be able to stop farming and powerleveling.
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| The farmers have already moved on to something else. This "fix" has done nothing but infuriate mission architects. |
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| The fact that the development team is happy to inconvenience the majority of players to combat a very small minority is disgusting. |
It's quite possible that the vast majority of MA activity has been about abusing exploits. I certainly haven't noticed hundreds or thousands of plays on my story arcs while all these farms seem to thrive. If this was such an insignificant problem as you think, would they really disrupt MA functionality for over two weeks just to stop it?
I don't think so.
The exploiters must have reached a "critical mass" for the devs to take such drastic action. Just like every time before.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
I've come to the conclusion that AE has been the single worst concept ever implemented by the dev team. It has done nothing but allow rampant & continued exploits, drained development time & resources away from other projects, seriously screwed up the market, and driven a major wedge between players over the farming issue. Unfortunately, the genie can't be put back in the bottle, and we're going to be forced to deal with it for the remainder of the game.
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I think AE has been one of the greatest and most fun things added to the game since launch.|
Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
I've come to the conclusion that AE has been the single worst concept ever implemented by the dev team. It has done nothing but allow rampant & continued exploits, drained development time & resources away from other projects, seriously screwed up the market, and driven a major wedge between players over the farming issue. Unfortunately, the genie can't be put back in the bottle, and we're going to be forced to deal with it for the remainder of the game.
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It has the potential to be that for a lot more people, if they ever get the player UI (not author UI) and search features better implemented. That is more important than adding new tasks, maps, critters, critter-customizing, or anything else you can think of (except closing exploits, because exploit PLing makes people quit sooner because they find the game boring much quicker than people who just play or regular PL).
The key error in AE's implementation, IMO, has simply been the dev's allowing their desire to give us super-cool, vast customizing options in critter creation to override their concern about exploits. IMO, they should have been very restrictive with how we could design critters and then gradually opened up more options after release. Instead they gave us huge options at release and then quickly added tons more options.
So many options made it much more likely for exploits to be hidden in the system, sadly.
I am an eternal optimist though. I believe we are very close to seeing AE become more popular for regular play / teaming / and normal farming instead of exploiting.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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Originally Posted by Dr. Aeon
Hey everyone,
We wanted to take a moment to address issues that have come up regarding the latest patch that has been released. We certainly understand a lot of your concerns and we want to do our best to alleviate them. The change that has been implemented is a temporary change to combat a long standing exploit. This was a stopgap fix that we had to put out until we could come up with a more permanent solution. We certainly do not want to leave your arcs in a state where using them in non-exploitive ways results in little to no experience being gained. Myself, pohsyb, Television, War Witch, along with everyone else here involved in the operations of Mission Architect, are doing everything we can to arrive at a solution that we can all agree on. We currently plan to implement a solution in issue 17 or soon thereafter (and I mean actual soon and not Soon™) . We can't go into detail about what exactly is planned, but it will alleviate the current issue that many of you are having, which is finding your normal arcs are rewarding little experience. Anyone who has a normal story arc that is drastically affected by this change should not go about overhauling your work. We are going to make sure that this upcoming fix will stop exploitive behavior within Architect while also allowing you all to be as creative as you want within the system - without extremely negative consequences. Dr. Aeon |
If this so called 'permenant fix' lets the farmers back in again, im pretty sure thats the end of my subscription of about 4 years or so total (including EU account time
)Im getting tired of devs wasting time on something that should have been thought about before AE release. My point of view on the matter is that AE shouldnt have exp at all and should just be kept to tickets and inf. Farmers can still farm, as they did pre i14 but it gets rid of the level 50 noobs who know nothing outside of atlas park/cap au diable.
These AE noobs destroy the entire point of an MMORPG by getting to 50 in a few hours and learning little else about the game. Before this idea got introduced you could get teaming elsewhere, however now all your getting is AE farm lfm in broadcast. When this patch was implemented at least they had to form a regular team again, which is actually fun instead of spamming this AE stuff over and over. City of Heroes has become City Of Farmers.
Im not anti farmer by a longshot dont get me wrong but I am anti 50-in-a-day farmer. I just wish the devs would stop wasting so much time fixing it to try keep everyone happy and just take a firm stance for once and just remove the exp completly. This way you wouldnt have to see every issue fixing the latest exploit, which I forsee happening even after issue 17 but I will be patient and wait and see....
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Agree with you 100%, if the entire issue had been thought about properly, then you wouldnt even need these patches in the first place, if it was implemented without exp, people wouldnt moan about there not being any now.
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Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
I've come to the conclusion that AE has been the single worst concept ever implemented by the dev team. It has done nothing but allow rampant & continued exploits, drained development time & resources away from other projects, seriously screwed up the market, and driven a major wedge between players over the farming issue. Unfortunately, the genie can't be put back in the bottle, and we're going to be forced to deal with it for the remainder of the game.
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They pretty much have to nowadays since theres next to no teaming outside of it thanks to AE.|
Originally Posted by TehHippeh
So, wait, people do actually quit the game because other people can do things they in no way have to participate in?
Wow. |
Thats not the only person thats left because of AE, it pretty much killed EU I found. My entire SG left within a month of its release and havent been back since. Even myself, if it doesnt get sorted properly soon i wont be staying either.
Just because farmers love it, doesnt mean the actual people wanting to play a decent regular game do.
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Speak for yourself. I love the AE. And oh, the wonderful peace in the Atlas AE building now. Just us story arc players...mmm, lovely.|
Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
I've come to the conclusion that AE has been the single worst concept ever implemented by the dev team. It has done nothing but allow rampant & continued exploits, drained development time & resources away from other projects, seriously screwed up the market, and driven a major wedge between players over the farming issue. Unfortunately, the genie can't be put back in the bottle, and we're going to be forced to deal with it for the remainder of the game.
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Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
[The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."
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You sir, just recruited another player to triumph |
Originally Posted by KingSnake
Must be a server thing. I always run my AE contact real fast cause of my OCD, and haven't seen a single person in the atlas AE building in MONTHS. Totally empty. I never heard AE spam anymore. Ok, maybe once in a blue moon. I can honestly say, in all my gloabl chat channels i'm a member of, only ONCE in... the last 6 months have i seen someone spam for an AE team. And i remember THAT because it was so weird to SEE an AE team forming in a long time.
I suppose bigger server may have more people using AE, obviously. Bigger servers also have more active PVP. That doesn't make it "popular" though.  (I don't know what server your on, but mine is Triumph. No AE activity, no PvP. We are the PVE server. LOL) |
That 5 in total now? lol.
Meanwhile, AE was responsible for at least 3-4 months of my subscription time and the only reason I returned to the game after a year. Because beyond AE, I just don't find the game that interesting.
AE is the one truly truly unique and innovative thing about City of Heroes that you can point to and say 'NOBODY else does this'.*
It allows unparalleled ability to be creative in a game and infinite capability to add new content to the game.
It is, in my opinion, the single best idea the dev team has ever had for CoH.
* (With one very buggy and limited exception from a game almost nobody plays)
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This.
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Originally Posted by StratoNexus
I think AE has been one of the greatest and most fun things added to the game since launch.
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@True Metal
Co-leader of Callous Crew SG. Based on Union server.
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I suspect that is more because other developers realized the huge problems inherent in allowing players to create custom content with rewards attached, and thought better about the idea.
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Originally Posted by Doc_Wormwood
'NOBODY else does this'.
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Well, looking over my story arcs, it appears that they've been pretty thoroughly wrecked by this exploit hotfix, and none of my arcs are in any way exploitive. Hopefully the fix to the hotfix will improve things, or I'll have some heavy rewrites and/or deleting to do. And even if it improves things, I'll probably still have to make modifications here and there.
In the meantime, I suppose that I can create some very simplistic arcs that just involve beating up the standard enemy factions. Yawn. I have a hard time believing that the exploits were so massive that they needed to nerf everybody else so badly, but I don't know what the exploits were, so I'll grudgingly try to give the devs the benefit of the doubt here.
Just please hurry up with that patch. I have some captives who need rescuing.
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Exactly. Most other developers probably decided that it was a bad idea to expend a huge amount of resources on a project that will require continual rebalancing in order to combat exploits, while at the same time only being of interest to a small percentage of the player base.|
Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
I suspect that is more because other developers realized the huge problems inherent in allowing players to create custom content with rewards attached, and thought better about the idea.
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This thing is like a black hole, constantly sucking in dev resources.
A message to Farmers who don't think that AE farms are exploits:
They are.
@Lazarus - that was cheap and I'm assuming you're just annoyed with the patch 'fix'.
Yes I have a DC. I spent time creating my arc. I didn't even win the competition. Doesn't mean I'm a viable target for anger.
There are, as was inevitable, a few posters creeping onto this thread who are farmers, exploiters, cheaters - whatever you want to call them.
I just hope you won't 'whinge' or be a 'carebear' when your arcs are puleld from the AE.
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I believe it's possible for the devs to fix AE, and to do so relatively quickly. But the fact that so many bugs slipped by during creation and testing of the feature, and so much time has passed since their introduction, that it makes me uncertain about the abilities of the dev team as a whole.|
Originally Posted by PapaSlade
I had the highest hopes for AE when it was released and still do to this day. I have, however, chosen to basically stop playing AE missions and making arcs for myself and friends until I can be more certain that the kinks in the system have been ironed out.
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Perhaps each dev is doing their job properly as it has been defined. Yet the results of the collective effort are not always encouraging.
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I agree that content with a good story and appropriate rewards can be played more than once. However, most people would appreciate playing several new stories in a row before returning to good stories for replay. It's hard to have this in the game right now.|
Originally Posted by Lazarus
Story is a reason to play an arc once.
A story with good XP, good meaning equivalent to canon story arcs is a reason to play that arc again. And again with your friends. And again with a random PuG. It's a reason to tell everyone you meet about it. |
As far as canon content goes, it's clear to me we need more of it, with more frequent introductions of content and more of higher quality. Players have been requesting this for a long time. I think it is possible that if players felt rewarded by content, at least some players would be spending less time grinding to exploit loopholes in the system.
In other words, it's possible that to some extent the exploiters are bored with the current status of the game.
As far as AE goes, I think we need better systems for managing it, like bookmarks / favorites, a different rating system, and so on, which should have been part of the system from the beginning. Players have been requesting this since AE's beta. Some of these features are not very time-intensive on the part of the development team.
Paragon Studios has the skill and intelligence to do all of this right. But for whatever reason - whether it's a drive to meet deadlines, poor dev + player communications, narrow developer focus, insufficient number of staff, overly ambitious projects, or whatever - we keep getting problems.
I think the devs have just reconciled themselves to the belief that there will always be problems, and maybe this is a realistic view. But I suspect there are better practices which could be used to further minimize the problems.
(BTW, no, the current nerf really doesn't bother me, and in fact none of the nerfs introduced to the game have EVER bothered me.)
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It's possible, perhaps, that the new people you are seeing are part of the existing player base who switched servers.|
Originally Posted by KingSnake
I'm not disputing what you said, i can't, i don't KNOW the numbers. I just know from first hand experience, on a small server, there seem to be more "new" people or names i haven't seen running around then there was a year ago. Teams, at least on blue side, seem somewhat easier to get. It feels like more people are around not less. I'd imagine a 40% drop in membership would be very noticeable. *shrug*
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I know I've made some changes with my toons and in the past several months have played a lot on Victory, Liberty, Triumph, and Pinnacle, and hardly any on Freedom and Virtue.
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So now you're accusing me of being a farm writer? It's obvious that you haven't played any of my arcs then.|
Originally Posted by Arctic_Princess
A message to Farmers who don't think that AE farms are exploits:
They are. @Lazarus - that was cheap and I'm assuming you're just annoyed with the patch 'fix'. Yes I have a DC. I spent time creating my arc. I didn't even win the competition. Doesn't mean I'm a viable target for anger. There are, as was inevitable, a few posters creeping onto this thread who are farmers, exploiters, cheaters - whatever you want to call them. I just hope you won't 'whinge' or be a 'carebear' when your arcs are puleld from the AE. |
In fact, don't play them. I couldn't care less about your opinions after this point.
I'm not interested in really expensive set IOs, though, so maybe the saving is more inportant for those that are.
er, that was sort of a threadjack i guess.
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)