AE, worst issue release since game began?

I expect a lot of flames for this but I'm going to post it anyway.

After seeing what AE has done to the game and how 1-50 in a few hours has now become acceptable by a lot of players, has AE been the worst release since day one?

The concept was good, however people were still complaining about farming on the forums pre i14 so they invented a tool that lets them do it anywhere in game from level 1?

It clearly needed to be thought about more from an exploiters point of view, any form of testing for exploits would have shown up what could have been done but it got pushed out anyway, probably to stick to schedule.

Now all we see is every patch is a new AE nerf, which is taking away time from the devs doing something useful, to fix something i see as useless. It would have been a good idea if they brought it in with no exp and just tickets, that way people wouldnt have got used to the idea that farming at level 1 was acceptable and you wouldnt have half the people crying about it now because they cant miss something they never had.

Pre i14 farms were still used by a small fraction of lower level players I know that, there is still ways to farm either way, which is fine because not everyone did it and it was very much a matter of choice since you could still get a regular team fairly easily.

Now however, people are upset because they lost there 'easy mode' and a lot even try to make it look like there making 'creative' arcs that are being affected to try hide the fact they just want there farms back.

At AE release I know a lot of my friends left the game, they had enough with the devs lack of foresight that it could be used for farming, as everyone has said already this is just baffling.

Besides this the devs announced it took considerable time to make, they even had to push back the issue to make way for another issue because it took so much time to implement, something that could be better put to use with something else.

Thats not to say I wasnt tired of the SF/TF every issue train of thought but the time and resources could have been better used on something that wouldnt have taken so much more time to fix patch after patch because of this, I rank it worse than ED.

So, rant over and now I ask the question, can anyone think of a worse implemented issue than i14s mission architect? or does it stand that this is the worst single update the game has had since release?

While I wouldn't call it the "worst", I do think AE is one of the failed features of this game; purely because from a cost/benefit standpoint, it did not satisfy what it was aiming for, while consuming lots of resources and attention.

But I can't think of any "worse" issue; because frankly, I've loved every single issue release in CoH's history. Even Issue 14. The stance that AE is a failed feature doesn't mean I didn't enjoy making a story or two on it before getting bored!

... "their". They lost their easy mode. The devs wasted their time. Don't mean to be a grammar-fascist, but it hurts my head seeing that used wrong.

Aaaanyway, if we're talking STRICTLY about a development resource viewpoint, I would agree that AE hasn't been very good for us there.

I think the devs biggest mistake was making an easy-to-use interface. If the system had been complicated (think spreadsheets), that would have been a good enough barrier for entry that would have prevented a lot of potential exploiters from even trying in the first place. Yeah, then people would gripe and moan about it being too complicated, BUT, i think the honesty intelligent and creative members of the community would have been able to wrap their heads around it and produce exactly what they wanted. In addition, more complexity may have yielded more creative control, which would have resulted in better arcs.

There are so many things that i'd love to see done in the name of creativity and challenging game-play, but those things would only make exploiters salivate. Like making enemies have higher resistance to certain types of damage and weaker to others. You know the exploiters would only crank those scales to their worst values to fit their own character's damage type to farm them. Customized maps, exploiters would make one long hall so they wouldn't have to waste time looking for more enemies. It's saddening, really.

Funny thing, I had high hopes for AE because i was an active member of the modding communities for both Thief and FF7 (pc version). The mods/custom levels/etc there rivaled and surpassed developer content, and it was all good, clean fun. Except i failed to take into account that this is an MMO with a rewards system. When you kill someone in Thief, it doesn't serve to make you more powerful. Stealing gold doesn't matter because you can't carry it over to someone else's mission map. In FF7, being level 50 from the start of the game with all the high powered items and maxed out money got old fast, so people went the other way and made the game HARDER, made enemies TOUGHER, and REDUCED the rewards. There was no sense in exploitative behavior.

Alas, people want to make their 50s as fast as possible so that they can get bored and quit sooner.

Now I don't have a problem with AE giving XP. After all, the normal dev content that's been around for 5 years IS getting stale, and using the AE as an alternative leveling path makes sense. They should have just gutted AE XP to 75% (to make up for the fact that you don't have to travel between contacts and mission doors) or something. But hey, hindsight, y'know?

I agree and disagree. I don't think this was "the worst issue ever" and even enjoyed creating stories and my own custom characters... which by the way people begged them for and was the reason the issue was pushed back to begin with. I have many friends that took time and energy to create GOOD stories and post them. These are the people AE was meant to please. The story tellers and the players tired of the same content over and over that wanted something new to try.

I agree that the exploits ruined a lot of that. First it was the BADGERS creating missions with no serious plot or even a shred of imagination .. just see how many clickables and hostages you can throw on a map cause I want the bright shiny badges and I want them FAST. The end result.. a bunch of the badges originally designed for AE were eliminated.

Then came the exploiters with mindless farms that did nothing but allow players to, as you mentioned, run around boasting Level 1-50 in under 2 hours! Forcing NC SOFT to, as mentioned, nerf again and again to stop what they deem against the rules.. and you can say what you will about farming and powerleveling but ultimately the game belongs to NCSOFT and they make the rules so if they say it's no legal guess what.. IT'S NOT!

Oh and lets not forget the shady writers out there that did other players story arcs and purposely gave them 1 star in an effort to lower another player's rating so their creation had a better chance at a Players Choice award. I have a good friend that creates some great stories that recently got a reply from someone that had played one of his arcs.. "Good story. I gave it 4 stars. I only give 5 to farms" Wonderful strategy don't reward someone for hard work that you actually enjoy.. give the high rating only to mindless content that was probably thrown together in half an hour but allows you to breeze through quickly and level fast.

There are things I'd like to see them add or fix but the Mission Archetect was not a failure on NC SOFT's part.. The tons of players that misused it, exploited it and forced them to nerf it to death created that failure.

Completely agree with you wendy, however because of how it was implemented, the rest of the game suffered for it.
Thats my biggest annoyance with it. Trying to find a regular team is like trying to get blood from a stone nowadays and thats just wrong. MMORPGs are meant to be about leveling and stuff, if you want a quick fix go play a 3rd person shooter or something.
The idea behind RPG's has always been to level up and gain rewards for your time, getting that in a few hours just makes a mockery of the entire game.

I like the AE on paper, but it has been a real mixed blessing for the game.

The good in it is that there really are some great MArcs, and it lets you side-step the market on salvage. But that comes at the very high cost of breaking the game in almost every conceivable way, and costing the game some of the good will of the player base (on various MMO forums, it is fairly common to see people who left the game due to what the AE did to it).

From a new player experience viewpoint, AE has been disastrous. Level50s with no idea the game has more than one zone. People who think AE is the totality of the game. This I would argue is far more hurtful to the game than any exploit or farm. A new player who thinks AE is the whole game isn't going to be sticking around.

Is the benefit worth the cost? IMO no, especially when considering the opportunity cost. The massive resources spent on AE could have been used to revitalize the low-level game, expand the high-level game, any number of things that would have improved the game and not brought the serious downsides brought by the AE.

I'm sure I'll continue to dip my toes in on AE every now and then (I'm a sucker for a good story) but only as the lowest of in-game priorities.

And despite what the OP said, many legitimate MArcs with good stories have been hurt by the latest patch. I don't understand why some people can't see that.

WARNING: I bold names.

AE is one of the few features which have been added to this game over the years that I consider to be a big mistake. The amount of developer time and effort spent on it simply was/is not worth what we ended up getting in my opinion. Very few people use or ever did use AE the way the developers intended it to be used. It's pretty much just a more efficient way to farm, and the devs seem to be doing their damnedest to stomp that out. Once they do I fully expect it to be a wasteland.

The devs just simply lack the resources to make AE 'reasonable'. By reasonable I mean, the ability to prevent exploits preemptively. Such a thing would be obtained by having a group of players on the inside so to speak, that are good at making exploits. Those players find new exploits ASAP and the devs can patch things up.

Granted this would have only worked to their PR benefit during the design of AE and could have prevented alot of the after issue nerfs. It would fail now because reworking the system after the fact doesn't quit work as well due to a volatile player base and comes off as harsh nerfs.

By hiring professional magic players, wizards of the coast was able to get a player's perspective on potentially exploitative cards during development. This works there because magic is always in development, here AE has been developed and released already.

The best thing they could do is try and find some medium ground to stand on as opposed to simply nerfing things ASAP ( some things such as the MM exploit need to be an ASAP no middle ground decision however ) .

For example the latest issue - excessive allies in missions. Simply nerfing all allies is a horrible idea, the devs know this and have stated as much. What middle ground can be found ? I wouldn't worry about catering to the whiny masses of players that want the fastest, easiest exploit possible - a role which alot of the people that come here and complain fit into perfectly. No, instead the devs need to decide what amount of allies with what functionality is actually 'acceptable and how to handle cases that go beyond that level. This is all well and good , but may not be possible code wise, or just not quick and easy.

On' the players side of things, people need to realize that yes, certain things may get nailed in the cross fire for the time being but also that hot fixes are not intended as a permanent solution.

The lack of foresight and the lack of malicious minded devs is something the team has a hard time compensating for. I rather doubt many of us here could outwit a group of tens of thousands of players so easily either.

AE is a great accomplishment.
Being able to craft missions is an amazing content to have.
AE is just as much about skill as fighting the Hamidon.
AE is also great for letting anyone have a scummy, shark throwing, regen, electric/energy nub, er, I mean, ahem, stalker in 2-3 days. I actually think that is a good thing, because if I had to spend as long leveling up a stalker to 50 as I did my main, I would have jumped into a hot tub with a microwave oven plugged in because it would have been more fun.
My attitude is AE isn't any worse of a game expansion than City of Villains was.
Before City of Villains, everyone in City of Heroes was very polite and helpful.
Before AE, every player also knew every zone intimately.
After AE, players can now make a mission or a story in just about any way imaginable.
The content of an AE mission is a display of how much creative talent and actual 'juice' a player has. Are you a player that has the juice to raid the Hamidon, like Sneaky Prophet? Or are you a player that got juiced to 50 sitting on a couch eating Cheetos like Dee'ceed?
So this entire issue about how AE has 'ruined' teaming...HAHAHAHAHA.
Don't blame the code, blame the player, afterall, it's all of us that are collectively making or breaking the quality of team-play.
It's the players on Freedom that make it Freedumb, it ain't the players on Liberty's fault.
It's the players in City of Heroes that nub out to AE, it sure ain't the fault of the players of AION, HAHAHAHA.
Since the devs started the 'Give the players what they want' policy, you got what you wanted.
I mean, I'm going to stay on long enough for me to be able to write my Magnum Opus for AE, then I'm retiring from COH.
Why?
I'm a rad/rad player.
I've played a rad/rad since day 1.
I've done everything with my main.
I soloed Hopkins.
I soloed the Envoy of Shadows .
I've beaten every TF.
I've beaten every GM.
I've beaten every AV.
I did nothing at all for three straight years but PuGs. 7 days a week, 365 days a year or just about 1100 straight days of pick up groups.
I beat all the AVs during the Purple Patch.
I got over 10 original Hammios, thanks Sneaky Prophet ;-)
I also met some really outstanding players and made some wonderful friends.
I got the pleasure of teaming with the greatest tanker in City of Heroes, Deed. If you knew Deed, like I knew Deed, you few, lucky players know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. The rest of you? You missed out.
I got the pleasure of playing with Test Model 2. He truly was the one lone 'immortal' player in the game, I never, ever saw him die, not even when he was fighting 4 8-man mobs of +7 Council solo because everyone was already dead. He didn't beat them all, but he did survive.
I got the pleasure of playing against the best stalker in the game, Matt Link, and beating him finally.
I got the pleasure of playing with Beverly Thrillz, the greatest PvP empath.
I got the honor of playing with G Lok, the best earth/rad PvP'er.
I got the honor of meeting Jack, in game, in costume, not in a signature costume displayed in game, but in a costume that was original, and none of the costume pieces exist in the game right now on either an NPC or a player character. He never said one word of dialogue, but it was him alright, my good buddy Force of Nature, the big man on Pinnacle, had an in. ;-)
My game is complete.
I don't have anything left to prove.
But I will say this: I'm not paying $15/month any longer to listen to rude players. If players want to be rude to me, they can buy my membership for me.
And all you PvP'ers that have spent all the time since COV being rude to other players, especially original players, you don't know what you're talking about. If you weren't in the beginning of COH, and you came in at COV, you simply don't know COH, and you never will.
But, alas, nothing is forever, and so the ends draws nigh, it's time to close the curtain, it's time to wave good bye.
So instead, I'll go play that other superhero MMO now, since I have a lifetime sub, it don't cost me anything to play until a paid update, so if a player is rude there, I really don't care.

Wall-of-text-obvious-troll in the post above me aside, no. I14 wasn't the worst issue. Second-worst behind I13, sure, but not worst. If you're talking in terms of developer time wasted, then yes, I14 was worse than I13, but both were pretty big wastes.

I actually forgot i13 even existed it was that minor lol, other than the PvP destruction I dont even think there was anything worth mentioning in it. Most pointless issue award goes to that one

Im really glad I escaped freedumb though, virtue is like a whole other world compared to that. 2 minutes into game on virtue, i get a regular team recruiting, asking for members, which lasted more than two minutes and they didnt go to AE to farm. This is what I chose to pay for, not to run the same damn exploit over and over again.

All I worry about now if how the devs are going to deal with the revised version of the ally nerf... I cant see them really sorting the issue and not effecting regular players as well, thats simply impossible as far as i can see but if the farmers do return to the extent they were before, im gone.

AE is not the first insta-leveling exploit that came about. Back in the day the Winter Lords were just about as bad.

The real problem is that the system has no inherent throttle on gaining levels. There is no reasonable case where a character should be able to reach level 50 in one hour, or 10 hours or maybe even 50 hours.

So why not just pick some maximum leveling speed in AE, and cap rewards that exceed it? Then when characters hit the cap, have the system log it and then the devs can investigate the exploit at their leisure.

Then there would be no need to ban anyone, or take away their excessive levels, or release poorly tested patches that have to be rescinded or repatched a few days later.

The devs quickly instituted a cap on ticket drops in AE. A limit on XP and influence seems to be a logical and simple extension that would be easier to implement than the complex set of standard/hard/extreme/custom XP percentages we have now.

And most PLing happens on on standard-content maps where lowbies doorsit and level 50s rampage through critters specifically chosen for an optimized PLing build. When you come right down to it, does it really matter how you get to level 50 if it takes you the same amount of time?

Doorsitting is as much an exploit as any bug in AE -- you can get XP without ever attacking enemies or buffing your team mates -- yet no one seems concerned about plugging that hole.

i dont think AE is the worst thing, and its definitly not the first big exploit

as far as i remember, the cathedral of pain trial exploit allowed poeple to lvl just as fast as in the AE exploits, then theres thart one exploit that was around a long time ago that allowed a PB to put unlimited enhance slots on a single power and 2 shot hamidon

i dont think the AE failed, but i know it still has its issues, they did cover some obvious exploits early on before it was released by making allies suck rewards so you didnt get a horde of AV allies to do the work for you

i agree that custom power selection was a little touchy, but they should have done it differently, so instead of being able to give allies 0 powers (which is what the "civilian/person" custom critter selection was for) they should have forced the custom critters to have at least 1 power in both primary and secondary set)

i overall enjoy AE, i personally when bored, use one of the extremely small casino maps, set 2 boss spawns, 1 ally 1 enemy, and in test mode just sit back unkillable/unaggroable and watch the AVs fight each other to see who wins (like LR vs states, BABs vs states, mako vs manti, ect ect), which is very entertaining to watch a few fights when your really bored

the AE is another option for poeple to play with, if you dont enjoy it find something else to do in the game, theres literally hundreds of things you could do (fully IO toons, run tfs in odd ways (speed, normal, small team, ect), collect badges, run a supergroup, hold events on your server, ect), plenty more things to do than just troll the forums when some little nerf happens because poeple were abusing the system, i have faith in the devs that they are doing whats in the players best interest while it may not always seem so.

No.. not the worst issue ever at all. But it should have been I19 to get it out without all the exploits!

Creating own missions like this is a big leap. But AE should be always the 'extra' thing to do. The thing that has the challenges for mr. big post a few posts back. As they are often harder then anything else in the game. If you don't believe me try my arcs.

With exception of the farm stuff ofcourse. But that's why I said it should have been I19.

we had a good run, after the gr surge dies down this game will be dead.