This is a grey area with some people, so i'll clear it up for you.
Whoever it was that sent you that tell was partially right, there have been arcs deleted due to farming but this was not the actual reason, it's actually due to an exploit not the fact that the arc was run more than once.
for example... Rikti Comms officer minions gave luit experience for some time, so all farm missions were loaded with them, it is to do with the Risk/Reward ratio, I loved the boss farm which was a mission with no luits or minions atall just bosses, to be honest there was no risk/ratio exploit there as you were still fighting bosses so im still bitter about that.
This person seems to be one of the "anti-farmers" that will shout blue murder if they get a sniff of someone repeating content for rewards...(which if you think about it IS the whole game)
My stance on it is that you pay your subs, and when i'm in game i'll do whatever I feel like.
There also seems to be some confusion between farming and powerleveling... alot of low levels will beg for farms when what they actually want is PL. I'm usually the first to explain the difference to them.
So, my point is this... do whatever you like in game. As long as you are doing the work you deserve the benefits, as long as you are not exploiting then you are free to run whatever mission you like as many times as you like.
Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.
You can get banned for exploitative farming.
Farming is alright.
Where to now?
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The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.
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Originally Posted by Ukaserex
Maybe someone could explain it to me, because I don't wish to offend anyone.
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Originally Posted by Bill Cosby
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
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The Story of a Petless MM with a dream
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Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus
This entire post should receive some kind of award for being both hysterical and fantastic.
Well done. |
Efficiency != Farming != Powerleveling != Exploiting != Cheating
Those are all different (yet not 100% mutually exclusive) terms.
The only things that you could, potentially, get banned or warned for (depending on the magnitude of the context), are the latter two: Exploiting and Cheating.
Fighting off massive hordes of Rikti with my character and getting equally massive rewards for it just because I invested in time, skill, and game-money to have the ability to do it is neither cheating, nor exploiting.
First off I would like to welcome you back to the city. A lot has changed, I am sure, since you were last with us.
Farming in and of itself is not neccessarily an evil thing. It is the exploits that get people in an uproar. The good people on MA Arc Finder (I assume this is the channel you are referring to) take a dim view on it for the most part.
The reason behind that is AE has been hit with several heavy Xp/Ticket Nerfs in an effort to combat the exploits. There have been so many that at times AE seems to have been abandoned by a great percentage of the player base.
That is probably the reason you got the tell suggesting you could be banned for such a question. I really wouldn't worry about it too much.
In reality, the MA ARc Finder channel probably isn't the best place to ask a question like that anyways. It is designed to help people promote and find storie based arcs.
Oh yeah. It was mentioned that there are lots of ways to make influence and it was suggested that Farming was the most effective one. I couldn't disagree more. Be an Ebil Marketeer while you play the game and your influence worries will be over.
As to Farming itself. Well, you can't say that the Devs condone it. Just looked at the Dreck mission you mentioned. It is now timed because of the farming.
If you are looking for an arc to run try out mine...#378442
Punk Rock Cybernetic Kitten Rebellion on TeddyBear Mountain
I'm pretty sure that it is rewarding full tickets and Xp, or at least pretty close to it. But more importantly it is fun. Still some spelling errors in there but working towards being typo free.
Enjoy your day please.
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They don't really *condone* it, but on the other hand, they don't really care as long as the rewards aren't so out of whack with the risk involved. If they think it is, they'll remove it or tweak the enemies (AE) or give the enemies extra powers, add a timer, or adjust where the XP comes from (PVE.) |
Originally Posted by Ukaserex
I was also told that the devs would delete said arc if they knew about it. I certainly doubt this, as the devs know about farming and seem to condone it. . |
For instance - people used to "portal farm." Sit by a portal (like the Orenbanga portal room) with PBAOEs going. Let enemies come out. Gain multiple levels overnight. Fix? The portal has the XP - you have to defeat it. The enemies it spawns can give you debt, but no XP. (Same with Comm officer spawns, Death shaman spawns, etc.) Or they used to farm the Shadowhunter map. Result - give puppies ranged attacks and make it timed. Dreck got a timer for the same reason.
If you're not using an exploit or taking advantage of mobs that can't fight back (for instance,) they probably wont' do anything.
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In case you never got an answer to this, yes the rewards will scale based on the enemies relative level (so for example farming at +1 will give more rewards than farming at -1 or +0). Increasing the group size does not affect the reward per kill but does make it so that you can get more kills in a shorter space of time.
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Originally Posted by Ukaserex
Not being terribly familiar with AE (I've returned after 3 and 1/2 years), I asked on this MA cross server channel if the tickets generated varied with mission difficulty. (if I'm set to 1/1, does that give the same # of tickets as 1/2 or 2/1 or 1/8 or -1/5 )
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The reason that this was considered an exploit was because bosses give higher rewards relative to their difficulty than minions/lts. Essentially their rewards are partly balanced around the fact that you encounter fewer of them than minions/lts. They give up to about 10times more XP than minions (IIRC) but they aren't really 10 times more powerful.
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Originally Posted by Donna_
it is to do with the Risk/Reward ratio, I loved the boss farm which was a mission with no luits or minions atall just bosses, to be honest there was no risk/ratio exploit there as you were still fighting bosses so im still bitter about that.
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Wouldn't count on that, it certainly seems that there is more going on there than the common wisdom suggests. |
Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
The reason that this was considered an exploit was because bosses give higher rewards relative to their difficulty than minions/lts. Essentially their rewards are partly balanced around the fact that you encounter fewer of them than minions/lts. They give up to about 10times more XP than minions (IIRC) but they aren't really 10 times more powerful.
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If you look at the rewards and the hitpoints
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Level 50 Minion Lt Boss Experience 2866 5732 17196 HP 430 857 2570
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If that person is an op of that channel, leave that channel and stick to Architect Chat. If that person is not an op, /gignore. Why? You asked a legitimate question that didn't necessarily have anything to do with farms and got trolled in response.|
Originally Posted by Ukaserex
... I asked on this MA cross server channel if the tickets generated varied with mission difficulty.... My question was answered, and then I got a tell that suggested I could be banned from that channel for farming.
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Non-farm story arcs give tickets, too. As an arc writer I'd love nothing more than to help people get lots of tickets for running my arc rather than yet another Portal Corp demon farm.
Don't worry about exploits, since the devs decide what exploits are arbitrarily. You can guess, but you have no way of knowing what is and isn't an exploit until the devs patch it. (Remember the Bonfire "exploit"? Or when rescue captives, non-combat escorts, and defendable objects started reducing XP in MA?)
So, how should you pick an arc to run? Commit to giving yourself the full MA experience, by playing arcs that have a combination of playability, story, and rewards to your liking. If an arc only has 1 out of 3, you're only getting a small part of the experience. If an arc has all 3, only trolls will accuse you of farming and try to scare you with petitions and bans.
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It's a fair point, the fact that the preferred boss for the boss farms were Maniac Slammers probably contributed as well (since they are very weak for bosses). Even ignoring that though I think that the difficulty of N bosses is less than N times the difficulty of one boss, mostly because certain player powers (AoE attacks and debuffs) become a lot more effective against multiple bosses.
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Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Wouldn't count on that, it certainly seems that there is more going on there than the common wisdom suggests.
If you look at the rewards and the hitpoints If anything the rewards for the boss decline relative to their difficulty. Especially seeing as bosses tend to have more defenses and attacks that add to both their survivability and lethality. So if you define difficulty in the normal sense, I.E. lifting a 100 pound weight is twice as difficult as lifting a 50 pound weight, its pretty clear that, that concept of difficulty is not applicable. |
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I'd save the slot and stick it somewhere else, personally. You get what, a tiny bit of toxic resistance out of most of them?|
Originally Posted by Ukaserex
Today, I finally got a hold of #6 of a set of purple recipes. So, I needed some of that rare salvage. I thought - hey, AE missions generate tickets which I can use to get that rare salvage - not random drops, but specific salvage.
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| Not being terribly familiar with AE (I've returned after 3 and 1/2 years), I asked on this MA cross server channel if the tickets generated varied with mission difficulty. (if I'm set to 1/1, does that give the same # of tickets as 1/2 or 2/1 or 1/8 or -1/5 ) |
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| My question was answered, and then I got a tell that suggested I could be banned from that channel for farming. |
SOME PEOPLE ENJOY BOTH STORY AND REWARDS.
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| Now, we reap what we sow. A farming principle, to be sure. But, I'm curious if running the same AE mission (not one I created) over and over because my character has few challenges with it - is that farming? |
Is it exploitative? No.
Will you get banned, suspended, or have any other developer action taken against you for doing it? No.
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| I was also told that the devs would delete said arc if they knew about it. I certainly doubt this, as the devs know about farming and seem to condone it. Why else would they set it up for us to do over and over again. When I go back to the computer after the arc is done, the same one shows up for me to select. I wonder why. |
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| I just wanted to know if what I was doing, solo - with no extra account being PL'd or anything, would be a problem for anyone. |
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| Maybe someone could explain it to me, because I don't wish to offend anyone. |
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Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
It's a fair point, the fact that the preferred boss for the boss farms were Maniac Slammers probably contributed as well (since they are very weak for bosses). Even ignoring that though I think that the difficulty of N bosses is less than N times the difficulty of one boss, mostly because certain player powers (AoE attacks and debuffs) become a lot more effective against multiple bosses.
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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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Wow this post is annoying...|
Originally Posted by Bright Shadow
Efficiency != Farming != Powerleveling != Exploiting != Cheating
Those are all different (yet not 100% mutually exclusive) terms. . |
Efficiency = Farming = Powerleveling = Exploiting = Cheating
Wrong...
Efficiency does not equal farming, I have plent toons that are fast and efficient that cannot farm.
Farming does not equal Powerleveling, they are actually 2 very different things.
Powerleveling does not equal Exploiting, all known exploits have all been plugged.
Exploiting is not our resposibilty to fix, it is the developers job to plug these holes.
Cheating is not possible in this game, it is as the developers designed it, there is only clever players and sheep.
Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.
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I've thought about this one since our last conversation about it and wonder if it was more to do with them also being a prime target for engineering a "corner case" involving them and other edge cases within the system. For example combining Boss Farms with the (then unchanged) Rescuable Allies can buff you up the wazoo means the risk is essentially nullified and the bosses go down very, very easy because the most frequently uses Ally Buff was AM from the Rad set.|
Originally Posted by Donna_
for example... Rikti Comms officer minions gave luit experience for some time, so all farm missions were loaded with them, it is to do with the Risk/Reward ratio, I loved the boss farm which was a mission with no luits or minions atall just bosses, to be honest there was no risk/ratio exploit there as you were still fighting bosses so im still bitter about that.
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Since then they've changed what allies do to XP anyway but given the poo-storm it kicked up and how many arcs were affected by the Ally change that was more of a stop-gap / last resort change.
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Umm...|
Originally Posted by Donna_
Wow this post is annoying...
Efficiency = Farming = Powerleveling = Exploiting = Cheating Wrong... Efficiency does not equal farming, I have plent toons that are fast and efficient that cannot farm. Farming does not equal Powerleveling, they are actually 2 very different things. Powerleveling does not equal Exploiting, all known exploits have all been plugged. Exploiting is not our resposibilty to fix, it is the developers job to plug these holes. Cheating is not possible in this game, it is as the developers designed it, there is only clever players and sheep. |
That's exactly what Bright Shadow was saying in his post.
!= is commonly used to mean 'not equal to'.
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inequality is not equal to; does not equal x ≠ y means that x and y do not represent the same thing or value. (The forms !=, /= or <> are generally used in programming languages where ease of typing and use of ASCII text is preferred.) |
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Oh... i take that back then. |
Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
!= is commonly used to mean 'not equal to'. |
Sorry.
p.s - ima not a programmer... xD
Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.
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This is only a dead horse because some presumptive types like to try to force their value systems on others. I enjoy story AND rewards but in MA (especially nowadays with the stopgap in place), sometimes those goals can be mutually exclusive.|
Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
You could be banned for discussing farming, or promoting farming, or asking for a good farm. I wouldn't blame them. People who don't farm generally don't want to hear about it. Your question however, is legitimate and not only applicable to farms, since *WARNING* DEAD HORSE AHEAD:
SOME PEOPLE ENJOY BOTH STORY AND REWARDS. |
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Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Yes.
Is it exploitative? No. Will you get banned, suspended, or have any other developer action taken against you for doing it? No. |
@Remianen / @Remianen Too
Sig by RPVisions
The devs prior to Dr. Aeon had a taste for really frickin' long arcs, so I was pleasantly surprised when, in January 2010, there was finally one of them that wasn't w-a-y t--o--o l---o---n---g. Now, I run that one at least one time on every alt for the Admiring Badge. Sometimes more just for fun.
As of March 2010 I hear there's a second reasonable length arc that made DC, so I'll give that a try, too.
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I haven't played it, but I can confirm there is at least one listed as "medium" length.
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Originally Posted by Rigel_Kent
As of March 2010 I hear there's a second reasonable length arc that made DC, so I'll give that a try, too.
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"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
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Who cares, play however you like.|
Originally Posted by Ukaserex
My question was answered, and then I got a tell that suggested I could be banned from that channel for farming. Now, we reap what we sow. A farming principle, to be sure. But, I'm curious if running the same AE mission (not one I created) over and over because my character has few challenges with it - is that farming?
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Tell the haters to eat it.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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I don't know what channel you're talking about but if it was the MA Arc Finder channel then I don't think there is such a policy. The channel is public so nobody can be banned anyway. As far as I know.
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Originally Posted by Ukaserex
My question was answered, and then I got a tell that suggested I could be banned from that channel for farming.
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Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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This. At the end of the day, it's a game, you're supposed to have fun.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Who cares, play however you like.
Tell the haters to eat it. |
"Hmm, I guess I'm not as omniscient as I thought" -Gavin Runeblade.
I can be found, outside of paragon city here.
Thank you everyone at Paragon and on Virtue. When the lights go out in November, you'll find me on Razor Bunny.
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Yeah, I wasn't sure whether it would be good form to throw in advertising for those two arcs in a random MA thread like this.|
Originally Posted by GavinRuneblade
I haven't played it, but I can confirm there is at least one listed as "medium" length.
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But, what the hell, they deserve it.
The January 2010 DC I was referring to was 137561 "Ctrl + Alt + Reset!", published May 2009 by Bubbawheat (@Bubbawheat). The March 2010 DC I was referring to was 374002 "Two Tickets to Westerly", published Feburary 2010 by PoliceWoman (@PW). They are the only two current DC arcs rated as Medium length, the shortest rating of any current DC arc.
Hope to see and play (repeatedly!) more arcs like these rather than the Long and Very Long slogs popular with, uh, whoever was picking the DCs in '09.
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Agreed. Nothing wrong with Long and Very Long arcs, but DC should represent a greater variety of arcs. Dr. Aeon has been quite good for choosing arcs that are very different from each other.
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Originally Posted by Rigel_Kent
The January 2010 DC I was referring to was 137561 "Ctrl + Alt + Reset!", published May 2009 by Bubbawheat (@Bubbawheat). The March 2010 DC I was referring to was 374002 "Two Tickets to Westerly", published Feburary 2010 by PoliceWoman (@PW). They are the only two current DC arcs rated as Medium length, the shortest rating of any current DC arc.
Hope to see and play (repeatedly!) more arcs like these rather than the Long and Very Long slogs popular with, uh, whoever was picking the DCs in '09. |
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
Earlier today, I dusted off my very unused fire/fire tank. I hadn't played him since the nerf to burn, which if I recall correctly was issue 4. maybe 5 or 6. I can't recall, and that's not what I'm wondering about.
True, back in those days, I did run Drecks over and over again - for the influence, mainly. I was playing several toons and back then, as soon as you started to buy SOs, you went broke pretty fast. If you saw the tailor at all, you went broke even faster.
Today, I finally got a hold of #6 of a set of purple recipes. So, I needed some of that rare salvage. I thought - hey, AE missions generate tickets which I can use to get that rare salvage - not random drops, but specific salvage.
Not being terribly familiar with AE (I've returned after 3 and 1/2 years), I asked on this MA cross server channel if the tickets generated varied with mission difficulty. (if I'm set to 1/1, does that give the same # of tickets as 1/2 or 2/1 or 1/8 or -1/5 )
My question was answered, and then I got a tell that suggested I could be banned from that channel for farming. Now, we reap what we sow. A farming principle, to be sure. But, I'm curious if running the same AE mission (not one I created) over and over because my character has few challenges with it - is that farming?
I was also told that the devs would delete said arc if they knew about it. I certainly doubt this, as the devs know about farming and seem to condone it. Why else would they set it up for us to do over and over again. When I go back to the computer after the arc is done, the same one shows up for me to select. I wonder why.
I bring this to this section of the forum because this is where the folks who probably play AE the most are likely to come across it.
Is this farming, what I'm doing? If so, why is it wrong? I can see if I were a roleplayer, and wanting my toon to make his own way in the world, but I'm not one of those players- at least not with my main. I do have some alts that start broke and work the market to make their way.
I just wanted to know if what I was doing, solo - with no extra account being PL'd or anything, would be a problem for anyone.
Maybe someone could explain it to me, because I don't wish to offend anyone.
Thanks.
"Most people that have no idea what they are doing have no idea that they don't know what they are doing." - John Cleese
@Ukase