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What it really comes down to is that people who farm exploits are cheating so they should be punished.
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Originally Posted by Sharker_Quint
Honestly, what it comes down to is, these people don't play the way i do so they should be punished.
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Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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... wha?|
Originally Posted by Sharker_Quint
Of course, when these exploits are found, it somehow is always the PvP'ers who get blamed for it.
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I think I'm the only person who mentioned PVP at all this time 'round, and there was certainly no blame there, just reiterating a suggestion that had been made before that would remove one incentive to run these.
Also,
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| Bill, the whole point is, if I decide that after I run an arc and I would like to go back to it after a few hours, I shouldn't be penalized for it |
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Great suggestion mechanically and thematically.|
Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
How about this:
XP you earn in the AE is not real xp, it's virtual XP, which functions similar to Patrol XP, i.e. you have to go out and earn actual "real" XP in order to benefit from your virtual "training session". |
Signed!
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| Another option would be to remove Influence rewards from the AE entirely. It would be perfectly reasonable since the AE missions are not real and thus shouldn't affect a character's fame or finances in any real way. Tickets more than make up for the loss of actual Inf rewards, and reducing the amount of Inf you get in the AE would reduce farming considerably, I believe, while still keeping the marketing promise of AE as an alternative way to level to 50. |
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
You don't get inf but you get tickets. Isn't that enough?
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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whoops missed that part.|
Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
You don't get inf but you get tickets. Isn't that enough?
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From a marketeer standpoint MA absolutely does not need to be awarding more tickets. The distillation effect and the player determination make tickets vastly more 'rewarding' than whatever drops you'd get running a 'real' farm.
From the standpoint of discouraging farmers it might work- I don't know how much attraction the creation of raw inf has for them. It's so insignificant compared to my market earnings I ignore it, but hardcore farmers may well think differently.
Our friend the 'casual gamer' would probably be perfectly happy to get tickets instead of inf since they can 'buy' pretty much whatever enhancers, recipes or salvage they want with them.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
One problem with all these suggestions. AE has always been sold as something with XP. It has always been said that one could play ENTIRELY in AE and go from 1-50. You take away the XP and you will find many people wont be interested to play it at all.
Obviously SOMETHING needs to be done about the exploits and in all honesty if the development team wasnt so focuses on Issue 19 right now this thing would have probably been fixed already, but the removal of XP isnt the answer to me. nor is earning vitrual xp because I am spending REAL time and I want REAL rewards. Patrol XP I am not spending ANY time playing at all.
Again something needs to be done about it.
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
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I like where this is headed because it has always bothered me somewhat that my character can do what he would know as virtual missions yet gain exp and inf as if they were real missions. |
Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
How about this:
XP you earn in the AE is not real xp, it's virtual XP, which functions similar to Patrol XP, i.e. you have to go out and earn actual "real" XP in order to benefit from your virtual "training session". Another option would be to remove Influence rewards from the AE entirely. It would be perfectly reasonable since the AE missions are not real and thus shouldn't affect a character's fame or finances in any real way. Tickets more than make up for the loss of actual Inf rewards, and reducing the amount of Inf you get in the AE would reduce farming considerably, I believe, while still keeping the marketing promise of AE as an alternative way to level to 50. Best would probably be to combine the two. You earn 0% influence and 50% XP in AE missions, but you gain Patrol XP up to the usual Patrol XP limit of thirty xp bubbles (I think) which will let you earn XP 50% faster when doing non-AE content. Tickets make up for the loss of Inf without causing inflation since you only produce merchandise and not money. Another way to hand out the patrol XP might be to let us buy it with tickets. It might be easier to program it that way. I think this would put an end to AE farming almost completely (tickets are still nice to get) and would limit the harm current and future exploits can cause before they can be plugged. |
Now I understand this is all a game and all that but it just bugged me from a logical point of view that Joe on the street would even know who a hero is who never saved one 'real' person or did one 'real' deed from 1-50.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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This suggestion doesn't take away the XP, it just translates it into something you have to 'cash in' by playing 'real' content.|
Originally Posted by Airhammer
One problem with all these suggestions. AE has always been sold as something with XP. It has always been said that one could play ENTIRELY in AE and go from 1-50. You take away the XP and you will find many people wont be interested to play it at all.
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I never understood the whole '1-50 in MA' thing anyway- especially if we're supposed to give any credence to the oft-repeated "MA isn't for farming!" mantra. While people are obviously going to play however they like, MA makes a great compliment to the 'real' game but I wouldn't want to spend my whole 'career' inside the building.
'Virtual' xp for a virtual experience that you can translate into faster leveling in the 'real' world makes a huge amount of thematic sense and would also completely eliminate PL'ing in the MA building.
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| nor is earning vitrual xp because I am spending REAL time and I want REAL rewards. |
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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My suggestion would give you 50% real XP and 50% patrol XP which could then be burned earning real XP at a 50% faster rate. You would get just as much XP as before, at the same rate, but only if you stepped outside the AE and did some "real" missions. If you only played in the AE you would only earn 50% XP.|
Originally Posted by Airhammer
One problem with all these suggestions. AE has always been sold as something with XP. It has always been said that one could play ENTIRELY in AE and go from 1-50. You take away the XP and you will find many people wont be interested to play it at all.
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| Obviously SOMETHING needs to be done about the exploits and in all honesty if the development team wasnt so focuses on Issue 19 right now this thing would have probably been fixed already, but the removal of XP isnt the answer to me. nor is earning vitrual xp because I am spending REAL time and I want REAL rewards. Patrol XP I am not spending ANY time playing at all. |
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
/unsigned. I'm perfectly content the way things are now, and I'm against removing XP or reducing it by requiring people to leave AE in order to get all the benefits.
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Good because my suggestion doesn't remove or reduce the XP. Glad to have you on board.
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Originally Posted by MunkiLord
/unsigned. I'm perfectly content the way things are now, and I'm against removing XP or reducing it by requiring people to leave AE in order to get all the benefits.
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Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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If somebody stays in AE it does. I'm against that. So /unsigned.
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Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
Good because my suggestion doesn't remove or reduce the XP. Glad to have you on board.
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Patrol XP bar grows whether I play or not. This is what I am saying.
Secondly my issue with this whole idea is that it seeks to punish people who farm AE. Well there has been and there ALWAYS will be farming. You cannot eliminate farming. PERIOD.
Now the exploits are a problem. That something the developers need to figure out WITHOUT hurting the entire AE player base. Personally if I were not given REAL xp I simply would NEVER play AE missions AT ALL. EVER.. and I dont think I am the only one either.
Im with MunkiLord on this one.. bad way to solve a serious issue.
The hard things I can do--- The impossible just take a little bit longer.
If numbers are so much more important than a teammate who is fun to play with, forget about the game altogether and go play with a calculator instead. -Claws and Effect-
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who wants to?|
Originally Posted by Airhammer
Secondly my issue with this whole idea is that it seeks to punish people who farm AE. Well there has been and there ALWAYS will be farming. You cannot eliminate farming. PERIOD.
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And I don't see how this affects farmers AT ALL.
What it does is eliminate the motivation for PL'ers to be continually digging around MA looking for holes.
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 question the need to throttle XP/inf/rewards in AE -- I've advocated for it since the first big wave of AE exploits. But I have a quibble with the above statement. (Though in theory I agree with you, Frederik, and am disappointed that they chose to make MA missions just be simulations -- see below.)|
Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
Another option would be to remove Influence rewards from the AE entirely. It would be perfectly reasonable since the AE missions are not real and thus shouldn't affect a character's fame or finances in any real way.
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Arguments about not giving experience and influence for a virtual reality simulation nested inside a virtual reality simulation are moot. As I recall the devs were undecided about whether AE should give xp and inf at first. However, they decided (correctly) that running AE missions is in every material way identical to running regular missions, except for the rewards given (tickets instead of regular drops). And of course Devs' Choice arcs do have the same rewards.
Since the AE simulation is every bit as real as the "reality" of the game, there's no question that that you should get every bit as much experience running the simulation as you do in a regular mission. Even if you posit that it's a simulation -- the simulation is so perfect that the character would gain as much real-world experience in that simulation as they would in real life.
That leaves the question of influence/infamy. As a practical matter, since you can't be killed permanently in "real" action, it takes no more bravery to face down the biggest bads for "real" than it does to face them in AE.
The conceit of influence/infamy/information is a flawed simplification chosen to represent cash in the game. It is inherently flawed because the value of influence does not scale with level the way experience roughly does -- your purchasing power increases drastically as you level, even though the opponents you defeat may not represent any more challenge to you than they did at level 20. That level 50 Tank Swiper is probably easier for you to defeat than it was at level 30, but you get a ton more inf.
Inf pretends to represent your level of notoriety, but it is just a unit of currency. Your inf level does not appear to affect your level of in-game notoriety in any way -- it only represents your spending capacity (your level actually represents your notoriety). And since you can freely trade it with others, and get more by selling things on the market, there is no semblance of it being anything but cash.
Finally, not giving inf along with exp is not an option. Characters really need to get equivalent amounts of inf and experience, otherwise things get really skewed (remember the Winter Lord?).
The whole conceit of AE -- that it is just a virtual reality simulator -- disappoints me and raises the exact in-game problems that you point out, Frederik.
My preferred backstory would have been that you're conducting missions for Portal Corp exploring alternate dimensions where all sorts of things could happen. I would have headquartered it at Portal Corp (with a similar Recluse-sponsored facility in Grandville). Instead of tickets, Portal Corp would issue credits that you could use to purchase items that teams recover from their extra-dimensional missions.
Everything else would be the same, more or less, but it would lack the virtual reality aspect. Since all these missions occur in other dimensions, they have no bearing on what happens in this dimension and "official" content.
That would give the whole enterprise a much more logical footing in Paragon City, and would avoid all the snarkiness of having Dr. Aeon involved.
I sort of like the patrol XP idea.
Here's my suggestion, mostly unconsidered:
* Dev's Choice arcs can give normal rewards, meaning 100% parity with comparable non-AE content; random drops, inf, full XP, and so on.
* Other arcs give little to no inf, but give tickets, and give partial XP.
* Possibly, have some kind of flag other than "dev's choice" that allows devs/GMs to mark a specific arc (until next time it's published) as a legitimate arc which gives real XP, but still only gives tickets instead of regular drops.
I do sort of like the "patrol XP" equivalent -- you can use it to accelerate levelling, but not as a complete replacement. However, this breaks an existing loading screen tip, which says you can level 1-50 in AE.
... But doesn't, I note, claim you can do it in 6 hours.
I think the basic issue right now is that a buggy AE mission can clearly and massively out-reward standard content. Note that non-buggy missions can also be better for players -- people have built things like custom maps which are designed to be cakewalks for fire/ tankers and /fire brutes, for instance. But I'm not sure that's really an exploit, because you can cherry-pick opponents in the rest of the game, too.
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Distinguish between "farmers" in the sense of "people trying to run a map which plays to their strengths" and "farmers" in the sense of "people trying to get massively disproportionate rewards". A fire tanker going up against things that do nearly all of their damage as fire is playing to strengths; a group of people going up against things that give 20x as much XP as anything else of comparable difficulty are trying to get disproportionate rewards. Both are perhaps "farming", but the latter are the ones who are saying "looking for AE farm".
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
who wants to?
And I don't see how this affects farmers AT ALL. What it does is eliminate the motivation for PL'ers to be continually digging around MA looking for holes. |
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The "five levels a day" thing isn't perfect as-is, but it's a step in the right direction. It would really need some kind of scale... it'd just be annoying from 1-10, which you can get in just a few hours. And it'd be too lenient between 40 and 50, in which 5 levels a day would be a ludicrous levelling speed. I'd actually scale it like thus:|
Originally Posted by ThatGuyThere
The problem here is you've - completely incidentally - established both an upper and a lower boundry on XP gain.
"We", being all the players, would know (for certain - it's right there in the code!) that "five levels a day" is an acceptable rate of gain. Anything at or under five-a-day is not an exploit; it's working as-intended. And anyone earning less-than-five a day is not "living up to their potential". |
Levels 1-10: no limit on levelling
Levels 10-20: 5 levels per day available in Architect
Levels 20-30: 4 levels per day available in Architect
Levels 30-40: 3 levels per day available in Architect
Levels 40-45: 2 levels per day available in Architect
Levels 45-50: 1 level per day available in Architect
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| ...so why do regular missions make it all but impossible for me to earn my "five a day"? If five-a-day is "acceptable", why not let me do it running "real" content, instead of just farms? |
You can also farm developer-created content for five (or more) levels in a day. Hop in a Demon Farm in PI and go nuts. They've said that they don't care.
But before the Mission Architect was released, they made it very clear that it was absolutely not to be used for farming, and that abusers would be punished. Unfortunately, fighting those that abuse the system has caused the developers to close many doors that legitimate storytellers would have preferred to keep open to see their ideas flourish. It's also taking resources away from other areas of the game, as the fixes usually require the assistance of the programming team.
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Additional thoughts are as follows:
1) I do not like the idea of trading tickets for experience. It takes what is supposed to be a tangible commodity (at least in-game) and turns it into a figurative one. No, a big part of the Mission Architect system is supposed to be that it can be thought of as a wayto run simulations or "training programs," so it needs to grant experience. (It does not, however, necessarily need to grant exp at the same rate as one would get outside the AE building.)
2) I'm not opposed to the idea of Diminishing Returns on Mission Architect rewards. 100% rewards for the first hour spent in AE missions, 85% for the second hour, 50% for the third hour, 20% for every hour beyond four. This would affect all rewards: experience, inf and tickets. The timer would reset on the same clock used by TFs for Reward Merits (is it 18 or 20 hours?).
I just pulled those numbers out of my rear, by the way; nothing says the degrade has to be based on single hours or use my proposed scale.
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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It also says this on the back of the Architect Edition game box.|
Originally Posted by seebs
I do sort of like the "patrol XP" equivalent -- you can use it to accelerate levelling, but not as a complete replacement. However, this breaks an existing loading screen tip, which says you can level 1-50 in AE.
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| ... But doesn't, I note, claim you can do it in 6 hours. |
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| I think the basic issue right now is that a buggy AE mission can clearly and massively out-reward standard content. Note that non-buggy missions can also be better for players -- people have built things like custom maps which are designed to be cakewalks for fire/ tankers and /fire brutes, for instance. But I'm not sure that's really an exploit, because you can cherry-pick opponents in the rest of the game, too. |
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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I don't like tickets for XP either.|
Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
1) I do not like the idea of trading tickets for experience. It takes what is supposed to be a tangible commodity (at least in-game) and turns it into a figurative one. No, a big part of the Mission Architect system is supposed to be that it can be thought of as a wayto run simulations or "training programs," so it needs to grant experience. (It does not, however, necessarily need to grant exp at the same rate as one would get outside the AE building.)
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But it absolutely does need to award at a rate roughly comparable to 'real' content or nobody will touch it.
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| 2) I'm not opposed to the idea of Diminishing Returns on Mission Architect rewards. 100% rewards for the first hour spent in AE missions, 85% for the second hour, 50% for the third hour, 20% for every hour beyond four. This would affect all rewards: experience, inf and tickets. The timer would reset on the same clock used by TFs for Reward Merits (is it 18 or 20 hours?). |
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Regarding the "virtual XP" suggestion, I dislike it.
If I want to run non-AE content, I will. On my own. Don't force it on me.
I'm currently playing a duo which cannot play together outside of AE. So, yeah.
However, I'd be very, very content with seeing AE stop dropping Inf and instead generate more tickets.
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PPD & Resistance Epic Archetypes
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Hell yes. I would make so much more selling ticket rolls then I ever would gaining influence for kills(outside of specific exploits that gives crazy influence).
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Originally Posted by SkarmoryThePG
However, I'd be very, very content with seeing AE stop dropping Inf and instead generate more tickets.
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By now, it should be obvious that the developers are NEVER going to be able to stop people from farming architect missions. Trying to do so is a waste of time, and quite honestly, may be driving people away from normal architect arcs, since a lot of the changes they make are affecting those too.
The devs need to simply accept the fact that this isn't something they can control, and move on.
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I don't think they are trying to stop farming. Just cheating.|
Originally Posted by firespray
By now, it should be obvious that the developers are NEVER going to be able to stop people from farming architect missions.
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| Trying to do so is a waste of time, and quite honestly, may be driving people away from normal architect arcs, since a lot of the changes they make are affecting those too. |
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| The devs need to simply accept the fact that this isn't something they can control, and move on. |
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
That's farming activity, no matter where it is. And I'm not coming down on farming in and of itself. In fact, you'll see it again shortly when the Winter event comes around as people try to - yes, farm - candy canes for rewards. I'll be doing that, as well, to get that Winters Gift slow resist IO for some of my characters. I won't be doing it because I just loooooove dealing with Baby Mutant and Snaptooth.
And as far as "the people who find these exploits doing what the devs should have done?" Sure. If you find an exploit, say, level 14 skulls providing 100,000 XP and INF a piece, great! /petition Reward issue in AE, send them the info. THAT is what is supposed to be done. Not "Make map, tell everyone to try to keep it quiet, PL 1-50 in an hour for the next few weeks."
And no, running an arc over and over, again, doesn't make it an exploit. The exploits, however, lead to running the exploitive *maps* over and over. Again, going back to my theoretical skulls - if they're giving normal rewards, people will run them on occasion, sure. Maybe someone will run it twice in a row to show it to someone (though they can send the arc number) or see just what I did in the mission. If they're giving 100k XP and INF for a minion? You'd better believe you'll see groups grinding that map out and restarting as fast as possible.
All the above is why I'm perfectly fine with the "5 level limit" suggested elsewhere. If someone wants to run an arc several times, they can. If someone wants to PL on that arc, it'll take them 10 days, and if they want more rewards, well, they can stick their nose out into the rest of the game world (or, yeah, go to an alt, but that will still be limited to 5 levels.)
(Edit: For one of the other PLing reasons, I'm still up for PVP-only characters that can be made @50, yes.)
I am not advocating exploiting in any way to make that clear. I am expressing my feelings of people who consistantly post about trying to either get xp removed or changed in the AE fully knowing that it will never happen.