Here we go again....
WN
Check out one of my most recent arcs:
457506 - A Very Special Episode - An abandoned TV, a missing kid's TV show host and more
416951 - The Ms. Manners Task Force - More wacky villains, Wannabes. things in poor taste
or one of my other arcs including two 2010 Player's Choice Winners and an2009 Official AE Awards Nominee for Best Original Story
They can't remove XP from the AE due to having printed on the City of Heroes: Architect Edition boxes that you can level from 1 to 50 doing nothing but AE missions. It would be inviting a lawsuit.
That doesn't mean that it has to be as fast (or as the case often is these days, faster) as the dev-created content, though. They could reduce XP in architect missions, as long as it's still feasible to get to level 50 by doing missions there.
Yours also isn't a new idea, as Wrong_Number implied. Use the search function next time, and post in one of the dozen or so threads that already exist.
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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you're about the twenty millionth person with this brilliant idea, so I'll give you the same answer I gave all of your spiritual ancestors:|
Originally Posted by Dragonkat
So I thought I'd ask the question here.....
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Removing XP would eliminate MA from the play schedule of 99.9% of the playerbase, leaving a handful of RPers and 'art for art's sake' authors.
Me, I'd rather have people use the thing they spent so much time and effort on.
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My City Was Gone
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The wouldn't have to.|
Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
They can't remove XP from the AE due to having printed on the City of Heroes: Architect Edition boxes that you can level from 1 to 50 doing nothing but AE missions.
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The second it stops paying off as good as the 'real' game, there go your players.
Cutting XP 5% would have the same effect as removing it entirely.
The dream that there is some demographic in love with MA for the beauty of its many lovingly crafted story arcs is Utopian folly.
MA is subject to the same exacting scrutiny from the players as every other aspect of this game.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
I'm willing to put up with lower rewards in exchange for interesting stories, but not much lower.
I do not think XP should be removed from AE. If anything, I think AE rewards should be a bit buffer than they are, but the exploits should get fixed faster.
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There is a wider range in reward earning rate within the actual dev-created content than that. The AE just has to exist within the range of reward earning the standard content generates and it'll be fine. Some of the players that *only* play AE arcs because they are massively more profitable than the standard content will stop playing AE arcs, but frankly I honestly don't care that much (or, actually, at all), and neither should the devs.|
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
The wouldn't have to.
The second it stops paying off as good as the 'real' game, there go your players. Cutting XP 5% would have the same effect as removing it entirely. The dream that there is some demographic in love with MA for the beauty of its many lovingly crafted story arcs is Utopian folly. MA is subject to the same exacting scrutiny from the players as every other aspect of this game. |
Of course, regulating AE rewards goes hand in hand with improving the quality of published AE arcs, but as long as the devs see the AE as a tool for mission writers as opposed to a tool for mission players and focuses on promoting the maximum number of players to write arcs as opposed to focusing on getting the maximum number of players to play arcs, reward regulation will not have much of a point to it long term.
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What does MA stand for ?
1. Why Soft Cap is Important : http://dechskaison.blogspot.com/2011...important.html
2. Limits: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Limits
3. Attack Mechanics: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics
4. Rule of Five: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Rule_o...e_Law_of_Fives
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Mission Architect.|
Originally Posted by plainguy
What does MA stand for ?
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Honestly, the thing that most puzzles me about the MA is that they don't seem to have put in any critical threshold alarms.
SURELY they have some means of going, "XP is coming in <x>% faster than expected. Red Flag for examination."
Something like this shouldn't have to wait for players to /bug it, for someone to post about it in the forums, or for datamining to show an uptick in leveling rate amongst parts of the playerbase, they should know about it effectively the moment a player gets it to work.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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I also completely forgot to comment on this:|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Of course, regulating AE rewards goes hand in hand with improving the quality of published AE arcs, but as long as the devs see the AE as a tool for mission writers as opposed to a tool for mission players and focuses on promoting the maximum number of players to write arcs as opposed to focusing on getting the maximum number of players to play arcs, reward regulation will not have much of a point to it long term.
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In my case, the AE is ... borderline unusable for me because of how stunted the search tools are. They're woefully incomplete, and they keep me from finding arcs that I actually want to play.
I have a great deal of trouble managing unexpected aggro, so allies are disruptive to my playstyle. I cannot search for arcs lacking allies.
I know people spend a lot of time lovingly crafting their custom enemies' costumes, but I almost always find them vastly more difficult to fight than standard critters, for generally less reward. So, I want to play arcs that don't have custom enemies. This cannot be done automatically. I have to manually flip through who knows how many listings.
What's particularly vexing about this one is that I explicitly am able to search for arcs that have custom groups, but yet not arcs lacking them.
I would like to say "I run arcs that my friends recommend to me" but they've all stopped running AE arcs due to the difficulty of finding things as well.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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I know they have thought about it. I don't know if they did it or not. I presume they did, but may not have the resources to monitor that data continuously. Suffice to say, if you're leveling fifty times faster than the average rate, they can figure that out if they want to. The question is less whether they can detect it, and more whether they want to take action to stop it at that particular moment. In my personal opinion, they need to be more proactive, but I'm not the one that would have to monitor those statistics and then make daily decisions on what sort of actions to take. Keep in mind the devs do not, as a rule, have 100% control over the live game. Customer service does, through the CSAs and GMs and service operators. A lot can get confused in translation between dvs and customer service. |
Originally Posted by Void_Huntress
Honestly, the thing that most puzzles me about the MA is that they don't seem to have put in any critical threshold alarms.
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Pretend you're War Witch for a moment, and you have to write a memo explaining what *specific* data you want some other group of people to monitor, and what specific actions you want them to take based on what they see in that data. And once you write that memo, some completely different group of people you have no direct authority over is going to read that memo, interpret it however they see fit, and then execute its instructions without your oversight. Consider all the possible things that could go wrong there.
Consider all the possible things that might have already gone wrong there.
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It will never happen but I would not mind if it did.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Pretend you're War Witch for a moment, and you have to write a memo explaining what *specific* data you want some other group of people to monitor, and what specific actions you want them to take based on what they see in that data. And once you write that memo, some completely different group of people you have no direct authority over is going to read that memo, interpret it however they see fit, and then execute its instructions without your oversight. Consider all the possible things that could go wrong there.
Consider all the possible things that might have already gone wrong there. |
... and all becomes clear.
"For my first wish..."
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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And it gets better.|
Originally Posted by Void_Huntress
I also completely forgot to comment on this:
In my case, the AE is ... borderline unusable for me because of how stunted the search tools are. They're woefully incomplete, and they keep me from finding arcs that I actually want to play. I have a great deal of trouble managing unexpected aggro, so allies are disruptive to my playstyle. I cannot search for arcs lacking allies. I know people spend a lot of time lovingly crafting their custom enemies' costumes, but I almost always find them vastly more difficult to fight than standard critters, for generally less reward. So, I want to play arcs that don't have custom enemies. This cannot be done automatically. I have to manually flip through who knows how many listings. What's particularly vexing about this one is that I explicitly am able to search for arcs that have custom groups, but yet not arcs lacking them. I would like to say "I run arcs that my friends recommend to me" but they've all stopped running AE arcs due to the difficulty of finding things as well. |
If somebody makes a cub reporter who follows you around the city streets after you rescue him, even though he has no powers and doesn't draw aggro he'll still show up as an ally because that's how you put something like that in.
If somebody just tosses the Firbolg in with the Devouring Earth for a Halloween arc about the Headless Bodiless Hamidon, the amalgam shows up as a custom group even though it only contains stock enemies.
So even if the system could respond to your searches it'd still have a bunch of false negatives.
I am not the dev team, but I think there was an expectation (based on the badges at release if nothing else) that a lot of people would play MA just for something different to do, and this would establish a critical mass of players who could answer questions like yours. (Speaking of, I wish I could help, but I'm going over my review history and I can't remember any arcs which didn't use either some kind of allies or custom enemies at one point.)
But, perhaps given the simultaneous need to stop people from adopting the degenerate strategy of just running the same farm over and over again, AE isn't as rewarding as the game right now. Patrol XP doesn't burn off unless you die, tips don't drop, 50s have no chance at a purple, the new GR mission tech is nowhere to be seen, there's hardly any badging potential, and I can practically guarantee you it won't help with your Incarnate progression either.
You do get the ability to turn all your drops into salvage/enhancements/recipes, which is kind of nice but doesn't really make up for the downsides.
Honestly I don't know what could be done to create that critical mass. One guy can only do so much.
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My unscientific impression is that the bulk of the audience for MA are rewards-driven. Not just during these periodic frenzies, but in general.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
There is a wider range in reward earning rate within the actual dev-created content than that. The AE just has to exist within the range of reward earning the standard content generates and it'll be fine. Some of the players that *only* play AE arcs because they are massively more profitable than the standard content will stop playing AE arcs, but frankly I honestly don't care that much (or, actually, at all), and neither should the devs.
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I also think that a greatly improved interface would even that out quite a bit by making it easier for the 'story' crowd to find stuff. As noted, I get nearly all of mine off the forums. Aside from the HOF and Dev's Choice stuff, it's really tedious trying to find a 'good' arc with the in-game tools.
If I want rewards I can find a great map in a minute or two by searching for "ticket farm". If I want a great story.....I'm on my own.
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| Of course, regulating AE rewards goes hand in hand with improving the quality of published AE arcs, but as long as the devs see the AE as a tool for mission writers as opposed to a tool for mission players and focuses on promoting the maximum number of players to write arcs as opposed to focusing on getting the maximum number of players to play arcs, reward regulation will not have much of a point to it long term. |
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Personally my opinion is to simply make a "farm" check-box to allow for farms to be easily filtered out and then make it an arc lockable offense to not use it on a farm arc (obviously farm arcs using exploits would still be subject to the current rules). Of course I can't see the devs actually going for this since they seem reluctant to officially condone AE farming but I think such a system would, long term, help people who want to use the AE for stories by allowing them to easily filter out farms.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
I also think that a greatly improved interface would even that out quite a bit by making it easier for the 'story' crowd to find stuff. As noted, I get nearly all of mine off the forums. Aside from the HOF and Dev's Choice stuff, it's really tedious trying to find a 'good' arc with the in-game tools.
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I love this idea and have hoped for something similar for a loooong time. |
Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Personally my opinion is to simply make a "farm" check-box to allow for farms to be easily filtered out and then make it an arc lockable offense to not use it on a farm arc (obviously farm arcs using exploits would still be subject to the current rules). Of course I can't see the devs actually going for this since they seem reluctant to officially condone AE farming but I think such a system would, long term, help people who want to use the AE for stories by allowing them to easily filter out farms.
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Personally I hate searching through the AE list and guessing what is and isn't a farm.
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As I live on the west coast by the time I get online the servers are all almost empty which makes finding a team of 8 nearly impossible most times. And as the game gives more XP for a larger team I get squat when soloing so it takes forever to level a toon. I think the devs really need to re-think that unless they come up with a new way to find a team(team LFM in the search window maybe?)
I have to say that as much as I dis-like to farm my toons to 50 there are occassions that it is nice to be able to take a lvl36 toon that was leveled normally and then farm it to 50 in order to be able to play certain content. For instance, I had a level 36 Rad/Rad def that I have been working on for a year or more, but realized that I really wanted the rad/rad to be ready for i19 content, and with my normal playing hours not allowing me to level fast enough and to be ready for i19 I took that toon to AE, I leveled to 49 in about 3 hours. I have done the same to a couple of other toons but I do not make it a habit.
Just saying that farming is not all bad unless that is all you do!!!
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As you note they probably wouldn't go for it, but this is a solid suggestion.
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Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Personally my opinion is to simply make a "farm" check-box to allow for farms to be easily filtered out and then make it an arc lockable offense to not use it on a farm arc (obviously farm arcs using exploits would still be subject to the current rules). Of course I can't see the devs actually going for this since they seem reluctant to officially condone AE farming but I think such a system would, long term, help people who want to use the AE for stories by allowing them to easily filter out farms.
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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
I say restore the rewards of AE to the way they were at release, then adopt a "three-strike-you're-out" policy for creating exploit arcs. After all, anyone doing it knows they're violating the EULA by now.
Once a reported mission has been confirmed by a GM that it's an exploit farm (ExFarm):
1st strike: All Global's missions are removed, Global gets a warning by email (restating the policy), and losses the ability to publish an AE mission for 30-days
2nd strike: All Global's missions are removed, Global gets a final warning by email (restating the policy and reiterating the final consequences of account closure), they lose the ability to publish an AE mission for 30-days, and the account is suspended for 7-days.
3rd strike: All Global's missions are removed, Account is Closed for repeated EULA violations.
Everyone, except the exploiters of course, would be happy. 8}
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I sorta like that. I really love AE stories, and I would not mind levelling through it, but it's such a pain to sort past all the !@*#!#ing farms.
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I remember reading an interview or a redname post stating that they had the ability to monitor such things because of the possibility of abuse. Never seen it being used or referenced to ever again, so either it never made it to live or they've chosen not to use it or can't.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I know they have thought about it. I don't know if they did it or not. I presume they did, but may not have the resources to monitor that data continuously. Suffice to say, if you're leveling fifty times faster than the average rate, they can figure that out if they want to. The question is less whether they can detect it, and more whether they want to take action to stop it at that particular moment. In my personal opinion, they need to be more proactive, but I'm not the one that would have to monitor those statistics and then make daily decisions on what sort of actions to take. Keep in mind the devs do not, as a rule, have 100% control over the live game. Customer service does, through the CSAs and GMs and service operators. A lot can get confused in translation between dvs and customer service.
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They should just have an internal marking system that will note how many times a particular toon is repeating the same mission over and over again in MA. Once it reaches a certain threshold it gets flagged for review and automatically starts lowering the xp gained (by that toon) from the critters in that mish to a lower value until it gets unflagged.
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+1. It's like the war on drugs. Trying to fight the dealers isn't going to do much when the users are the ones who will go to any length to get a fix.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
As you note they probably wouldn't go for it, but this is a solid suggestion.
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I wouldn't remove XP from AE, since even fighting a holographic enemy can teach you somethin'. What I'd get rid of is Inf, since how is fighting a fake enemy in a hologram giving you real money to spend out in the world..
I'd also remove Prestige.. Again, while you might learn something fighting a holographic enemy, I doubt playing what is essentially an advanced video game would make your group seem very prestigious.. Same for inspirations and the like.. You get them in the MA, and they should work in the MA, but once you exit the hologrammy goodness, items produced in there wouldn't exist on the outside.
Tickets are good, sort of like the tickets you get for playing random games at arcades or whatever. Though I don't think you should be able to buy overly rare crap with them.
Just my opinions, though.
The AE is a direct representation of human nature and how people in society are.
Some will try to break it and find exploits.
Of those: some will report it because they feel like that is the right thing to do
and some will take advantage of them because they feel like it is ok and justifiable
Some will make missions and enjoy it
Of those: some will make for pure pleasure and arts sake and some will make for ways to get to the end faster, bypassing the experience.
Some will say ditch the xp system and make it worthless
If that happened: The artsy ones get upset, some ragequit, some dont care, and no one really wins.
My solution? Patch the holes as you find them. Try and let as many people who want to experience it do so. Always seek to do for the greater good in all things. If it doesnt directly effect your play experience, try not to let it bother you.
My other solution? Put out rewards of some sort for people who find exploits and issues.
Maybe a free respec, a recipe, some inf, a badge..IDK
Encourage people to report issues and offer bounties for those who can break thier system.
By doing this, your replicating what already works well in the IT sector and your giving people a reason to do the right thing. I know some folks dont need that reason, but it at least gives them a nice shiny for doing so.
(In before "bug hunter" badge and any other flames and how could/dare you's.)
From the start we've seen the well known problem of the "AE babies" powerleveled in AE with no clue about the actual game.
We had the spammers on and off.
We have had a nonstop string of exploits including the most recent one causing all kinds of problems on the heels of the I19 launch.
We've had the devs wasting time trying to patch the loopholes but always seeming to be two steps behind, or in some cases starting PR disasters by just not being clear enough about what's banable, what's not and the punishments have been spotty at best anyway.
And then one of my SG mates pretty much said it best, why not just remove XP? After all that would pretty much stop every exploit past present and future right in its tracks, and to me would go a long ways towards making AE what it should be, a place to enjoy stories and player created content, not an exploit haven full of exploit map missions to cheat your way to 50. Perhaps as a trade off boost the influence or ticket gain within?
So I thought I'd ask the question here, there's my reasons above, and what do you all think about the impact that it would have pro or con?