Biting the bullet here...what does 'AE" mean?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-12-03 14:30 in Player Questions
Architect Entertainment. Check out the big building in most zones.
Never argue with stupid people. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
@vanda1 and @nakoa2
AE = Architect Entertainment - the in-game name of the Mission Architect system.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
It is better to ask forgiveness than permission.
Architect Entertainment. There's an AE building in virtually every zone now. These are player-created missions. As you might expect, a lot of farmers use AE since they can tailor missions to their character, but there's some very creative stuff there to check out too.
my lil RWZ Challenge vid
Ahh, that's new to me, so i had no idea. I thought that stuff was all through the Oroboros thing (which was new last time i stopped by) ...I think.
Cool, thanks for the assist with that one. I was totally in the dark. Does this building show on the map, or do you just have to find it?
It's on the map with an "AE" marking.
4
I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is definitely better.
Light is faster than sound - that's why some people look smart until they speak.
For every seller who leaves the market dirty stinkin' rich,
there's a buyer who leaves the market dirty stinkin' IOed. - Obitus.
Just a heads up, since no one mentioned it. A lot of the teams running AE are farm teams, depending on your personal preferneces this may or may not appeal to you.
Ahh, well that is good to know. I don't mind people "farming" if it is for a SG or something like that, but I take it you mean gold sellers and the other scum of the earth.....I mean "folks" like that?
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Not necessarily. Sure, there are probably your obligatory gold sellers and other scum and villiany, but most of the farmers there are just leveling themselves or their friends or farming tickets for recipes or salvage. |
Originally Posted by AlbinoBull
Ahh, well that is good to know. I don't mind people "farming" if it is for a SG or something like that, but I take it you mean gold sellers and the other scum of the earth.....I mean "folks" like that?
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Don't go to Altas AE on Freedom. It is a place of madness.
Never argue with stupid people. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
@vanda1 and @nakoa2
While I am sure gold sellers farm in the AE, they would probably not be looking for a team, they pretty much do thier own thing. Most farms would be for people leveling, presumably people with a ton of alts doing some quick leveling. That was most of the people I met during the recent AE craze.
Now though, there may not be as much of it, since they supposedly fixed the one exploit and a lot of people are playing thier 50's.
*crosses herself and looks about with no small sense of alarm before taking you by the arm*
"It is expressly forbidden to even allude to the existence of such things and persons." she whispers.
"They do not exist. Surely, good friend, they are but wild figments of your imagination."
"T'were best to quickly recant such words, lest such heresy be the cause of your undoing."
She peers up at you with uncertain eyes, and continues in a trembling voice.
"Only suffering awaits those who would say otherwise." she softly murmurs.
*slipping away, she gathers her shawl more closely about her, and soon vanishes in the snow*
Yeah, that's what I was meaning. If it isn't to sell gold or something along those lines, then I could care less how someone else plays this or any other game.
I may not like it, or condone it, but that's not my call.
Now, if they are blood-sucking gold farmers trying to undermine the economy of the game, then all bets are off.
Yeah I did not intend to imply that there is anything wrong with farming (baring the use of exploits anyway). It's simply a style of play that appeals to some and not others.
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People are constantly finding exploits that allow you to take a character from level 1 to level 50 in the course of a day. |
Originally Posted by AlbinoBull
Yeah, that's what I was meaning. If it isn't to sell gold or something along those lines, then I could care less how someone else plays this or any other game.
I may not like it, or condone it, but that's not my call. Now, if they are blood-sucking gold farmers trying to undermine the economy of the game, then all bets are off. |
This is generally a bad thing for a few reasons:
A) The devs do NOT want us doing it. They can, will, and have deleted characters leveled that way, and some egregious offenders have been banned for repeatedly exploiting AE. (It is usually the ones that keep making new exploit missions after getting the previous ones locked or deleted that get banned) If you stumble across one by accident you will most likely be fine, but if you habitually abuse it you could get in trouble with it.
B) After an exploit becomes widespread the market goes crazy for a while. Common salvage starts selling for 10-20x what it normally does because it doesn't drop in AE missions. Also, prices of commonly used IOs will jump because there are a lot of people making a lot of money all at once, and being too impatient to bid a reasonable price they bid a crazy amount, then other people see that and assume that's the going price, and so on.
C) It leads to the creation of "AE Babies". What they are is new players who got sucked into AE when they first start the game and end up with one or more level 50 characters, and know NOTHING about the rest of the game. You'll see things like level 50 characters asking how you get out of Atlas Park, and asking what an enhancement is. They lack common knowledge that they would have learned just by playing the game.
AE Babies are bad for a couple of different reasons.
Their lack of knowledge frequently leads to high level task forces being much more difficult than they otherwise would, because they don't really know how to effectively play their character. A lot of times it also gives them an arrogance that someone with that little knowledge should not have. It's annoying when someone tells you you don't know what you're talking about because they have more level 50s than you do....and they have never been outside Atlas Park.
The other reason is, a lot of CoH's advertising is word of mouth. If someone gets sucked into AE on their first day and gets to 50 in 6 hours, they are going to go tell their friends that the entire game takes place in one building and you can hit the level cap your first day. They also tend to get bored quickly and quit, leading them to tell their friends not to waste their money on that "lame game that only has one thing to do in it". It's pretty obvious why THAT is bad for the game.
AE was originally introduced so that players could tell their own stories in it, and there are a LOT of good stories in there (Check out the Dev's Choice and Hall of Fame arcs, those were ALL made by players). Unfortunately, people figured out you can also use it for PLing, and that's what it became known for. Due to the laziness and impatience in a lot of today's society, many players want to get to the level cap as fast as possible, under the mistaken impression that that is where the "good stuff" is at.
It is a rude awakening when those players spend 50 levels fighting easily killed, nearly helpless enemies and then find out that they not only missed the majority of the game, but they have suddenly gone from easy mode to getting the floor wiped with them, because they never had to learn any tactics while they were leveling. It's funny seeing a blaster repeatedly faceplant against tough enemies and tell you that he's never had this much trouble with anything before. Yeah, pal, that's because you've spent 50 levels doing the CoH equivalent of clubbing baby seals.
AE can be an awesome experience, with some of the best writing in the game coming from other players. But, sadly, it has been very much perverted from it's original intention and gotten a bad reputation. AE itself doesn't deserve the reputation it got, but abusive players ensured that it did.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
Claws speaks much truth. (This is a good post and you should feel good.)
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
Quote:
Incidentally, you might want to bookmark the Paragon Wiki site. If you go there and just type AE in the search box, you'll get a definition page showing what it means.
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Originally Posted by Kobolt_Thunder
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We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
The only people who reliably get what they want from AE are farmers.
There are other stories in the Architect Entertainment System. Unfortunately, there are a lot of potential problems with any given story:
1) Many people built half-finished experiments to try out AE, published them and abandoned them.
2) Many people's storytelling skills are not as good as they had hoped.
3) Some people think it's funny or cool to make up grief critters.
4) It is very possible to, entirely by accident, create enemy groups that are living hell for some or all players. (KoA-level caltrops? Seen it, very often. Permanent slowcap? Seen it. Every minion having blind, slow and three holds? Seen it.)
5) To avoid exploits, there are a lot of reasons enemies may give lowered XP ("hmm, you've created nothing but minions and they don't have either of the main attacks for their attack set. SPLOIT!") So it's very common for a good story to give severely reduced XP.
So you need to find the stories that are actually meant for the public, that aren't farms, that aren't crap stories, that aren't griefbombs, and that will be at least slightly rewarding.
Having said all that: There are some really, really good stories out there. Wonderful stories. There are a number of threads devoted to them; I haven't done much AE recently, so I don't know where my list is. But if you start with the Dev's Choice and Hall of Fame you'll get some good storytelling.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Quote:
Agreed, the source of the best missions I've seen have been AE. But, that said, its also been the source of some of the worst. I'd have to say that of the missions that I've played, two of the four best were AE missions, and the other two were level 45-50 Strike Forces.|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
People are constantly finding exploits that allow you to take a character from level 1 to level 50 in the course of a day.
AE can be an awesome experience, with some of the best writing in the game coming from other players. But, sadly, it has been very much perverted from it's original intention and gotten a bad reputation. AE itself doesn't deserve the reputation it got, but abusive players ensured that it did. |
I'd actually like the most exploited mission type to remain, IF you change two things: No INF rewards, or nerf the INF to a trivial amount and leave the XP. Second, require something like already having a level 50 on your account or several months in the game to access it.
This provides an easy out for alt-aholics, while limiting the game-breaking aspects, no easy money, and they will have played enough that they will probably have at least some grasp of how other ATs/powersets work.
It has always been my belief that if you don't like the sub-50 game, YOU DO NOT LIKE THE GAME.
"The game really starts at 22" or "The game really starts at 35" or "The game really starts at 50" are excuses. I've always found that the game really starts at level TWO. Maybe level 11 blueside, because there aren't any significant story arcs below that.
The only excuse for PL'ing through the game that I've heard and accepted is from PVPers. And PVPers don't, as I understand it, actually like the PVE game. They suffer through it to get the level 50, and to get the gear, to start the game they want to play.
Personal favorite missions: Hess task force, Eden trial, a few moments in the Freaklympics, Ice Mistral strike force.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
I keep seeing people mention it, had a person ask me if i wanted to team up to do AE missions withing 5 minutes of being back in-game from a 3 year hiatus.
What is AE?