The Purpose of Essentially Making Shards Obsolete?
By
Another_Fan,
Posted on: 2011-04-21 15:12 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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Forcing people into the trials and that is what this is about isn't a great idea. It also strikes of completely disregarding all player feedback, and invalidating the changes that were made to appease players.|
Originally Posted by EvilGeko
The "they would be done on the first day" is only part of the reason. The fact is, and I recognize this bothers people, is that they wanted you to do the trials.
It's that simple. The trials are designed with a certain base level of difficulty and coordination required. For the time being the devs want to give this content a de facto exclusivity in earning rewards. |
I19 shards are dropping only from level 50 people are concentrating in a few tfs and getting burned out on them.
I19.5 WST notice of the well and double merits BRILLIANT !!!!! You get rewards that help all your alts and advance your incarnates. The playerbase now has all kinds of options and it becomes incredibly FAST and easy to get teams going
I20 Someone visits paragon studios randomly hits the devs on the head with a hammer giving them brain damage and amnesia. Players are forced into very limited content that requires teams larger than ever before, long waits while they are being assembled and is in the category only bring your most uber uber toons. Just for a kicker there is a new reward system that will double hurt you for not being uber
What are the lessons from i20 ?
Players like to play the game at their own pace and style
They like being able to distribute rewards amongst their characters (Technically whichever issue introduced glemail)
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Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
Exactly proving my earlier point.
I am not saying that just following the Dev direction is wrong - I am saying I am not doing it - I don't find it fun and encouraging it leads to more of the same. You said exactly what I pointed out - it isn't that fun but the reward is good and it only takes 30 minutes, so what is the harm? The harm is this will be what the game becomes if it is encouraged. |
Give it a week maybe two, its going to become really hard finding 16-to 24 people to run these things. On smaller servers the multiple zone instances of people waiting to do them are already a thing of memory.
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The devs not liking something is not the same as them trying to ban it. I may dislike seafood but that doesn't mean I'm going to try to stop those who come into my restaurant/store who happens enjoy seafood from eating it. Can you not comprehend the difference? |
Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
That would be wrong on your part. Positron and Statesman came out and explicitly said they did not like farming. If you were not here when they added timers to Dreck and the Woilf farms - that's your problem.
Look if you don't like me and my comments - ignore me. I will be ignoring you in the future because obviously you don't have a clue about the past history of this game. |
You keep using the same lousy examples as so called "proof" of your flawed argument. Okay, I can do that too. What about Liberate TV farm on redside? It's literally been around for years and have the dev changed anything? No. What about a more recent example of Fire farms in AE? It's been around for the past 6 months and have the devs changed that? Again, no. And just how long do you think people have been farming ITF for purples and more recently shards? How do you explain these with your insurmountable logic?
It is quite apparent that it is you who is clueless due to your extremely narrow and obtuse view regarding the history of CoX. Any straying from what *you* perceive as the approved "path" is enough to blow your lid, go off in petulant triades, and start using generalizations against people who disagree with your OPINION (bolded and capped for extreme emphasis). Let's not even talk about how absurd your overreaction is given that this is only ONE issue and that's hardly enough material to judge the future direction of the game by.
Now that you have been called on your BS, you decided to resort to the tried and true pathetic defense of "I'm just going to ignore you because you have no clue and I just know better". Fair enough. Please do ignore me because if this is your mentality, I highly doubt we will have much to talk about in the future anyways. Good grief and good riddence. I feel I'm talking to a 5 year old throwing a tantrum.
You win and your opinion/logic is irrefutable. Better?
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For someone with a registration date like yours, your recollection is rather poor. Could be CRS I suppose. I've been known to get that. |
Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
What I am saying is that for 7 years the Devs had a specific goal in mind for their players - everyone can advance doing whatever it is they want to. |
Let me point out some history for you. Let's set the way back machine to, oh, say i1-6. Back in those days there was exactly one way to advance a level 50 character. Wait for it- yes, you got it- farming Hamidon. That was your sole course of advancement. It was the only way the character could improve. You would join a huge raid, and get your Hami-Os for the advancement that would provide.
You wanted another way to advance? Tough noogies. Suck it up.
Oh, does that burst your bubble and quaint history? Sorry, facts are facts.
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| Yes, you may need to do a trial to get a respec - but once unlocked you were not forced to repeat the trial over and over - earning a currency that you could buy a respec with. |
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| Please continue to demonize me for pointing out this is NOT what the game has done for 7 years. |
Heck, I could also bring up inventions. Rare inventions initially required doing task forces (or hoping someone would sell you want you wanted eventually). That's more gated advancement. Now granted this is somewhat different because of the market and the ability to trade, but fundamentally it is about advancement being provided the way the devs want it to be provided not "doing whatever you want".
You have created a narrative which suits your argument, but which doesn't agree with the facts. It's certainly your right to complain about content you don't like. It's fine to ask for something different. But if you are going to make arguments, don't distort history in search of facts to make your case.
Too many alts to list.
I imagine that the next 4 slots will use a new currency as well, with new shard alternatives as well as new components. And then Omega will use its own (a friend of mine suggested they be called Incarnate Tears).
I also made the guess that the future "incarnate content" like the proposed incarnate story arcs would give their own currency (I called them Incarnate Flakes) that you combine to make Threads and whatnot.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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Nope. |
Originally Posted by Dispari
I also made the guess that the future "incarnate content" like the proposed incarnate story arcs would give their own currency (I called them Incarnate Flakes) that you combine to make Threads and whatnot.
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You have to use Incarnate Shards - 30 make an Incarnate Bowl. In that, you put Incarnate Flakes and cover liberally with Incarnate Milk for a good old fashioned farming breakfast.
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Good name as I'm sure most of the players will be in tears by then trying to figure out which icurrency goes with which slot, conversions, counter-conversions, upgrades, sidegrades, downgrades, diagonalgrades, breakdowns, teardowns, etc, etc.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
a friend of mine suggested they be called Incarnate Tears
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They will also have brand new music introduced while in the incarnate menu. Probably a toss up between the three stooges or benny hill themes.
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Originally Posted by baron_inferno
Good name as I'm sure most of the players will be in tears by then trying to figure out which icurrency goes with which slot, conversions, counter-conversions, upgrades, sidegrades, downgrades, diagonalgrades, breakdowns, teardowns, etc, etc.
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So you are saying my facts that Statesman and Positron came out and made an issue of farming being a problem was a lie?|
Originally Posted by docbuzzard
For someone with a registration date like yours, your recollection is rather poor. Could be CRS I suppose. I've been known to get that.
Let me point out some history for you. Let's set the way back machine to, oh, say i1-6. Back in those days there was exactly one way to advance a level 50 character. Wait for it- yes, you got it- farming Hamidon. That was your sole course of advancement. It was the only way the character could improve. You would join a huge raid, and get your Hami-Os for the advancement that would provide. You wanted another way to advance? Tough noogies. Suck it up. Oh, does that burst your bubble and quaint history? Sorry, facts are facts. A single Hami raid got you a single Hami O (barring the days when you could scam multiple buds, luckily that didn't last very long). You want another? Do it again - and that will be the next day since Hami won't respawn for a while. Or how about we call you on the fact that you make claims about the history of the game that don't happen to line up with reality. Heck, I could also bring up inventions. Rare inventions initially required doing task forces (or hoping someone would sell you want you wanted eventually). That's more gated advancement. Now granted this is somewhat different because of the market and the ability to trade, but fundamentally it is about advancement being provided the way the devs want it to be provided not "doing whatever you want". You have created a narrative which suits your argument, but which doesn't agree with the facts. It's certainly your right to complain about content you don't like. It's fine to ask for something different. But if you are going to make arguments, don't distort history in search of facts to make your case. |
They never put timers on missions that have not had them formerly?
I am lying?
No sir, selective memory indeed. Dreck farms, wolf farms and other easily farmed missions did indeed get timers. You can say the entire game is a farm, if you mean that the way you advance is defeat foes, get shineys and xp - yes you are correct. If you define a farm as REPEATEDLY playing the same content over and over and over.
By the way please remind me, when you defeated Hamidon could you immediately do it again?
I do believe my old man brain recalls a 24 hours cool down and people scouting the Hive for Hamidon to respawn. That was because they didn't want him FARMED.
I say again thank you for proving my point.
Infernus, you're mixing up farming with exploits. They considered dreck and dumpster diving fire tanks exploits, so they changed them. Farms like the TV farm and Battle Maiden are not considered exploits, so they remain.
Devs are against exploits, not farming.
I think its more that they took a harder stance against PL and farming in the past. That's why the Dreck and Wolf maps got timers on them. I don't know if I'd say dumpster diving was an exploit. Do you know if a dev ever said it was?
Other than Statesman, who had Dumb Ideas about Things in general.
Its an interesting point though, since farming is running the same map or content over and over just purely for the rewards. Since there are only 2 trials right now, trying to get all your Incarnate stuff arguably requires you farm.
Its kinda why I wish they hadn't implemented a whole new reward system and currency. Or at least wish they'd have made old content and reward systems work with it too. Like the WST, I think that's a fantastic system. But with the trials, hardly anyone runs TFs anymore. Which is a shame. And yes, I know that Shards can be converted to Threads.
Breaking down all your TF rewards into Shards and converting them into Threads once a day at a decentish rate and multiple times at a terrible rate is not a great system.
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From Positon himself in a 5/7/09 follow-up thread regarding MA abuses. Parts bolded for emphasis since someone here obviously has reading comprehension issues.
Q) “What about all the farming and abusing that goes on in the normal game? How come you guys don’t put a stop to that?”
A) We address rewards abuse all the time. We put timers on missions that could get reset for rewards. We take rewards off of critters that are considered exploitively farmable. Or we just change the mission. Merit rewards are another way we have handled the situation. You can’t run really fast stuff over and over and get a reward every time. Again, we are looking out for “Disregard for the risk and/or time to reward ratio”, and we take action.
Nowhere did he say he was looking to get rid of all types of farming. He specifically stated that he's against people doing farming missions that have out of whack risk versus reward ratio, aka exploit farms.
/endtopic
I am stuck wondering if you even bothered to read my post? I mean you even asked questions which are already answered. That's pretty weak.
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I'm not overly concerned with the opinions of Emmert as I don't consider his views on game design particularly smart. Posi may well have said such a thing, and then learned that trying to repress such things would be like the punishment of Sisyphus. |
Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
So you are saying my facts that Statesman and Positron came out and made an issue of farming being a problem was a lie?
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Certain people play MMOs in certain ways, and trying to suppress those play styles is a waste of resources.
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| They never put timers on missions that have not had them formerly? |
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| I am lying? |
Remember this:
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What I am saying is that for 7 years the Devs had a specific goal in mind for their players - everyone can advance doing whatever it is they want to. |
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| No sir, selective memory indeed. Dreck farms, wolf farms and other easily farmed missions did indeed get timers. You can say the entire game is a farm, if you mean that the way you advance is defeat foes, get shineys and xp - yes you are correct. If you define a farm as REPEATEDLY playing the same content over and over and over. |
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By the way please remind me, when you defeated Hamidon could you immediately do it again? I do believe my old man brain recalls a 24 hours cool down and people scouting the Hive for Hamidon to respawn. That was because they didn't want him FARMED. |
But farming is farming, no matter the duration of the cool down. If I'm farming for hero merits, yes I can get one every 2 days (slightly faster with conversion). I'm still farming nonetheless since I am re-running the same content in pursuit of a prize.
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| I say again thank you for proving my point. |
If you want to rant about farming, so be it, but nobody will care. You're playing an MMO, and like all other MMOs, it will have farming. If you're trying to play some nonsense card about the devs radically changing the game on us with gated advancement, you're utterly blowing smoke as I've already demonstrated.
Too many alts to list.
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I really don't have trouble finding TFs on my server(not freedom or virtue). Yes, the new incarnate trials are certainly the rage, but I've been running TFs regularly since they appeared, and will continue to do so. These are PUG TFs, not specific to a SG or coalition. Maybe you need to watch the active channel particular to your server.
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Originally Posted by Silas
Its kinda why I wish they hadn't implemented a whole new reward system and currency. Or at least wish they'd have made old content and reward systems work with it too. Like the WST, I think that's a fantastic system. But with the trials, hardly anyone runs TFs anymore. Which is a shame. And yes, I know that Shards can be converted to Threads. |
Too many alts to list.
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See now - this is a statement that I know isn't true.|
Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
They are farms and I have never farmed anything other than the wall in Cim - just because I like beating up Romans!
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If you're the same Infernus Hades that used to play on Champion at launch, and who I teamed with regularly before he deleted all of his characters one day in a fit of pique, then you have most definitely farmed things other than Romans.
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To my knowledge, the Wolf & Dreck maps weren't considered explicitly exploitative.|
Originally Posted by Silas
I think its more that they took a harder stance against PL and farming in the past. That's why the Dreck and Wolf maps got timers on them. I don't know if I'd say dumpster diving was an exploit. Do you know if a dev ever said it was?
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But dumpster diving was called out as exploitative, in that it abused map geometry - compressing 100+ mobs into a space meant for 20
Abusing map geometry was fun
Time to party with a gas can :P
Nah, I think the player who said, its a time sink had it right. But they want more, see this is a game only for us the subscribers, for the developers and NCsoft its more than that..its employment and a source of another source of currency..called Dollars..Euros..Rials what have you.
They want ((and in my opinion have always wanted)) multiple time sinks. The quick fast way to make all your 50s get the coolest, hottest, newest bling that overpowers you more than an overclocked Oboise chip. Is to play, grind what have you two farms, Trails what have you that requires more than one person. 15+15=30 and 30 is way uber than 15 baby.
Of course all of this is in my opinion, but for some reason this reminds me of how the developers once upon a time jacked AV regen rates through the roof so it required a team ((and boy howdy even teams of 8 were having a struggle to take down an AV much less a GM))
Please, remember I do listen to conspiracy radio and believe in UFOs, Loch Ness Monsters, and Big Foot. So take all of this with a grain of salt.
"...well I have wrestled with reality for thirty-five years, Doctor and I am happy to state I finally won out over it." Elwood P Dowd (from the movie Harvey)
Some interesting points being made here. I'll just quip in with this:
I think it takes a lot of work and an incredibly charitable attitude toward the Devs to say that they've been anything but vehemently opposed to farming. Yes, the auto-mish-spawner was an appreciated addition, it saves the farmer a solid 2 minutes each run trying to find fillers. (Not sarcasm) Not only that, but it serves the dual purpose of letting non-farmer uber heroes take on loads of baddies every mish. Intended purpose? You tell me. (possibly getting a little sarcastic).
Against this single improvement in the life of a farmer, we have how many nerfs? Feel free to pick and choose your 'exploits', I don't care.
Hamidon, you say? My long term memory is awful, but if it's serving me at the moment I believe I recall at least two instances where Hami got a complete overhaul because "you aren't defeating him the way we intended." A.K.A., "your success proves this is too easy." What's the official count? How many times has Hamidon been buffed/nerfed? (Docbuzzard, I know this wasn't your initial point, but it got convoluted into farm-denial, IMO)
ITF, Respec trial, AE, etc., you say? These have all been nerfed, in one way or another, at one time or another. True, their current incarnations have been stable for some time now. This does very to show that the Devs are somehow happy to see players farm if they so desire, and I'm holding my breath.
I won't pretend to know the mind of the almighty Devs, and I'm all for interpreting the position of others charitably, but a little mental math should be more than sufficient to show theys been hatin on teh farmz for a long tiem. Perhaps the issue is that we haven't established a working definition of "farming", but I have a feeling the people saying "any time you make a new toon you're farming" are just being coy.
Next... YES! THANK YOU Devs for putting in some end game content. Love it, good work. WSF was an even more brilliant idea. As others have said, don't abandon it, fix it.
Last thought - you want me in a zone, or you want me to play the game a specific way? Give me an incentive, a REASON to do so. Force me into it and I'm going to fight you every step of the way, complain, and just might (and have) take my dollars somewhere else. Destroying what I've put time, energy, and thought into is not the way to equalize or get me to "play the game the way we intended". You can achieve the same end quietly and quickly by showing me greener pastures - I might even thank you for it! (read above). You'd think a team with a long sad history of waiting 7 years to give the players what they explicitly want would have figured this out by now.
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Originally Posted by OreoCookie
I think it takes a lot of work and an incredibly charitable attitude toward the Devs to say that they've been anything but vehemently opposed to farming.
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Originally Posted by OreoCookie
I won't pretend to know the mind of the almighty Devs, and I'm all for interpreting the position of others charitably, but a little mental math should be more than sufficient to show theys been hatin on teh farmz for a long tiem.
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Farming is not a new issue. It has been around since the days of Mudding. The developers at just about every MMO has had to deal with this reality at some point. Dare I say that eventually, based on my own observations in the half dozen or so MMOs I've played in the past, they do come to that very mentality I mentioned above.
What's the alternative? It is literally an exercise in futility for developers to try to eliminate farming entirely from their MMOs. First of all, they run the risk of alienating a sizeable chunk of their subscribers so it doesn't make a whole lot of business sense, especially if it's a smaller game with less subscribers to begin with. Secondly, the resources required for such constant vigilance is beyond the means of most developers. On one hand you have hundreds of thousands of players (if not millions) armed with their creativity and on the other you have a few dozen developers running the game from a reactive/defensive position. Is there any reason to believe that such a game of cat and mouse will ever end? Just how much resource and time can the developer devote to such hamster wheel of an operation before they finally realize that they will have to be make some concessions in order to not get completely bogged down?
Getting back to CoX, being that it is a game based almost entirely on instanced missions, the task of eliminating farming becomes a virtual impossibility. In games like EQ or FFXI where farming is extremely rampant (some may say fact of life), at least there were the factors of spawn competition and timer for the players to take into account. With instance based games like CoX, there are no such concerns. We can repeat just about any mission we want, at any time we choose. Short of adding a anti-repeat timer on every mission in CoX, there is just no way to stop players from running higher reward missions over and over. Even then the players can just keep track of their time of completion and run a continuous string of different higher reward missions whenever they are up, which is exactly what players in some other games do to get around spawns timers.
The above is just yet another example of how reactive anti-farming solutions implemented by the developer will accomplish little other than to prompt the players to come up with new countermeasures. It is a bottomless pit. Now I'm not saying that the developers shouldn't try to fix exploitive farming but frankly, it is a waste of development time to devote an undue amount of attention to the so called "farming" problem.
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Yeah, I agree whole-heartedly. What were we arguing about, again? =) /cheers
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Originally Posted by baron_inferno
I don't think anyone here has suggested that the devs do not care about farming at all (exploitive or otherwise). They've been quite vocal about their desire to stop exploitive farming (see AE abuses) but somewhat less blunt when it comes to farming in general. That was the point I was making. Even though the devs may openly disapprove the general concept of farming, they quietly tolerated it none the less. Why? Because they have no choice in the matter.
Farming is not a new issue. It has been around since the days of Mudding. The developers at just about every MMO has had to deal with this reality at some point. Dare I say that eventually, based on my own observations in the half dozen or so MMOs I've played in the past, they do come to that very mentality I mentioned above. What's the alternative? It is literally an exercise in futility for developers to try to eliminate farming entirely from their MMOs. First of all, they run the risk of alienating a sizeable chunk of their subscribers so it doesn't make a whole lot of business sense, especially if it's a smaller game with less subscribers to begin with. Secondly, the resources required for such constant vigilance is beyond the means of most developers. On one hand you have hundreds of thousands of players (if not millions) armed with their creativity and on the other you have a few dozen developers running the game from a reactive/defensive position. Is there any reason to believe that such a game of cat and mouse will ever end? Just how much resource and time can the developer devote to such hamster wheel of an operation before they finally realize that they will have to be make some concessions in order to not get completely bogged down? Getting back to CoX, being that it is a game based almost entirely on instanced missions, the task of eliminating farming becomes a virtual impossibility. In games like EQ or FFXI where farming is extremely rampant (some may say fact of life), at least there were the factors of spawn competition and timer for the players to take into account. With instance based games like CoX, there are no such concerns. We can repeat just about any mission we want, at any time we choose. Short of adding a anti-repeat timer on every mission in CoX, there is just no way to stop players from running higher reward missions over and over. Even then the players can just keep track of their time of completion and run a continuous string of different higher reward missions whenever they are up, which is exactly what players in some other games do to get around spawns timers. The above is just yet another example of how reactive anti-farming solutions implemented by the developer will accomplish little other than to prompt the players to come up with new countermeasures. It is a bottomless pit. Now I'm not saying that the developers shouldn't try to fix exploitive farming but frankly, it is a waste of development time to devote an undue amount of attention to the so called "farming" problem. |
Yes, I agree, the devs used to be worked up about farming, but I would say that they have learned. It's just not worth their effort trying to end something which they can't end. Players will farm, and that really is the end of the story.
If you can, instead, make the farms pretty entertaining and involve a lot of people (like, say, the new trials), you will have made a good business decision.
Too many alts to list.
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I'm asking this in all seriousness. Could you clue me in as to how to get ten shards a session? 3-5 second times not required. |
Originally Posted by mauk2
So you can let them build up pointlessly, or you can take the 3-5 seconds required to bump up ten of them a day.
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In my, admittedly more time limited, experience threads drop a whole lot faster than shards. And not by a small number. At best I think I've gotten 4 shards from an ITF, but in regular content I can recall one mission where I got more purple io recipies than I did shards. (2 vs. 0; mish at +1/x8, probably a tip)
Threads on the other hand drop like a metaphor about rapidly dropping objects. Even the 1:1 conversion, while great and I hope to use it in some fashion, doesn't seem to make up for the difference. Add in Astral merit conversion and it's just plain easier to get threads than shards. Bear in mind here that I rarely run the trials more than twice each a given time I set out to do them, I'd call it about a 50/50 split on iTrials vs. "regular" on my one iToon since i20.
I'm also down with the "we don't know what's coming" camp; it's possible that the next 4 slots come with some new trials for the xp, but the same materials. Omega will more than likely have it's own - or "Alpha" incarnate salvage will become "Alpha/Omega" salvage. It's also possilble that they introduce two more - one for the next for and another for Omega. Aside from being a pita to keep track of what is what, that's not that big of a deal if you can run at least a trial or maybe 2 runs each time you play. Getting the Empy merits makes a big difference for us casual types.
I noticed some new sidegrade/downgrade options. Useful I guess, but I haven't really explored them.
>> scrolls down through some of the posts he didn't read before writing the above <<
And x2 to what the Doc said about business decisions.
This is pure speculation on your part. I've been involved in several anti/pro farming threads before. I could be wrong but I honestly can not recall a single developer actually coming out to say that they want to rid CoX of farming. I think you are confusing farming legitimately versus farming using exploits. The devs have only been explicitly throwing their weight against the latter. Frankly, in any repeatable instance based MMO where rewards between different quests/missions/content can vary greatly, farming is unavoidable. The devs are not naive enough to believe otherwise.
Look if you don't like me and my comments - ignore me. I will be ignoring you in the future because obviously you don't have a clue about the past history of this game.