So When Did AE Farms get add to the Hall of Fame.
By
Acemace,
Posted on: 2011-07-09 18:32 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Personally, I find farming boring. I usually just play through story arcs and missions, and let the other rewards come at their own pace.
Back before there was AE, I actively hated farms, because I saw it as immersion-breaking. To me, the act of resetting a canon mission over and over again without completing it was like Superman raiding a villain's base after being sent to retrieve a McGuffin, beating up the henchmen, then ignoring his objective and leaving without the McGuffin just so the villain could call more henchmen for him to beat up. It just didn't seem like a heroic thing to do.
But now that there is AE, my stance on it has lightened. I tend to see AE farms as more of a "Danger Room" type of thing. I still don't partake of them myself, but they feel more plausible to me now.
I do feel it's a shame that legitimate arc writers like myself are having trouble getting our arcs noticed in the sea of farms, but as long as they don't take advantage of exploits, I'm willing to tolerate them.
Currently published Mission Architect arcs:
Arc ID# 70466: From the Abyss.
Arc ID# 403174: The Serpent's Revenge.
Arc ID# 534236: The Clockwork Angel.
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Thanks for sharing your mildly-relevant anecdote. I'm still waiting for the part where you disagree with me.
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Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
You're simplifying Posi's explanation... and that creates a use of the term "farm" that's so broad that it becomes meaningless. Entire genres of games (from pacman through mario to some of the latests a-listers) would be considered nothing but "farms." There would be no need to differentiate between "raids" and "farms" and "street hunts" and "grinds" and any of the other terms we use to define gameplay.
Put into historical context of MMO's, you had "hunters" that would run around instances, find new mobs, and kill them. A person that found a good respawn point (usually, but not always, with unique drops) settled down to just that spot. Just as hunter-gatherers settled down into farmers, "farming" seemed a natural name to give it. In this early state, the proponents of "farming" defended the practice as a form of the Bartle "explorer" gameplay. While poking and prodding at the game, you find things that give better reward (over time and/or over challenge) than the way the devs anticipated (or intended), and then you pause to take advantage of that discovery. Developers often DID offer some perks out there FOR explorers to discover- things that just worked better and gave somewhat-better reward rates. The explorer thus saw "farming" as a badge of honor, and the responsible explorer knew to exercise judgement and to report something that they thought went "too far." They were treading in a gray area-- if the farm was TOO effective, they'd be exploiters, and they couldn't easily read a dev's mind to tell where they'd measure that threshold. Early farmer-explorers were some of the best bug-reporters early MMO-devs had. The problem became that many explorers didn't report questionable discoveries to the devs. Some had the attitude of "if they let it in the game, we can use it... and if they can't find it, too bad." They were broken pieces of the game (exploits) that, if stumbled over once or twice weren't particularly bad, but when FARMED, they could lead to real trouble-- and many exploits in games were farmed to disastrous levels for the MMO. Thus, "farming" came to be known as synonymous with "exploiting" among non-farmers and MANY in the community started putting a lot more anger behind that word. Finally, we have latecomers that never understood the history of a "farm" or caught the significance of tying optimizing reward into the definition. They incorrectly used "farm" for... well... virtually every kind of grind they encountered. Any kill-all activity. Anything where the primary effort is to run around and beat up stuff. It saves them the "boring time" traveling point to point, and they don't pause to read stories. To them, that's "farming" and they're fine with it... and they don't see the issue with farming because they're using the words in ways that the people who rail against a farm would find absurd (*I* find it absurd). You can say its all relative and we all should be able to use the word however we want, but from an operational standpoint, the most-broad definition serves no useful function- it defines virtually nothing that "playing" doesn't, and there are more descriptive terms (hunts, raids, missions, "kill[ing] skuls") that offer better function. You just can't exclude the whole "gray area" of optimizing risk/time/reward without eliminating any useful meaning the word may have. |
I really wish the devs would finally make a stance on the rampant farm maps. Either their okay and give writers and farmers the proper tools to better separate ourselves or they aren't and should be removed. Granted, the fact that the current filter glitch is still prevalent it almost seems like they have made a stance.
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I'll second this. The farms are crazy in AE, people talk about them like mad on these boards and nothing ever seems to get done about... them... |
Originally Posted by Zamuel
I really wish the devs would finally make a stance on the rampant farm maps. Either their okay and give writers and farmers the proper tools to better separate ourselves or they aren't and should be removed. Granted, the fact that the current filter glitch is still prevalent it almost seems like they have made a stance.
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Wait a second!
Maybe the devs have taken a stand!
An AE Farm making Hall of Fame does not surprise me in the slightest. After all, it is player votes that get things into the Hall of Fame. The devs have nothing to do with it.
It will also not surprise me when that arc gets locked.
Congratulations, by getting your favorite AE farm voted into the Hall of Fame.....you just brought it to the attention of the LAST people you want knowing about it.
If farms start getting Dev's Choice selections, I'll be a little concerned then.
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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. |
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you are correct, only dev choice give regular rewards, however, having HoF still gives you a free arc slot so said person could just make more farms
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Originally Posted by Xanatos
HoF arcs give regular rewards? I thought that was just "Dev Choice" arcs?
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I suspect the only way that would ever actually happen is if they got a metric ton of freebers turing ViP and citing such and such AE farm arc as the reason why. It's only shunned until it turns into a cash cow. Personally I lost a great deal of friends to the bAEbies in the initial feeding frenzy after it launched so I still have a love/hate relationship with the system.
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Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
If farms start getting Dev's Choice selections, I'll be a little concerned then. |
Maestro Mavius - Infinity
Capt. Biohazrd - PCSAR
Talsor Tech - Talsorian Guard
Keep Calm & Chive On!
It has already been pointed out that non-farm missions are graded on different scales and standard,s while a farm mission just has to deliver the crops. A better system might point out that "hey, global friend gave this AE mission 5 stars, you might want to look at it" instead of just the majority vote system they have that skews the results.
A million people could be playing story arcs, but nothing in the current system helps them locate what they want.