AE farming now OK?

I made a new character recently, after getting the Steampunk Pack. Philomena kelvin, ice/ice Defender. I took her thru the tutorial and then to Atlas AE to look for some starter arcs to run her though. The broadcast in Atlas Freedom was full of 'farm team lf paying lowbie' and the like, and I asked in broadcast out of interest how far from lvl 1 sb could get on one run in 'one of these farm things'. I was told to level 17 on one run.

Philomena just dinged lvl 5 after doing Relativity Be Damned, and I'll be continuing to solo my way through story arcs, but is this sort of thing now considered fine? I know it doesn't take more than a few sessions to get to lvl 17 anyway by
'normal' means, if you're in a hurry, but one run through an AE mission seems a bit fast.

Eco.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

It's always been ok with AE farmers.

What exactly are you asking?

Depends on how you define "considered fine." To me it's a valid play style outside of PLing newbies which end up generating players with level 50s and still ignorant of the basics. I have just about got a level 50 SS/fire and a near level 50 Claws/fire via self PLing them in the AE and to me it has been an interesting experience and I learned from it. I even learned some aspects of using AE that I didn't know about since I hardly use the AE before. I got all of the AE stuff unlocked so at some point I'll start to poke around and see what I can come up with. Without rolling a ticket generator, that doesn't happen.

What's not "okay" is exploiting loopholes. If it's something you can do in a normal mission, it's okay in AE. AE simply affords speed and convenience in exchange for actual drops.

Granted, if someone is a new player and they get their character to 50 with no idea how to play them or what enhancements to use or whatnot, neither they or anyone they team with is going to have a very fun time. Otherwise, go for it.

Technically this would be considered PLing and not Farming per se. Hopefully that'll prevent the pro-farming crowd from getting to upset...

That said. Recent changes in the game point to the Dev's being perfectly fine with it. Though I suspect that has more to do with being resigned to the fact that it's unavoidable as oppossed to openly supporting it.

See: AE Babies

That is the only real problem I see with it these days. Level 43 PB's that have never left the Atlas park AE building...
It was so bad a week after AE launched I had to step away from the game for a bit. A good friend of mine actually started a global channel on Infinity called AE annoynomous for those of us actually wanting to 'Play' the game. Channel is still going strong too.

We can laugh about it now but I really feel like it cost us quite a few players. AE was hyped up enough that it brought a wave of fresh players to us. Sadly those players had no clue AE was being abused and found themselves with 50's overnight, coming from the 'Game starts at the level cap' mindset present in other MMO's this initially felt like a great thing, til they realized the only thing to do was create a new alt...

Cost us quite a few players it did.

Sorry for the tangent. I'll admit I took advantage of some of the 'options' for fast leveling. Usually running a sewer team to level 8 then hopping in a AE farm to get to 20 quickly for Stamina. However, now that Stamina is inherrent I haven't bothered. Seeing as how I knew the AT I was playing though, I didn't see this as a bad thing. Though looking back, all the toons I sped to 20 ended up being shelved at 22 cause I just didn't have a connection to them.

I'm gonna have to agree with the sentiment above, as long as it's not an exploit and you aren't PLing someone who's only been playing for five minutes it's really just the same as any old farm mish in PI that was created by the devs, we just don't have bridges anymore.

The whole reason people are anti-AE is the AE babies. Heck, I was on a redside team on Virtue last night that was running one of the members' cape mish. We pop out right by ICON, as that map is set in Steel Canyon. One of the members commented along the lines of "I thought this was in Atlas?" and another member (who I won't specifically name but something along the lines of Misterawesomedude53, on virtue mind you) replied "It is Atlas, that's AE right over there." I couldn't help myself, I had to point out that "No, it's Steel, that's ICON right across the river which doesn't exist in Atlas and AE is in every zone. You'd know that if you ever stepped outside of it." Upon seeing this exchange the team leader kicked him, realizing that we'd picked up an AE baby. And that's a light example.

i would prolly ae farm if it was actually like worthwhile

i was PLing some friends in a non-AE mish for the drops and one of the runs i got 2 purples in one run, i dislike AE farms because of the lack of drops, no shards for incarnate progression, no purples, basically it all just sucks to me so i usually avoid AE related farms due to the lack of drops and because its only slightly better than most of the popular standard farming maps

I seem to oscillate between thinking 'they pay their sub same as me, whatever' and 'I hate them. I wish they'd remove all rewards from the AE and leave it a ghost town of storyarc writers/players' lol.

I do think it's a shame they don't remove the AE from
atlas and galaxy, though.

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Farm or PL, its all fine to me and obviously perfectly acceptable behavior to both the playerbase in general (although a few of the purists/snobs disdain the practice) and also to NCSoft. They LOVE alt-itis, it keeps players interested in the game and willing to run the hell out of their content over and over and over again. There's a reason they charge you for additional character slots per server these days....they figured out a way to get people to pay for making even more alts.

All of my alt-itis is now fed by a couple of farming/PL toons. AE is used to run them up to level 32 in a single evening. It makes the game infinitely more enjoyable to me. For farming, I often just use portal missions since it gives me a chance for purple drops and incarnate shards/threads.

Anything you can do in this game is OK until the rule-makers say otherwise. Opinions around here notwithstanding, the only person who can tell you what you are doing is wrong are the owners of the game.

Personally I wouldn't mind if they removed the AE building in Atlas, I'd actually prefer it.

Like others have said, it's remarkably easy to go to any other zone for the building. Placing it within site of the new blood coming in might not be the best idea. Seeing as how the majority of the ones unfamiliar with COH will be coming from other MMO's that live under the 'Game starts at level cap' mindset. If the very 1st zone they enter is a hotbed of PLing they will be drawn to it like moths to a flame. Not knowing any better and going with the idea that this is just 'How it's done here' We could end up with another mass exodus of bored players after a month. Worst case and all.

I'd prefer they get their feet wet in Atlas at least before entering a zone with AE. Hopefully by then they would've experienced the wealth of play avail. and won't want to isolate themselves in AE for 50 levels.

Since the rewards have been adjusted I doubt it'll ever be as bad as the 1st few weeks after AE, when you could go 1-50 in 2 hours but it could still pose a problem. Though, with Incarnate content costing money the Dev's might actually want them to hit 50 asap so they hit the wall and end up buying access...

Time will tell.

I think removing it from Atlas would be a really good idea.

Not because I want to stop PLing/farming. That stuff is FINE. As a long time player I like a way to get to 50 really fast and to grind out currency fast.

What I don't like is: New players logging into the game for the first time. Being invited to a farm team. Joining up because they don't know any better. And then thinking that's all their is to the game.

This needs to be avoided. If any newbies join the game and ask "hey I just bought architect edition...where can I find it?" We can just point them to Steel Canyon or another zone. But let's face it. Those types of guys are going to be in the minority. And, judging from the amount of attention the MA has gotten recently, they are not the people the devs are targeting.

Lets say that if I ever encounter this.. (and this is NOT happenning at that kind of scale on UNION at all).. I would stand around broadcasting that...

I was starting an official story arc team so that you could use your inf to buy the enhancements you wanted while having fun actually playing the game!

Which servers have this kind of PL for Inf crap too? Union has none... and I cannot remember seeying it on Virtue either...

I think that the time yto debate this is well beyond us. It is there, it is used for farming, prices rock to ridiculous levels, overpowered characters run amok. We cannot turn this back. It is here to stay.

Only thing to discuss now is how to make some of the problems less problematic.

To name two of them:
The AE babies. Removal from Atlas and Mercy might help a bit.
The difficulty for finding nice non farm missions. A simple searchable tag in the AE interface could do just that.

I seem to recall Positron making some rather strong anti-farming statements, but these were promptly met by "I pay my subscription, you aren't the boss of me; besides, if it's possible to do it, that must make it okay" bluster from some farmers and simply ignored by the rest.

I agree with Xanatos (shock!) that it would be nice to get AE out of the starting zones, just so that newbies don't get the idea that AE Farming Is The Game.

For now, at least, the "paying for AE farm" thing is mostly confined to Freedom (the server), though I wonder if Freedom (the pricing plan) will bring it to others. Sometimes I wonder if anyone on Freedom (again, the server) knows how to level any other way.

Never paid to be pl'ed up. I do however know that the rate is normally 10-20 mil a level. So 500mil to 1bil inf to reach 50.

If the person getting pl'ed is smart enough to roll tickets when capped they are going to come out ahead of the cost at level 50. Most likely by a wide margin.

With that in mind I don't so much look at it as charging to pl as the person running the farm saying I'm doing all the work give me a modest percentage of the returns.

The attitudes of the devs (and policies of the customer service staff) has definitely changed. In the first few month after AE I was one of many people who had their MA missions removed because I said something like “good xp and tickets from this basic freakshow farm.” At that time simply using the word “farm” in the mission description was against the rules and would get a warning from customer service.

In case you haven’t experienced it, you can get from level 1 to 15 in a single +3 X8 mission in the MA. Even a good team of low-level heroes is at best, oh, 10% as fast as being powerleveled. It is usually worth it to me to pay for this service at least until level 22 when I can get SO enhancements. I really wish the discrepancy were not so great, but it is an emergent phenomena of how powerful level 50 characters are.