AE farming now OK?

When I first joined a little over 2 years ago, I was completely new -- this being my first MMO, and this was before AE. I didn't know the game, didn't know the interface, didn't know squat. I had been poking around on Atlas with my first toon, managed to find my first contact in city hall and did a couple of missions even. Iirc, I was level 3.

Then I got my first invite to a team! I immediately clicked 'yes', and followed along as the team promptly went... into the sewers. In a matter of hours (blazingly fast compared to before), I was at level 10 (maybe even 12). I was thrilled!

At least until I found out about out-leveling your contacts and being unable to complete all their missions, even if for no XP at all. At that point, I felt cheated -- partly due to my own ignorance of the game, partly by the way the game is designed (out-leveling? WTH?), and partly by those Sewer-ites who were getting PL-ed.

And when AE came out, and I saw what most of the community was doing with it, I said "No thanks, I'll pass on Farms" because while I love action, I also love content. I especially passed on (imo) stupid ones like the "save the world and click on a bomb" ones.

But now, I've created a *single* toon expressly for farming (gasp!). It seems the only thing to do to be able to afford even half of the IO's for my developing toons. But even so, I doubt I'll ever pay someone else to PL me.

If I had known about out-leveling, I would have passed on the Sewer Teams from the get-go. I wonder if people new to the game (and new to MMOs) know about out-leveling? I didn't.

NCSoft, Please reconsider your decision to close down CoH. It has an extremely loyal following and enjoys a great amount of free support from the larger community.

I invite everybody to add the above image to your signature as a petition to reverse NCSoft's decision.

Double-XP weekend obviously brought out a lot of players. But for the first time in months, PI broadcast was filled with "$25M per run for +4/x8 Warrior Earth map" and such. I think that only underscores the fact that PL farms are going to happen in AE and portal missions both. Farmers will just switch from one to the other.

What was amazing to me was that during this same period of time (this is on Freedom), Atlas AE was just as busy as normal.

Not really with all the things going on with Issue of 19-21 of this game and the whole Incarnate, It lease the last thing on there minds right now.

I disagree.

I do not think that an AE is required in every non-hazard zone. While it is true that it would be a minor inconvenience for a veteran to get a level one to any other zone, it would be significantly more difficult for someone brand new to the game. If someone want to power level their friends through AE (or any other content) they will find a way to do it.

The point of removing AE from the starter zones is not to prevent or hinder power-leveling or ticket farming or story arc writing. The point is to take the farming and the broadcast chatter that goes with it to a place that a brand new player might find after having at least a few "hard earned" levels to his or her name.

Not sure how practical it is, but I'd really like if you could get level-appropriate AE story arcs from regular contacts in the game. So Azuria or Back Alley Brawler might be able to give you a lowbie AE mission, or maybe there'd be some entirely new contact that managed AE-specific missions for that level range. This would be a lot more immersive than the current "virtual reality entertainment" set up that we currently have. We could then maybe move the AE building to its own extraplanar zone, like how Ouroboros is right now. Unproven arcs, work-in-progress arcs, challenge arcs, and perhaps farm arcs, could be played there instead.

Of course a certain amount of quality control would be necessary to ensure the contacts refer you to story arcs that are at least semi-decent and not to incomplete test arcs or deathtrap challenges. This would potentially be a lot of work, but it's possible you might get the player base to do this work for you.

The tickets from AE help to keep prices of certain items in the market low by increasing it's supply.

You may have noticed that the price of rare salvage in the market has come down slightly while uncommon and certain common salvage have shot up in price. I attribute that, in large part, to players being able to choose their rewards with tickets.