How do the devs feel about farming?


Adeon Hawkwood

 

Posted

I know how some people look down on farming and others love it, i want to know what the devs think about it


 

Posted

I very much doubt the devs will ever directly say what they think about it for the same reason they are never going to explicitly define "exploit" (as soon as they make any sort of definition it'll be used by someone to justify behavior they do not approve of but that is technically covered by their statement). Given their actions to date I suspect they do not particularly care for it but are resigned to it's existence as long as the rewards aren't to far out of whack.


 

Posted

They will not answer that question directly. They are constantly checking the numbers and if they ever see anything unbalanced or exploiting the system they will shut it down or nerf it.

The only time they will discipline players is if they have obviously broken the Eula so run your favourite mission as much as you want.


 

Posted

I dont get what you are saying, what is the point you are trying to make?


 

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Thank you claws for explaingin but, who knows, mabye 1 of them will post here and answer my question?


 

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If not for farmers, we'd still be hunting and gathering. Or bowling, maybe.


 

Posted

Judging from the Incarnate Content being only three (soon to be four) raids we need to run over and over again if we ever want all those rewards, I'd think some of the devs are just fine with farming.

As long as the farm's not taking an advantage of exploits or breaking any rules, I doubt they could care less about it.


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dual Hammer View Post
Thank you claws for explaingin but, who knows, mabye 1 of them will post here and answer my question?
You could also PM the devs or one of the community managers if you want. As _Klaw_ and Adeon Harkwood said the devs won't give a clear straight definition to what they consider exploit farming because then people will find a way around it, and claim that it's not an exploit because it does not match the definition given by the dev team. Examples that I can think of are the changes made to the Mission Architect system a while back. Also the limitations to taunt a long time ago to trim down on dumpster herding. Also when the Winter Lord made his very first appearance in the game.



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Posted

Another example of an anti-farming change: Converting the "Defeat Shadowhunter" to a timed mission.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Xzero45 View Post
Judging from the Incarnate Content being only three (soon to be four) raids we need to run over and over again if we ever want all those rewards, I'd think some of the devs are just fine with farming.

As long as the farm's not taking an advantage of exploits or breaking any rules, I doubt they could care less about it.
That's not farming. That's a lack of options.

It's not farming if they had 20 Trials to compete in, and you ran 10 of them a day to get the rewards.

Also, Trials require lots of peoples to run the task, which doesn't tend to go with farming either.


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Reading thread while logged into Warrior farm.

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1. If it's ordinary content, you can play it as often as you want and get what rewards you want from it as often as you want with some exceptions:

  • If it's a thing that gives surprisingly good rewards that are so good that people seem to be doing nothing but that thing over and over again to the exclusion of everything else, the Devs will 'fix' that out-of-balance reward: e.g., they'll put a timer on the mission; reduce the rewards; increase the difficulty. This is really a question of game mechanics being unbalanced and the perceived 'nerf' is really fixing the balance.
  • If it's a thing that a sizable number of players are using to annoy another sizable set of players, it will get 'fixed' to make it not so appealing. This happens when all of a sudden the broadcast channel is fill with nothing but appeals looking for that thing or recruiting for that thing. Or if the farmers in question are badgering others with tons of unsolicited tells regarding this thing. (With the number of solo farming options now available, this scenario is now not as likely to happen.)
  • If it's an AE mission that is so obviously a 'farm' with no redeeming story quality. It gets removed. Eventually. After enough petitioning. When they get around to it. If you dress up the farm in a basic story, it's likely never to get touched.


2. If some mechanic is being exploited to get incredible rewards (level 1 to 50 in a few hours, e.g.; or getting 100 million inf an hour) than it gets quashed as soon as possible, whether one person was using it once or it's being farmed by thousands for the past month. Exploits are always removed. Those who knowingly abused an exploit may find their gains taken away and may even face a possible (temporary) ban. Not as likely, but has happened.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by BrandX View Post
It's not farming if they had 20 Trials to compete in, and you ran 10 of them a day to get the rewards.
I still view that as farming. I need 150 Empyrean merits or whatever, so I farm up the easiest 10 per day and ignore the hardest 10.


Quote:
Also, Trials require lots of peoples to run the task, which doesn't tend to go with farming either.
Actually, you see it all the time. "BAF forming to farm threads and astrals" or "ITF forming to farm shards". One of those is a trial and one isn't, but people farm officially approved content all the time.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure the developers mainly want to stop exploits. and they want to monitor reward rates. As long as the bulk of behavior falls within expected values, they are probably content to let us all debate whether something is farming, or grinding; or who is or is not a bad person for preferring to do content one way vs another way.

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Quote:
Originally Posted by BrandX View Post
Also, Trials require lots of peoples to run the task, which doesn't tend to go with farming either.
Au Contraire. Raid farming has been around since the days of EQ. It was quite common to see guilds of 20-100 players camping a section of a raid zone for hours if not days by utilizing rotating shifts. In the process they would kill the same 10 spawns (named or otherwise) dozens if not hundreds of times to farm for gear, crafting components or quest items. FFXI was the same way but those are the more extreme examples and things started to change a bit in recent years as more MMOs started to move toward instanced raids. Despite that, people still farmed the same raids over and over for loot. In WoW or DDO for example, guilds would wait for specific raid timer/dates to reset and clean them out right after. It's quite similar to people repeating the same CoH raid/trial over and over in order to obtain components/merits.


 

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The only thing I remember a dev said about farming is that it's boring. There's lots of content in the game, running the same mission over and over and over again seems boring to them.

However they also believe you should have to work for your rewards (risk Vs reward) which has caused numerous changes with player designed missions to not make them insanely easy with enormously disproportionate rewards.


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Quote:
Originally Posted by Zombie Man View Post
  • If it's an AE mission that is so obviously a 'farm' with no redeeming story quality. It gets removed. Eventually. After enough petitioning. When they get around to it. If you dress up the farm in a basic story, it's likely never to get touched.
I've been wondering if this actually happens or not. It's enough of a gray area that the AE story-people are running a nice long thread debating what the dev's take on AE farming is over on that forum. Have you some experience with seeing thus happen/not happen? If so, that could help us figure it out since apparently no dev will ever tell us.


 

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Given that they still haven't updated or removed Unai Kemen's "To Click a Thousand Glowies"/"To Farm a Thousand Maps" I'd say they don't mind it.

Seriously though, given how they took to AE farming, I don't think they appreciated it very much.


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Posted

While they'd never say for sure and thus this post is merely speculation, I believe the unofficial stance on it is they'd rather we didn't, but have no outright problem with it unless we're exploiting some bug or quirk of the system to do it. Things like the older farm maps and even the newer AE farms are breaking no rules, thus we don't get smacked for it. In the latter case they had to fix a lot of exploits to get it to the state it is now (And in many cases, annoyed a lot of people who used the same feature for legitimate reasons), I doubt they would leave it alone if they thought there was still something definitively wrong about it.


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I would agree they're not 'keen' on it. However, they have made various 'pro farming' changes to alter how it impacts other players. We had lots of complaints about people broadcasting for 'fillers' to get a large team to farm a mission solo. So they gave us the ability for a solo person to run a mission as a team of 8.

So it seems they don't particularly care for it, but they acknowledge it exists and will never go away and they're okay with that. Probably because it would anger a boatload of paying customers if they eliminated farming.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by BrandX View Post
Also, Trials require lots of peoples to run the task, which doesn't tend to go with farming either.
A common term in the big Gorilla of the MMO world is to have raid content on 'farm' status. . It's used when the guild have basically nailed down the entire encounter OR have outgeared it completely, it's used primarily to gear up peoples alts.

Both the original iTrials are currently 'farm' status, enough people know how those two iTrials work that its easy enough to simply blow through them, which is why every new trial thats introduced in the current bracket (Lore, Destiny etc.) is going to have to compete with them and why Keyes isn't very popular and why (I predict) the Underground iTrial won't be very popular.

Why run those two when in the same amount of time you could probably run 2 of each of the Originals. the Undeground iTrial is especially long when compared to the originals, it takes 20 minutes (or atleast that's what it feels like) of slogging through ambushes just to get to the first boss. Compare that to the originals where you're already on the Siege fight or Marauder fight at that time.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dual Hammer View Post
I know how some people look down on farming and others love it, i want to know what the devs think about it
They are of two minds on the subject. In statements and whatnot, at least some of them have expressed a dislike of the practice (both the actual farming aspect and the power-leveling aspect). In actions, they have made the game progressively more and more friendly to farming, power-leveling and such.

Now, if anyone is using an exploit? They really don't like that. Not that they have ever defined what they consider an exploit, nor do I expect them to do so, in order that they have wiggle room.

The farming maps in current and popular use are not using an exploit (to my knowledge and understanding). Some people may disagree with this; their opinion doesn't matter (nor does mine, honestly). The only opinion on the subject that matters is that of Paragon Studios (and NCsoft), and that only matters so much as they actually do something one way or another.


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr_MechanoEU View Post
A common term in the big Gorilla of the MMO world is to have raid content on 'farm' status. . It's used when the guild have basically nailed down the entire encounter OR have outgeared it completely, it's used primarily to gear up peoples alts.

Both the original iTrials are currently 'farm' status, enough people know how those two iTrials work that its easy enough to simply blow through them, which is why every new trial thats introduced in the current bracket (Lore, Destiny etc.) is going to have to compete with them and why Keyes isn't very popular and why (I predict) the Underground iTrial won't be very popular.

Why run those two when in the same amount of time you could probably run 2 of each of the Originals. the Undeground iTrial is especially long when compared to the originals, it takes 20 minutes (or atleast that's what it feels like) of slogging through ambushes just to get to the first boss. Compare that to the originals where you're already on the Siege fight or Marauder fight at that time.
Right.

I'd also argue that 2 EMPs that it gives WILL NOT be a big enough incentive for folks to abandon the "on farm status" ones. Now if the U Trial is able to be speed (which from what I've seen and read so far, there are already strategies that could make it speedable) then that's a different story.

If I had my way Keyes would give 2 Emps, and the U Trial would give 4.


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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aura_Familia View Post
Right.

I'd also argue that 2 EMPs that it gives WILL NOT be a big enough incentive for folks to abandon the "on farm status" ones. Now if the U Trial is able to be speed (which from what I've seen and read so far, there are already strategies that could make it speedable) then that's a different story.

If I had my way Keyes would give 2 Emps, and the U Trial would give 4.
I don't mind Keyes (It's annoying, but so is farming hundreds of mobs for hit point Accos) but there's no reason to do it with BAF and Lambda being on "zombie mode", where we can basically roll our faces over the keyboard and succeed. I'll probably try the Underground Trial. If it's fun (IE I don't get instakilled, instaheld, have to do repetitive actions involving carrying an NPC around) I'll do it more often...

As for farming, it's been around since Day 1 and the Devs haven't killed it yet. Heck, in some cases (PvP IOs, Purples), you either have to play the Market to get them or farm player characters over and over or mobs over and over to get a drop. Or just accumulate enough Empyrean Merits or Alignment Merits, as a result of farming tips and trials...


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Incarnate End Game = Farming.


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Xanatos View Post
Incarnate End Game = Farming.
And adding more trials isn't changing it.