Seriously . . . ewww . . .

Yes. Post AE. When the AE first came out and practically everyone was in there farming*, there seemed to be sort of an attitude shift towards charging for PLing. At the time, so many people were doing it, and so few charging for it, anyone charging for it (on Justice) that anyone who paid for it was being silly, because they could get in on a free one so easily. Since then, paying for AE doesn't seem to have picked back up as a norm.

Even before then, though, people would commonly advertise for fillers in PI, and rarely were asking for money. Back when level 41 anchors were the rage, I think I saw them charge more often than the farmers!

*The AE is still really good for leveling. When it first came out, though, it was so much better than it is now that I think the perceived opportunity cost of not using it was so much higher that way more people used it for rewards.

Actually, I see this on Virtue all the time.

My gaming partner and I have discovered that some tip missions, no matter what, will always bounce you into another zone than the one you take it in... unless you're in Atlas. For some reason, aside from the two 45-50 "go to the Rogue Isles" missions that always start on Statesman's helipad, all tip missions you take in Atlas will stay in Atlas.

So... after 7 years of avoiding Atlas like the plague, suddenly I spend more time there than any other zone. And yeah, there's a lot of that spam going on constantly.

*shrug*

@Acemace - Would you care to elaborate about the filthy cheat part? Freedom is THE farming server. Other servers have farmers and farming, but Freedom is KNOWN for it server wide. Been that way since AE.

@UberGuy - I'll get to your boggling noggin in a moment, but you are correct that it happens far less obtrusively elsewhere.

@Techbot Alpha - Yes, Union too. There are some SGs on Union who have a designated "farmer" who has the (un)enviable task of PowerLeveling alts for the leaders of the SG, or as rewards for getting to a certain amount of Prestige. My main on Union IS a farmer.

@MAD UMLAUTS - This... Simply this.

TL/DR
I wasn't always a farmer. As a matter of fact, I looked quite skeptically at the notion. I had 10 50s before ever I set foot on Freedom. ALL through Content. Heroes, Villains, Rogues, Vigilantes, Praetorians, Peacebringer, Warshade, Bane, Widow, Crab; all leveled to 50 via content. I wanted to see the content red side versus blue side, the different arcs for the different EATs/VEATs.

And I did.

When late April rolled around and they started talking about the stress test for Freedom and the BIG MEGA ULTRA SUPER-MAX Praetorian Invasion, I realized I didn't even HAVE a character on Freedom. So, I rolled up a tank, but one I'd never played before but saw some on the Freedom chat boards: A Fiery Aura-Electric Melee tanker.

I went through the tutorial, picked Atlas and I zoned, trained with Ms. Liberty, and immediately got a tell from someone asking me if I'd like a free farm.

I said sure, they said come to AE. 2 runs later I was able to slot SOs.

And free. No costs. That farmer has farmed me since, sometimes for inf, and sometimes not. I would always offer.

Well, Electric Briquette was 50 before the invasion, and even slotted credibly enough for the fights (I was in Talos and Peregrine for most of the Invasion).

I got my global badge, I had a new server I had made friends with... now what?

The first time someone asked me for a farm, I said no, not because I didn't want to (as I recall I was standing around the Merit Vendor at WWs), but because I wasn't IOed enough to stand in the middle of a bunch of fire-breathing cyborgs or cat-people or zombies or whatever.

I do farm folks for inf sometimes, usually I run a trivia contest broadcast and the first 4 who answer correctly get a free farm or two (or three).

Some of the people who beg for farms (which annoys me as well) didn't set foot one outside AE except to train. The first time I had a lvl 50 ask me where Cimerora was, I almost spit my coffee onto my laptop. HOWEVER, many who pay for farms have already leveled several characters to incarnate status and want to try something new. Nothing wrong with that.

How else do you think a lvl 2 Ill/Rad troller has 100 million inf in the first place?

Mark my words, with the advent of CoH:F, we will see decidely fewer farmers for a while. The new content, the new arcs, the new trials and TFs, and the new paradigm of who can and cannot do what with whom and where will put a serious damper on the "PL me NAO, plz?!" syndrome we all view with equal distaste.

We USED to be able to say, "I pay my $15, I play my way." Well, we can't say that anymore. Not sure WHAT the mantra will be, but I think for Content-driven folks, the changes are for the better.

Your question suggests you read only what you were looking for, or completely missed the gist of my post, so no I don't care to elaborate.
Besides these threads quickly spiral into idiocy, which is why I haven't waded into a thread with this topic in several years with good reason.

Happy Sunday, cheers.

-A

No, not at all. But, sarcasm is sometimes hard to read with no vocal inflection. I'm not offended, I was just curious how you felt.

Pity about the miscommunication, my apology.

And, yes, the threads often do spiral woefully downward.

And happy Sunday to you as well!

It tickles me how much BS is in this post. They could be farming badges, inf, XP or ferrets. The farming is irrelevant - it's the broadcast spamming. It makes the zone seem like a slum.

Drop the bushel of ferrets, you nefarious farmer!

As someone who actually *plays* on all the servers, let me say:

No, it doesn't.

OK, *farming* goes on, but the Atlas-broadcast-full-of-farm-spam is pretty much the smog of Freedom (and one of the reasons my alts there are among the least-played of any of mine.) And the "Pay to join" bit is, from what I've seen, exclusive to Freedom (well, as far as its acceptance, it gets laughed at if anyone offers it elsewhere.)

See my Guides and Tutorials

I will allow for sake of argument it happens at some time on liberty, but i have never seen it during my play time. so if it happens, its better organized and less visible.

Uh, I play full time on Virtue and it certainly (sadly) happens there.

A lot of Free Farmers also are paying it forward/back. They got farmed XP for free, they farms others for XP for free, they expect free xp farms in future.

I have seen a scattering of pay to farm on virtue, but the broadcast chat normally scrolls through them pretty quick.

I lol'd

It's a VIDEO GAME.

The farmer is losing nothing, because the stuff he is "losing" was never real in the first place.

When that farmer is having trouble paying his bills at home because he is losing some fictional currency in a made up world, maybe THEN I'll feel sorry fro him. As it stands, it's only a video game, so the completely made up currency that is only usable in a fictional internet based world means precisely squat.

Really, the idea that you need to be compensated for doing something in a video game is completely ludicrous. I understand the value of influence better than you do, it seems. It has ZERO value. When you log out of the game you have earned nothing of any use to you. When I can make my mortgage payment in influence, maybe then I'll concede it has some value.

To the OP: Yeah, that's pretty much Freedom's Atlas Park, and has been since i14. They REALLY need to remove the AE building from Atlas. I seriously wonder how many new players have logged into Atlas Park, got sucked into an AE farm, and never saw anything else in the game because they were completely convinced that AE was the whole freaking game until they got bored and left.

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.

So long story short, there is no reason for the Farmee to not give the Farmer the influence because the influence isn't real?

All I can say is, some people are taking their video games WAY too seriously.

If someone tried to 'charge' me, in anyway, to go on a mission in City of Heroes, I would laugh in their face.

You, Sir, are part of the problem that gives gamers a bad rap.

I suppose not... but if it is of so little value... why would the farmer want it?

—OR—

Looking at it the same way... there is no reason TO give the farmer anything either, it works both ways. And with no good reason to pay for something that should be free, why wouldn't the 'farmee' just keep his pretend money?

Freedom gets all the farmers from Virtue and in return, Freedom then sends Virtue all the RPing catgirls it ever needs to sustain itself. I think its a fine tradeoff.

And yes, like Claws&Effects said...they should take the AE building out of AP. New players probably get sucked into the farming aspect of the game and rarely leave. Could you imagine if Pocket Ds RPing was open BC in AP on Virtue? Grown men would be stuck roleplaying catgirls and never see the light of day.

And this happens quite enough as it is!