Discussion: VIP Head Start - Patch Notes for Build 2100.201109170227.1

Messages to everyone pointing fingers at other players/posters about this farming thing...
The players are not the ones who have repeatedly made changes with the AE to lessen some of the efficiency with popular farming techniques.

Some people can denigrate others all they want. However, as is usual, all they really accomplish is making themselves look worse.
Either side of the argument... right or wrong... lower yourself to such things and that's all you're doing... lowering yourself.

Anyway... Who here wants a Barbarian Sword for Katana? Me too!

I began playing this game in Issue 2 and played for 4 years and then they "nerfed" something, as they always do, and I left for 2 years. I came back recently and was having fun, but my toons were all under-powered compared to everyone else, since I had never put IO's on them.

My "bestest" toon has hamidons, because we used to do a lot of hami raids to get them before the IO system killed hamidon raids.

In any case I knew farmers, and although I did not farm, it never bothered me in the least that some people found it enjoyable, and never affected my game. In fact, I never tell anyone how to play their game. They paid for it, they should be able to use it as they wish to, and in any way that is fun for them, IMHO.

But when I returned the fact that my toon was so underpowered and the cost of IO's so high, I began farming AE for tickets in order to get recipes and salvage to enhance my myriad of level 50's. I am far from being a super uber farmer, I plug along, and sometimes some of my lower level friends who have played the game for 7 years and want to get over the lower levels would come with me and chat and joke and gain a few levels. This stopped abruptly yesterday when we found they were not getting xp anymore, and our fun was ruined. Someone rained on our parade. On purpose.

I have never understood the continual attempts by developers to modify human behavior in games via computerized controls. It rarely succeeds at doing much else than pissing people off. I also do not understand people who feel every player must conform to their style of game play or the whole thing is ruined. They always come off as people who would like us all to be in funny little grey hats and suits, marching up and down the square and praising our "Great Leader", in this case, the developers.

I am sad, to be honest, that instead of looking at the root cause of why many people farm (the exorbitant cost of things in the market) and attempt to fix that economy, the developers have again made an attempt to control a behavior or style of play they find abhorrent.

In the end, I am a kind and honorable person, as many on my home server of Infinity would attest to, but with the advent of "MARTy" and the nerf of farming, I now feel like a "cheat" for the first time in my life.

Here's my two cents.

So far, I've gathered that Farmers are bad, and don't know anything about the game, except how to farm.

All Farmers need to banned, be knocked back down to level 1 (or whatever 'desirable' level the thread trolls think most appropriate.)

This is an utter load of poohbear's honey.

I've been here for 4 years. I've TF'd, I've farmed, I've RP'd, I've played at least 90% of the content multiple times, I badge hunt, I participate, and sometimes organize events, I base build...

Wait...I said a key word didn't I?

Yeah, that's right, I FARM. I will farm for 3-5 hours in day. I have toons I've spent billions of influence/infamy/information on to be able to stand up to the farms that are both CONTENT (omg, there's actually farms in the content) and AE.

The Dev's have outright said they WILL NOT do anything to help the current market conditions, because that is a mini-game in itself. So, why the flapjacks would I spend 2million inf on a rare piece of salvage, when I can buy it with AE Tickets for 560(?). That's a waste of influence, in my opinion, but to spend 15 minutes getting over 1k of Tickets to get at least 3 rare salvage pieces, or roll some recipes that I might luck out on and NOT have to spend MILLIONS of influence for. Oh yeah, I'm exploiting the game, by working around the marketeers.

No, this is not a bash on anyone who plays the market. I respect you guys for something I've yet to get a grasp on. Keep up the good work.

Let's talk about clutter. SG/VG bases take up FAR more room than a MA arc ever will. In fact, there's a little bar at the bottom of your AE window, when you make an arc, that tells you how much room you have left to spend on the arc. Bases don't get such a 'notification', so when we get up to 1k in decoration items making a totally tricked out base, it's entirely possible to CRASH YOURSELF out of the game.

So shut up about 'clutter'. Get some search-fu, and FIND the arcs that aren't farms. Or...I don't know..try the first few pages of the AE list, because they aren't farms. Or, there's a section on the boards where people POST their arc numbers, and beg people to play them.

We have been given the tools to select what level we want our enemies at from -0 all the way to +4, and how much of said enemy should be on the map, from 1 standard hero, to 8. Do you want AV's, and Bosses? You can choose that too. It's quite infinite how you can play this game.

So what, I choose to farm, when I'm not FARMING iTrials for Emp merits, and Incarnate Salvage to get up to Tier 4 in all my incarnate powers. I choose to build my base as large as I can handle it, until my system crashes me out, and I realize 'holy cheeseballs, I need to make some changes'. I choose to be a villain, or a hero, a rogue, or a vigilante. I choose if I want merits, or a Hami-O from the STF, and LRSF.

Are you getting the picture?

Choice.

This is how I choose to play the game I pay for.

Will this 'no revive' thing stop me from farming the noodles off this game? No it won't. Will it slow me down? By maybe a few minutes. Have I, personally, hit MARTy yet? No I haven't. I will rejoice when I do though, because I've been trying like mad since I found out about it.

@Obsidian_Light

Ditto...

Also, frankly those of you among the "Want-It-NOW" crowd from the market, you know who you are... you have the Farmers to thank for your supply, without them the market supply would dry up inside a week... I don't think that the nerf to respawning enemies is so much as a nerf to Farms as it is to the speed those farms can run. It isn't the Devs saying farming is bad, it is the Devs saying "hey wait a minute slow down a bit."

I can handle that. I play a lot, I do Task Forces, Missions, I love the CONTENT of this game, but to play what I want, when I want, with what I want, I find that sometimes I farm... that sometimes has become, as Obsidian_Light has pointed out 3-5 hrs a night some weekends... but I also RP, I run a pair of fairly successful Supergroups... and I have toons that are built for things WAY outside of Farming.

I think it is important though to point out that everyone here, EVERYONE has farmed something... whether it be making sure you ran that Incarnate Trial enough to unlock your judgement power, or ensuring you got around to running the TF of the Week, you Farmed Content! What you all seem so up in arms about is AE farming, ok, well let me point out the Maria Jenkins arc, which most of those AE farms are based on. In her arc you can face a series of badguys in tight groups who don't run much, AND get the XP and INF for them, along with NORMAL rewards as well...

This existed prior to AE...

As for those of you concerned with not being able to find AE arcs to play, for all the "Farm Trash" try searching for key words, like story, and origin... or simply look on the boards in the AE section for people putting up they're Arc numbers and asking for Story feedback!!!

for example, http://boards.coh.com/showthread.php?t=271780

Now, the Farmers provide you a service, generally mind to themselves minus a few bad apples (the same could be said for the nonfarmers, cause we get griefed too), and mostly want to play the game they pay for the way they want... can we all just agree to get along and play a game we all clearly enjoy...

Thanks,
Elvnsword

"Exploitative"

"The Spirit of the Game"

Necessarily vague terms the dev team have to rely on. Because, were they to be specific about what was acceptable, their flawed moral position would be revealed.

Sorry if this has already been said but:
I see the word "exploit" is being thrown around again.

If it was truly an exploit, Freakshow mobs outside of AE would also have this rule applied and they'd no longer reward XP, INF and Prestige again for killing them a second time after rez. After all, what's good for the goose, et cetera. I remember people holding onto big Freakshow maps specifically for farming/PLing years before AE came along. Despite what some in this thread have stated, there really wasn't that much more risk to a Freakshow farm, before or after AE, because Freakshow damage types are predictable - smashing, lethal, energy damage - and specific tank and brute builds can mitigate those types of damage just as well as fire can against custom fire mobs.

And therein lies the problem: You can't have two competing definitions or standards for the same game mechanic.

So I'm just going to echo what was said way back on page 1. This isn't going to change ticket farming, at all, but it will increase mapserver load. Not sure why anyone would want to increase load before opening the floodgates to free players but, meh, whatever. Not my call.

My own two cents: I honestly don't understand why farming has become such a hot button topic. I get that people hate running into clueless 50s. I hate it as well. I get that people hate that AE turned into FarmVille rather than a good place to share mission arcs. I understand, and somewhat agree, with that sentiment, too.

However, with all the vitriol going around any time AE and farming is brought up, one would think farming never happened before AE, and that's hardly the case. I don't recall this kind of hatred against instanced outdoor blinky farms, or Behemoth farms, or Nemesis farms. There were some people against those farms back in the days, but it certainly wasn't up to this level of community polarization. The only thing AE did, in all honesty, was consolidate farming to one place. It certainly didn't invent farming and I don't even think it's necessarily made players lazier. The same people you may see begging for an AE farm would have been clogging up the Ferry in PI, begging for an instanced farm.

I set up a fire farm map which doesn't offer insanely great rewards, merely decent rewards. No ambushes or anything. I go beat on it for a while, then convert tickets to stacks of alchemical silver, which I dump on the market at 1 inf. I can do this while chatting with friends, so it's relaxing.