A way to, perhaps, fix AE for good!
Just accept that farmers are players too.
They deserve to play this game how they want and there is nothing you can do about that. |
I also think it's fine as it is. I don't, never, and likely will never, have any issue with AE in these respects.
What *I* have a problem with, if you really want to fix it, is to, oh, I dunno, look at my signature, for starters. And why does updating it kill older arcs in some way, say, changed maps or broken custom characters? And why is there *NO WAY* to place something in the back of an outdoor zone? There's a front and a back everywhere else but those? Hm.
There's a LOT more broken with AE than has to do with farming, and it's all inattention to details... that it works as well as it does is pretty dang amazing, actually, and is likely also due to dilligence in testing the arcs before releasing them to the public by the authors.
I quit making AE arcs when I found out the outdoors maps were broken, as spawns would happen outside the explorable map. And I couldn't put things in the back. Kinda spoiled the whole idea of the way the missions were supposed to work. They've never been fixed since AE was conceived.
THAT kind of stuff needs fixing *way* before you nerf/fren things to satisfy some 'logical' reason it's 'broken' for farming/PL/inf that 'you' don't particularly care for.
Some people like the journey. Some people wanna be genies immediately. IDIC is the stuff of our existence. Be well.
August 31, 2012. A Day that will Live in Infamy. Or Information. Possibly Influence. Well, Inf, anyway. Thank you, Paragon Studios, for what you did, and the enjoyment and camaraderie you brought.
This is houtex, aka Mike, signing off the forums. G'night all. - 10/26/2012
Well... perhaps I was premature about that whole 'signing off' thing... - 11-9-2012
How does reducing the XP of ambushes and the removal of certain critters make things better?
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The farmers move on to something else, and there is peace and quiet for some time until the next farm du jour reaches critical mass and the non farmers plead with the devs again.
Its good for the farmers, because they need to stay on their toes and learn new ways to optimize xp gain.
The removal of certain critters is good for both sides. It is good for the farmers who need to learn how to do it without being both softcapped, and resistance hardcapped with 10 bubbles on them. Easy mode teaches no one anything.
Its good for the story writers because the need to write in and enable the player of your story complete invincibility without even having to click an inspiration is bad writing. Just look at the alpha slot arc. Sure it is fun to be that powerfull once, but it is actually very boring to run it much more than that.
I say people pay to play how they want , we have devs for a reason let them do what they feel makes the game better but you know most of those sets you but in the market come from farming for recipe rolls in ae so kill the farmers kill the market. Play how you want and let people enjoy what they pay there hard earned money to do, i dont care if people farm or not i play how i want and mind my business.......
By culling the broadcasts in certain zones about ambush farms. That dies down for awhile, and the people that like to see farmers get punished let out a big sigh or relief because it seems like the devs have heard their plea making them feel important.
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Its good for the story writers because the need to write in and enable the player of your story complete invincibility without even having to click an inspiration is bad writing. Just look at the alpha slot arc. Sure it is fun to be that powerfull once, but it is actually very boring to run it much more than that. |
What if i want players to fight Cimmys, complete with their support units (though that's easily fixed by making a custom character... BroadSword or Kat/Emp... point is, I shouldn't have to)? What if I want them to fight Ritki, complete with Comm officers? What if i want to ambush them several times without them griping "This isn't worth the XP!"? Those options have been taken away
As long as farming in AE is worth-while, people will continue to farm in it... and in that vein, some will continue to conjure up exploits. The devs will close those exploits, taking options away from story-tellers who used a similar tactic or type of character as a mild challenge instead of using it to an exploitative degree. They'll then find their arcs no longer work the way they want them to. This will continue to happen until the Devs make AE unappealing for farmers, and by extension, exploiters.
You want to "cull easy paths to XP"? Cap rewards in AE. That's it, end of list, instead of playing catch-up every few months.
Just accept that farmers are players too. They deserve to play this game how they want and there is nothing you can do about that. |
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
Can you dismantle my logic step-by-step? Seriously, I'd like to know where it's flawed.
IF: Devs make nerfs because of Farms = True THEN: No farms = No Nerfs. |
Here's an improved version:
P1. Devs nerf because of farming
P2. Devs do not nerf because of anything else
C1. No farms = no nerfs
Your argument is missing P2.
You can't now say "well Xan you knew what i meant" because that would make your language informal/colloquial. That's not how logic works.
However, the updated argument is also wrong. P2 can be defeated by pointing out that the old CoT have been removed from the MA. This would very much be a nerf to the AE.
This is all an aside though. As your argument had changed. Your original contention was that farming makes it "hard to create NPCs and enemy groups" and that "every anti-exploit measure made makes it harder and harder to make mechanically well balanced content." While the former is obviously not true (I can still make NPCs and enemy groups as easily as I could before), the latter is true. The anti-exploit measures do make it harder to make mechanically balanced content. (Assuming, for the sake of argument, that "exploit" is the correct word to use in this instance.)
But are these anti-exploit measures making it SIGNIFICANTLY harder to make mechanically balanced content? Technically the game lagging for 1 second makes it harder to make mechanically balanced content. (Because it takes me longer to make it, thus it's harder to create.) Similarly shutting off the CoH servers and deleting everything also makes it harder to make mechanically balanced content. So where do I draw the line? Player ability is the obvious answer. I think you need to say that the difficulty in production is "harder to a significant enough level that you find yourself unable to produce mechanically balanced content." However, difficulty in creation is relative to player ability with the AE toolset, and any argument would have to take this into account. One person being unable to create something does not mean that someone else would not be able to, given the same toolset.
In my experience it is still very much possible to make mechanically balanced content despite the anti-exploit measures put in place. I say this from the position of someone who uses the AE a lot. I am not talking from the perspective of someone who just uses it for farming and I would appreciate it if you didn't typecast me as such.
In my mind, the biggest concern for me isn't so much the anti-exploit measures taken, but rather the dev-team withholding certain things from the AE. (PVE game mechanics, maps, NPCs, etc.) I can only assume that their motivation for limiting the AE users in this regard is due to the CoH staff writers being so bad that they need an aesthetic/gameplay advantage over the playerbase. Simply put: If we were able to replicate the SSAs in the AE - they would be far superior to the absolute tosh the dev team are putting out.
Look, even if you do cap xp earnings in ae, I believe it is naive to think that will prevent any further changes to the ae story tool set. I can't remember the last time the devs fixed a bug without introducing 3 others.
Hell, I would argue that the profanity filter ***** affected way more arcs in the system than any of the exploit fixes to date. That one by they way had nothing to do with farms.
I don't think that taking the interest to use a part of the game away from a large demographic of people that use it is worth it in order to stop a few exploiters. That is why Marty was developed. The ambush farms were not exploits, the devs just felt that the rewards needed to be adjusted. If they were considered an exploit, they just would have closed the option off and never mentioned it.
People are going to have to accept that while the original intent of ae was for story writing, it has evolved into something else as well. It is not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.
I assume that people who feel this way also always ensure to use the turnstile system as that is the devs preferred intent of how to run incarnate trials.
Some people have not and will not accept that they are not in control of what other people do or can do. Those people are truly sad individuals, so messed up in their heads that the only way they can have fun is if they can control what fun others are allowed to have if any. Yeah...not much fun for these folks.
Clinical psychologist have names for the multiple mental conditions that cover this type of behavior.
Rest assured this cover of a proposed "fix" is nothing more than the rants of a person/people that have an uncontrollable desire to control others nothing more, nothing less.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
To my the biggest problem with AE rewards is that as an incarnate there really is no point in doing non-Dev choice missions and even those it can be questionable (given the shard drop rates and how hard it is to get a full team that wants to do any AE arc).
So I see two problems, normal missions just don't produce shards (TF at least gives you an item at the end) and lack of interest. Lack of interest is indeed because Arcs don't work or because they are mislabeled (often badly).
If game tracked both the flags set by designer AND those set by people playing the arc you would have a bit better chance at choosing an arc. Worst example I can think of is the many arcs labeled "Soloable, Easy" which contain multiple Archvillains or filled with EBs. Hey not all EBs are soloable - at least by all ATs. Scrapper/Tanker/Brute only Soloable is not Soloable, Easy and annoys people expecting to be able to just go through an arc to experience it.
This would also allow you to add a broken flag other can search on. Although the problem there is LOT of people don't understand the game. I have a Arc Mail Strike! where the goal is to destroy mailboxes but a few are painted on the map and not targetable. I get 1 star arc is broken messages, each of which of coarse ruin a bunch of 5 star ratings lol.
Maybe a last revised date works better instead of a created date. I started adding that to Arc description.
There is so much dreck out there it seems like they should unpublish any arc that hasn't been played all the way through or republished in last X months (3, 6 months?). If everyone has been warned there is no reason they can't republish before it happens to prevent losing ratings.
Holding down exploiters and powergamers is hopeless IMO. For them they aren't interesting in playing the game anyway they are only interested in proving they can level fast/make money. This is especially true now with incarnates (before there really was no reason to get to 50 quickly). So I don't know what you do with them.
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
I know this is an older thread, but I'm new to AE and I had an idea.
How about during each issue upgrade have every AE arc tested by the upgrade to see if it passes and if it doesn't, unpublish it and send an email to the user telling them their arc is broken?
That should at least get rid of the dead wood in AE.
After that I'd like a better search including the ability to search on what people flagged their arcs as. And I'd like one of the flags to be "Farm". If I can search and say I specifically do NOT want Farms (and someone else can search specifically for Farms) then I don't really care what other people are doing.
Casual player - but been around forever.
Lots o characters.
I know this is an older thread, but I'm new to AE and I had an idea.
How about during each issue upgrade have every AE arc tested by the upgrade to see if it passes and if it doesn't, unpublish it and send an email to the user telling them their arc is broken? That should at least get rid of the dead wood in AE. After that I'd like a better search including the ability to search on what people flagged their arcs as. And I'd like one of the flags to be "Farm". If I can search and say I specifically do NOT want Farms (and someone else can search specifically for Farms) then I don't really care what other people are doing. |
Anyone who has played the AE for very long has encountered the various crash/failure to load errors. Adding some kind of flagging that the arc is bugged into the error catching would help - I don't know if it would help a lot, but it's kind of wearing to keep stumbling across crashy arcs, knowing that they'll never go away. Some can't even load at all, so you can't even blind rate them to try and mark that you've encountered them before.
Farms we're just going to have to suck it up and deal with since moderation (apart from copyright enforcement) seems to have completely left the AE building. Were it me I would just smack the banstick (unpublish and arc lock) on any obvious farm that hit the front page of search, and otherwise not bother too much about it. You can come up with all kinds of ways to prune them out of search but it's pretty clear we're not getting any of them. It's not worth spending too much time worrying about. They may not be doing anything to stop "mechanically optimized content" besides the occasional flail of the nerf bat but I can't see them just straight up making a flag that outright condones it.
@Mindshadow
Hmm..another misdirected shot at farms...brilliant.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
As a story arc player, I already get pissed over the things the dev's have done to control PLing in AE. If I have a few hours to play and I feel like running my character that is leveling exclusively in AE I damn well better not run out of the ability to gain xp. That would be the nail in the coffin of my ever using AE again.
Farming is not the problem. Farming is also not the dev's issue. Nearly all of the AE nerfs have been to combat PLing, not farming, which are two entirely different things. The problem is the devs. The devs made the decision, after initially announcing AE was not to be used for farming, to turn a blind eye to it. Despite deciding to unofficially condone farming, the devs refused to make even a simple fix that would allow story players to actually find story arcs. They already have the tools in place to do it, so there is no excuse why they have not done so.
The farmer vs. story crap needs to stop. Farmers did not ruin AE, the devs did. They're the ones that deserve the outrage.
@Doctor Gemini
Arc #271637 - Welcome to M.A.G.I. - An alternative first story arc for magic origin heroes. At Hero Registration you heard the jokes about Azuria always losing things. When she loses the entire M.A.G.I. vault, you are chosen to find it.
Really, you guys you're reacting to the start of a necro'd thread?
Really?
@Mindshadow
This just encourages people to farm Task Forces! I don't think ANYONE likes the fact that Cimerora is clogged up with people running the ITF from level 35.
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Anyways, AE is fine. If people don't farm AE, they'll farm TFs. Then what would you do? Nerf regular content? I personally want to try the challenge of leveling from 1 to 50 on nothing but actual story arcs in AE sometime.
http://www.virtueverse.net/wiki/Shadow_Mokadara
Anyways, AE is fine. If people don't farm AE, they'll farm TFs. Then what would you do? Nerf regular content? I personally want to try the challenge of leveling from 1 to 50 on nothing but actual story arcs in AE sometime.
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I'm just stating what the point of the OP is. I myself do not care there are farmers in AE. I do wish farms and story arcs could be segregated in such a way that would make it easier to find a story when you want one or a farm when you want one. Currently, the farms "drown out" the story arcs, and that is a problem.
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WARNING: I bold names.
Improved search function, removal of broken arcs, increased demand and or reason for players to play others arcs(most of which are true crap) over regular better rewarding content and better advertising of arcs would all help.
I think the reality of the demand for players to play any other players arc and the perception by some arc makers is way way off and has been from the beginning. The demand to play others arcs is very low even without including the most influential factors and they have nothing to do with anyone being able to make a BM map in AE.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
I think the reality of the demand for players to play any other players arc and the perception by some arc makers is way way off and has been from the beginning.
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Back in " the old days", people actually did want to play player-created stories. Some of that was no doubt just "the new shiny", but the urge did exist, once. These days start a thread asking people why they avoid the place and you'll get responses about it being too hard to sort through the chaff, the rewards being off balance with the rest of the game (including nothing incarnate), how the history cited above left a bad taste in their mouths, but very few about "I don't care what other players have written (except from those sorts who like to pop in and troll a thread).
So the devs could actually do something about all this, refocusing the new shiny effect on the AE in part for a bit and it would no doubt draw a few more people to look at and play some story content rather another farm. If they wanted to. But they seem to enjoy writing up more trials instead.
*Some of what chased off a ton of folks was the dev response of course.
I've bolded the art I think is way wrong. My first arc was a silly trifle of a joke, based around rabbit puns and was published like 2 months after AE went live. Its number of plays quickly went up and up and up, and it's now sitting at about 130 or so.
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Once the AE meow farm - monkey farm - et cetera farms started and then chased off a ton of people*, it's gotten maybe a dozen plays.
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On the other hand my arc Against The Wickerwork Khan has actually won a player's choice catagory last year (see my avatar tag there) and iirc, it's still under a hundred plays.
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Which for those that are just interested in making an arc that anyone can play if they decided to do so would be happy with. However, if the motive is to have hundreds of people play the arc or even thousands then the promotion of the arc and desire for players to play the arc with reduced rewards and other handicaps come into play.
Back in " the old days", people actually did want to play player-created stories. Some of that was no doubt just "the new shiny", but the urge did exist, once. These days start a thread asking people why they avoid the place and you'll get responses about it being too hard to sort through the chaff, the rewards being off balance with the rest of the game (including nothing incarnate), how the history cited above left a bad taste in their mouths, but very few about "I don't care what other players have written (except from those sorts who like to pop in and troll a thread).
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So the devs could actually do something about all this, refocusing the new shiny effect on the AE in part for a bit and it would no doubt draw a few more people to look at and play some story content rather another farm. If they wanted to. But they seem to enjoy writing up more trials instead.
*Some of what chased off a ton of folks was the dev response of course. |
IMHO if people are not advertising their arc like this guy: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=278339
and then some, they cannot expect too many plays if any.
People have way too many options for AE story arcs to be as popular as some would desire them to be and that is where the disconnect lies, residual feelings notwithstanding.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
The ability to make a BM farm was there from the beginning.
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Exploit farms did nothing more than to show where the larger demand was in the MA.
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-they had to put up with constant farm-team spam in broadcast
-the casual willingness of fellow players to resort to outright exploiting
-serious crowding issues in Atlas Park and the AE buildings (often equals lag)
-playing with these new 50s who had to be told how to get from Atlas Park to anywhere else
The low post count of this forum compared to the past is good evidence of this, as is the dwindling number of "usual suspects" who make those posts.
Yet the fact remains the vast majority of the people that play this game do not play it for the devs or anyone else's story. The other issues just compound the initial low demand.
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The AE system does needs dev attention because it's under-performing, much like stalkers or PVP. If we have a system in place for something in CoH, it should be the best system in place that we can have, even if "not everyone" wants to play it.
Never said it wasn't.
Exploits were definitely detrimental to the AE population and had nothing to do with "show[ing] where the larger demand was/is" - people will cheat en mass when the opportunity arises. That tells us nothing about what they didn't do to get what they took. The exploits disgusted a lot of players (both those who were and weren't interested in AE stories) who then turned away from the AE because: -they had to put up with constant farm-team spam in broadcast -the casual willingness of fellow players to resort to outright exploiting -serious crowding issues in Atlas Park and the AE buildings (often equals lag) -playing with these new 50s who had to be told how to get from Atlas Park to anywhere else The low post count of this forum compared to the past is good evidence of this, as is the dwindling number of "usual suspects" who make those posts. |
That is really no different from the rest of the game. Before AE all of the things you listed about spam and farms was just in PI instead of Atlas.
Of course at the beginning there was much more AE activity of all types, but the relative demand for players to play other players arcs has always been lower than many arc makers are willing to recognize and they in turn incorrectly place blame on farmers, farms or powerlevelers in general.
Getting a thousand or even several thousand people to play any players arc is still a relatively tiny number of the overall player population.
You're judging the past interest in AE based on the current situation, forgetting the history and ignoring the new-shiny effect of the devs moving their focus in the game elsewhere, as well as the need for "improved search function, [and] removal of broken arcs" (your words there). If the devs moved some focus back into the AE system in some major way, say just by repairing those and other problems, many people would follow.
The AE system does needs dev attention because it's under-performing, much like stalkers or PVP. If we have a system in place for something in CoH, it should be the best system in place that we can have, even if "not everyone" wants to play it. |
I said
"Improved search function, removal of broken arcs, increased demand and or reason for players to play others arcs(most of which are true crap) over regular better rewarding content and better advertising of arcs would all help." |
In the end, my contention is while there are things the devs can do to fix issues with AE and give it more attention( like updating the new powersets as asked by me and many others), the relative interest in running marysue's arc is going to remain relatively low.
I didn't make my story arc so that thousands of people would play it and rate it high and give me cyberspace notoriety etc....I made it because it was a story I wanted to make and play and if others liked it or even bothered to play it that was gravy no skin off my back either way.
I would say to others that are looking for as many plays as possible and internet notoriety etc... based on the current status of AE you might want to go the route of the Howard Zaine Trilogy: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=278339
Which to me is pretty much mandatory if you want any plays in the high numbers at all. With hundreds of thousands of player arcs and hundreds of dev arcs, getting people to play your arc is increasingly difficult and the factors making it so have nothing to do with farming or powerleveling aside from them being more attractive to more people than any player or dev story arc.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
Now I personally feel this is a complex issue. Frankly I approved of AE farming from day one. See by the time AE came around I had grown ill with contempt and a general loathing for large SGs many who acted very high and mighty, but in fact practiced the most extreme forms of PLVing by portal farming, and using this as thier major draw in recruitment. To me that is the worst kind of hypocrisy.
So that ofcourse meant PLving and farming was exclusively in the hands of the big groups which is wrong. AE made it so anyone with an average farm build could farm if that was thier thing. Personally I dont farm. I love the merit systems and making it so just by playing content I earn steady progress towards needed IOs. Run alot of various tfs every day mostly with pugs full of new players who appreciate smooth first time runs.
I also love AE for its potential to tell the story, and if anything feel that the Virtue Server considering all the energy spent on virtueverse, could have a really huge and consolodated rpae project if they bothered to get along instead of being divided among hundreds of tidus mental cloned Its my story and it will go the way I want to or end it right here ego trips.
i dont have any great AE rankings under my belt, my best AE contribution would probably be 46665, a simple little one mission lore based arc simply meant to let characters have options when considering the different factions in the game. Among others it helps to give a sane answer to the popular newb question I see from players when they first hit brickston and go "Uhm why are we fighting the police?" because most do see crey as somekind of corporate police until higher levels. feel free to check my old arc there btw and give me hell for it if you think it sucks. just know its more about stealth and investigation then battle, though there is some good action to be had.
I love the idea but
What shall claim a Sky Kings' Ransom?
PPD & Resistance Epic Archetypes
*reaches for the Undead Slaying Axe to put this zombie thread down for good*
@Mindshadow
I really don't like any of these suggestions. I think things are right where they need to be. If any of these changes are implemented its not going to turn out the way you think it will. Lego -just- announced they are shutting down their mmo, I refuse to let that happen here.
again
/unsigned to every idea.
Just accept that farmers are players too.
They deserve to play this game how they want and there is nothing you can do about that.
So sayeth the rabbit.
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.