Really, devs? REALLY? AFK farming is ok?

Simply because you dislike something doesn't mean it needs to be "fixed".

Likely, if they fixed it so that PVP IOs dropped more regularly, they'd wind up having to nerf them fairly drastically.

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Never, in the history of the millions of market transactions this game has had since it's creation, was the sales price set by the seller. There's sellers out there who list thier item above what people are willing to pay, and their item will sit there unsold for months and months. Thus, what you're describing is already happening.

The prices are set by the decisions of the masses. One might even suggest that because it is a mass decision and not made by one individual, it is by definition rational. And those of people who disagree with that mass decision are thus, by definition, irrational. Now, when it comes to most things in life, yes, it's good to be in the "irrational minority".... but it doesn't really makes a lot of sense to suggest that everyone who's acting rationally is doing something "stoopid."

That said, the rest of your post I pretty much agree with.

Because repeating content, and getting rewarded for doing so, isn't an exploit. Were it an exploit, there would be no repeatable TFs. No Oroborous. No iTrials. Nada.

Or, if you repeated them, there would be no XP, Prestige, Inf, Salvage, Recipe or Enhancement drops.

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No reason to nerf them... they're not excessivly good. They're not trash... but they're not overpowering by any stretch.

And what about us PvP'rs who can't AFK farm? Because of AFK farming, those that do it having a huge advantage over those that don't from the start; whether it helps the market or not, it still doesn't change the fact that AFK farming is the only viable way to afford all this crap anyway. I would rather AFK farming be nerfed and no one be able to afford this stuff than have the imbalance right now that gimps me from the start. I'm dueling regularly on Freedom without PvP IOs right now, and let me tell you, it's a pain in the ***.

Let me rephrase this for my own thoughts on the issue.

As a player that loves rewards there is no way I'm going to PvP.

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The problem is, how do you segregate out the drop table for the "chaff" while not dropping hundreds of the desireable (+Def, +Resist, +HP etc uniques)?

Plus the fact that THE SET BONUSES EXEMP LIKE PURPLES?

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Most of the PvP sets do not have very good bonuses for PvE.

And the most sought after PvP unique, the Gladiator Unique has all of its true value wrapped up in 3% DEF for 2 to 2.5 billion.

The Steadfast Unique provides the same bonus for about 15 to 30 million.


I personally think the devs should shut down PvP AFK farming by actually making the system for earning PvPs through actual PvP more attractive.

While the attractiveness of PvP to PvE players is a whole other issue, I think that if they implemented a method to track real kills vs. farming kills perhaps using MARTy, they should implement a method of earning PvP merits similar to Empyrean merits.

I think most of the list of Empyrean and Astral purchasable items should have a near equivalent version for PvP merit vendors.

Except PvP IOs would be slightly cheaper at the PvP vendors, and standard recipies would slightly more expensive.


I'd like to see the devs give real value to the people who actually do want to PvP and make the system for drops attractive to them, unlike the nightmare it is now where going AFK for 18-20 hours and farming yourself is the best method.

HI CAPS!!! :d

The set bonuses exemping like purples isn't a problem for pve because most of the pvp sets have crappier bonuses than purples do for pve builds.

You don't need to seperate anything... the +3 def IO from steadfast protection for example is very accessable... and yet not game breaking.

Oh bull. While it's MORE cumbersome than AFK farming, you could drag alts through tip missions and SSAs for Alignment Merits. It's not as fast, but it's doable.

Also, why CAN'T you AFK farm?
Honestly, I call shenanigans. You may not be able to do it at the same scale as some of the guys with the really POWERFUL computers. But you can likely support at least one alt.
Or are you still running a 2Ghz P4 with 1GB of RAMBUS memory and a GeForce 256?

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Whether the bonuses are "crappier" (which is a completely subjective judgement) is irrelevant. The fact is, the bonuses still exemp all the way down.

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I think he could use the farmer's powerful machine buy simply finding the afk farmer, pop him and then take over the farm. If it works as described upstream, it should be pretty easy to do this... I mean the farmer is afk attacking maniquins it isn't like he'd be able to defend himself. I'm not a pvper by any stretch of the imagination but this would seem to be pretty easy and likely to really tick off the afk farmer for that little ego stroke that pvpers seem to like. *shrug*

Sorry, but it isn't going to happen. They, quite simply, are incapable of balancing PVP (to the point that they've stopped even trying).

And even if they WERE able to at this late date, it still would be wasted labor. Myriad other concerns, besides mere technical adjustment, poison the chances that PVP will ever become meaningful. Not the least of it being the absolutely vile behavior of a certain segment of the PVP population.

If they want to pull the fangs of the whole PVP farming issue, they need to make earning them easier. Both in-PVP and out. Right now, PVP IOs are more expensive than purples in terms of Alignment Merit cost.

Sorry, but Kevin Spacey said it best.



It's part and parcel of the whole. What you're attempting to do is talk about what a smooth ride a car would give...if it had tires and an engine...


If someone's rocking 10 accounts, how is that going to be much different from PVP'ing against another team?

PVPBroot kills JoeBlaster
PVPBroot kills NoController
PVPBroot kills LOLKheldianPVP

Are the devs going to track whether the people have been standing still?
And what kind of load would that granularity of tracking impose on a shard?


So instead of farming the IOs directly, they farm the PvP merits?

Yeah. Good plan!




This can be done in three "easy" steps!

1. Invent Time Machine
2. Go back to the first days of Cryptic's meetings for CoH's planning.
3. Hold a gun to their heads until they put "Balanced PVP" at the top of the list.

Or you could do the following.

• Throw several million dollars at NCSoft and Paragon Studios to fund the development of "PVP Your Way".

Otherwise, sorry. PVP is a dead system in the game. You may feel I'm being harsh, insensitive and trollish. Honestly, my intent is none of these. I simply know reality when I see it.

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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.

I'm playing on a macbook, genius. Regardless of how powerful it is, it simply doesn't load 2 instances of CoH; you click the CoH app again and it just returns you to your first instance. And I've tried alternatives to AFK farming, thank you; they would maybe fund one or two characters a year if I wanted to fully PvP IO them.

Could you imagine some putative "hardcore PVPer's" face if he logged on to that?

Granted, it'd be an AFK ganker's wet dream.

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Yep. It's how I got mine.

For some odd reason I'd rather see this than an AFK farm. I don't believe in getting xps/rewards while afk but if the player is willing to gank and be ganked with 50 others all doing the same thing for 8 hours then that's their lookout. How they spend their time in-game is up tot them.

You can buy sets in the store now that do the same.

As they've already added some of the better sets going, I think we will just see more of this.

So what again is the issue with PvP Sets exemping down?

And the PvP IO set bonuses for PvE are not subjective compared to Purples. They are not as good as purple sets, if they were you would see higher prices for them than we do now.

A handful of very specific bonuses are better than a handful of tiny counterparts, for example the +HP bonus in SW vs. the +HP bonus in LoTG.

Then other sets for PvE are not even worth looking at, the TAoE set is worse than Posi Blast.

And Posi pretty much sucks, it just happens to be the only halfway decent option that isn't Ragnarok.



Incapable, really?

Why are you playing a game where you feel the current dev team, which is doing new and creative things IMO, is unable to accomplish this feat of balancing PvP?

If you think the developers of the game you play suck so bad, you might want to move on in life.


PvP players are notoriously some of the most high end build focused players in MMOs.

That's the market segment that will spend any amount of INF, and any amount of real cash if you let them, to totally pimp their builds out.


So just so we are clear - those players, could be made to be very profitable.

That's not wasted labor.


Step 1, anyone in TF mode can not earn PvP merits.

Step 2, there is no step 2.


If someone is actively playing 10 accounts at once and killing them-self, yeah I don't we need to worry about Mr. 1 in 50,000 edge-case.



We are all farming reward merits and incarnate merits now. This is dev sanctioned, it is time gated.

This is doable.



Maybe you're just unable to see past your own bombastic negativity?




I ignored the rest of your post, because you don't seem to be able to have a discussion like a grown up.