Really, devs? REALLY? AFK farming is ok?

Now the problem is actually getting it an actual priority ahead of base overhauls and Boomtown revamps.

And that's assuming the changes they make are in line with what the players want, not necessarily what it'll take to balance PVP, let alone make it an attractive proposition in the game.

Simply because I agree with the devs on some things, and support them in others doesn't mean I don't find some of their decisions...questionable (let alone downright DUMB). If you want to try and apply my positions on individual points in and about this game to it as a whole, you've already failed.

And if it's any consolation. You're neither required to like anything I say, nor agree with it.

The problem is, you're still talking pay to win. Some players could afford to dump hundreds/thousands onto the market. But some can't. In short, PVP becomes pay to win.


True, but it still doesn't stop the scenario from being pay to win.

On a sarcastic illustration of the economics of scale?

Surely you jest!

My point remains. Do the devs think they can make more off selling a few expensive expensive things to a small group of wealthy minority players? Or selling several orders of magnitude more cheap items to the majority of players?

And which one would give the best returns on investment of time and development resources.

I haven't seen any $9000 monocles in CoH yet.

Rolls Royce or Chevrolet?


The problem is, you cannot guarantee that.
You can't even guarantee that the changes wouldn't drive more people away.
The PVP community right now is probably several hundred people strong at the moment. Talk of them going to 70,000 (a majority of the game's TOTAL population) is absolutely insane. As is asking Paragon and NCSoft to bet the farm on it.

How is someone who states, flat out "I will not engage in PVP. PERIOD." a potential customer in any but the most deluded mind? A good chunk of the PVE population will only enter a PVP zone for:

• Badges
• Temp Powers
• Farming PVP recipes

Maybe not to you. But you don't like my message. So that's going to color your perception.

As I've said, some people simply wouldn't recognize subtlety if they were beaten to death with it and resurrected on a daily basis.

Well, you're obviously not going to change your position. So yeah, I'd change things by not wasting my time trying to explain to you in any way shape or form.

This is what I'm talking about with subtlety and how it is missed.

It was stated that the attractiveness of PVP was a completely separate issue.

I disagreed, vehemently (and graphically), with that statement. The attractiveness is an issue that is part and parcel to the whole giant clump of offal that is the current state of PVP in CoH.

Why? Putting them in terms that are more palatable to you still isn't going to change your position. As such, I'm just going to keep pointing at the elephant in the corner that you're consistently trying to ignore. And I'm not going to be nice about it. Because making the effort to be nice nets me nothing.


There's that term. "Relatively". Luckily for you "compare and contrast" posts are verboten here isn't it?

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Probably the simplest is to allow inactivity logoff when on an oro tf. But I'll leave the exact mechanism to the dev's, it's what they're paid to do.

Obviously I'm not versed in how one does pvp afk farming but...how would that help?

A person can still have two accounts going doing afk farming without being on an ouro (or any other) tf/sf.

Pretty much, yeah.

PvP in this game was tacked on well after launch, and was NOT a design consideration while the game was originally being developed. And after CoV came out and there was apparently a short-lived reinvestment in PvP development, Cryptic moved most of the CoH/CoV staff over to the Marvel MMO which was eventually canceled. the remaining devs had to choose what got their development time, and PvP was not worth the return on investment. Heck, bases suffered the same fate (partially because the base system incorporated SG vs SG PvP, but I digress). Even with a larger development team, Paragon Studios still has to carefully decide how to allocate their resources. And due to the development history of the game, PvP is unfortunately still not really worth the return on the sort of investment that would have to be made in order for it to be a robust, balanced gameplay system within this game.

As for PvP farming itself: Well, why not?

I mean, there are no real "exploits" going on, and the farmers aren't really disrupting any other PvPers' experiences. The only downside is that some characters have access to the ridiculously inflated PvP IOs. Thankfully, there are ways to acquire them outside of PvP farming. Outside of PvP, for that matter. As far as I'm concerned, that does mitigate the complaint some.

Does this work for getting PvP badges too?

Eco

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Mm, their tears are so yummy and sweet!

You mean PVP kill badges?

Yeah. While I didn't do it this way myself, I'm aware of several people who've done this.

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Soooo you're complaining about folks getting their pvp IOs by not pvping . . . yet you got most of your's by, drumroll please, NOT PVPING!



Right. LMAO!

No, he's complaining about people getting PvPIOs by not playing the game.

Whereas, he's using A-Merits to get PvPIO's. Last i checked, A-Merits can only be earned by ... playing the game.

Except they are playing the game. They are just using their second account.

Also soon A-Merits are earnable via reward merits, which will soon be earnable by simply buying superpacks. In other words PVP IOs will become earnable with real cash money.

Not seeing the issue here as the majority pvp IOs haven't been gotten via pvp since they came out.

HAHAHAHAAHA. Oh, is THAT the reason?
I guess I got my thousands of reward merits and hundreds of alignment merits by AFK farming... somehow. Still, it's nice feeling you can blame other people when things don't go your way, isn't it?

You don't have to 'skeev' anything for it. I have the 3% resistance unique on one of my tanks. I bought it in Wentworths for 2 billion inf, using inf NOT gained from AFK PvP farming.


This change, by itself, will have little or no impact. Even if the farming was somehow made LESS convenient than actual PvP, plenty of people hate PvP. As long as the farming is in any manner possible, it will be happening.

Not gonna work. At least, not in practice. Look at the system for rewarding 'participation' in the iTrials. If you're leading (i.e. typing a lot, instead of shooting), you're getting 10 threads. If you're a mastermind, you have a good chance of getting hosed with the 10 threads. If they implement a system like you describe, we can be sure it will occasionally screw over real PvP'ers and make PvP even LESS popular.


Say what? If you want something to be rare, charge more. Okay. As you point out, the PvP IO's cost a lot more. So this should encourage people to PvP, rather than trying to buy them, right? Which negates your crack about 'marketing 101'.

Still, as I said above, if farming is easier (or even possible), it's going to happen.

...really.

You're really not grasping the whole "Away From Keyboard' thing here, are you? The whole point of the AFK farm is that you set it up and then it runs automatically. The player then goes away and does something else, while his toons happily auto-slay and auto-rez, with nary a human interaction in sight.

That's not 'playing the game' that's bots farming the most valuable stuff.



Really?! I did not know that.

So, since I have a good income in Real Life, I can simply crush everyone else by throwing cash at the issue, and you will, of course, consider that perfectly fair play.

Good to know. (Pulls out debit card and waits patiently.)

You know, I'd wager that at least 75 percent of all pvp hours spent on the game right now are bots auto-killing each other.

A sad state, that is.

I will say that there have been times where I've been leading trials and doing lots of typing, etc...and still get a Rare...I'd actually say more times than not.

Which is weird....cause...you know most of the time I'm not actually doing anything.

Granted, I have no specific evidence but...*shrugs*

But I have never received the 10 threads option after an iTrial. *knocks on wood*

Anyways, back to the main point of the thread....

Seeing as how pvp is in a sad state complaining about AFK farming is the least of things wrong with pvp.

Indeed, this may be the case, but I do not give a rats backside about pvp. I find the 'community' of pvp'rs to be mostly vile individuals I'd one-star and happily place on ignore.

Sorry. Maybe my experience with those gracious folks has been bad. A run of bad apples, as it were.

What I DO care about, is the fact that the play mode which gives the greatest rewards to players is to grab a bunch of free accounts and then use one pay farm account to run what is essential a bot swarm.

This is appallingly bad game design, and is easily fixed. I feel the Dev's made a stupendously bad decision by making the PVP sets in the first place. You can't bribe people to enjoy vile company. All the PVP sets do is encourage the very worst sort of exploitation.

According to Hyperstrike, it's all balanced on Time versus Reward, after all. If people are using AFK farming to 'play' for 100+ hours per day, SOMETHING IS FREAKIN' WRONG.

The PvP community is like grade school. There are some mean kids and then a few kids that jump on the bandwagon to laugh at everything they say. Then theres the group of good kids that dont really get involved in the nonsense so much. Saying the PvP community is mostly vile individuals is a wacky generalization like when I play on Virtue and hear how most of Freedom players are dbags.

As far as this AFK farming thing, who really cares...
If the PvP community makes up 1% of the game population and thats the main reason the devs dont care about that aspect of the game, why would the devs care about AFK farming which probably makes up .1% (I dont know the real #, just cant see that many people doing it)?

I know right? I wonder what vintage that whine is. Seems like a bad year.

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Yep. You can get reward merits. For which you still need piles of Inf to convert to AMs. If you're one of these people with a WW hate-on, this helps you not at all.



Hey, at least the PVP stuff is being used for SOMETHING, rather than standing empty 24x7x365. Right?

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Basically the AFK farmers are the main reason PVP IOs are available AT ALL. The gating prices for the recipes via various merit systems are fairly steep. And while some people take that route, I'm willing to bet that even with that avenue, the market would absorb 100% of supply in short order leaving nothing available.

Essentially the people damning these guys for providing an actual supply are potheads cursing out their supplier for being bad and selling drugs.

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I agree. Im part of that "1%" that does casual zone PvPing and have sold a few PvP IOs here and there.

I still dont get the below statements:

"But the AFK PVP IO farming?
People are making STUPID levels of rewards, WHILE THEY ARE ASLEEP. The most profitable way TO PLAY YOUR GAME, is to do it while you're sleeping."

It can be extremely profitable to play the stock market in real life...I dont but it doesnt bother me that there are people out there making millions doing it.

Actually sounds fun.

Awesome! I thought I'd never get those badges.

And I get some free inf too?

Finally, something good about PvP.

Eco

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."