City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

So why aren't you using AE?

Acroyear2

By Acroyear2,
Posted on: 2012-04-17 10:20 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by dugfromthearth View Post
1. Wipe all existing arcs. This may require notifying players to save their old arcs. Or it could just be a wipe. Players who have their arcs saved could republish them. This would remove the backlog of old, broken arcs.
This would pretty much end the Architect once and for all. Back in I16 when there was interest, players created hundreds of thousand of arcs in a matter of a few days, and there was a huge pool of things to try. Now, that makes it unwieldy and it pollutes it with broken or abandoned arcs. However, wiping EVERYTHING is a mistake, as I honestly don't believe the Architect has enough popularity to make what was lost back.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by dugfromthearth View Post
I think from the responses that AE could be revitalized with 2 changes

1. Wipe all existing arcs. This may require notifying players to save their old arcs. Or it could just be a wipe. Players who have their arcs saved could republish them. This would remove the backlog of old, broken arcs.

2. Have a setting for missions for type of mission, at least dividing between farming and story. I am thinking: story, experience, challenge, roleplaying. With roleplaying being personal/SG arcs that they do not intend for outside play. You can only set the arc to be one of these.
it only needs one thing, a vastly more robust, flexible search interface.

imagine if you could set up a filter like this:

EXCLUDE invalid arcs, EXCLUDE farms, INCLUDE lowbie friendly INCLUDE stock enemies

etc etc.

A good search interface would singlehandedly wipe out most complaints on the player side.

On the author side the situation is more complex, but really should start with the gangland execution of that ridiculous word filter.

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

 

Posted

Guess I'm just that naive, then.

And I still think farming is wrong, though I have no power to do anything about it. Positron did, but he didn't follow through.

Unfortunately, it seems the door of permissiveness swings only one way. You can let everyone be as much bastards as they want (e.g. EvE), but you can't make them all saints.

My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by dugfromthearth View Post
To make arcs or to play them?
Why I don't make arcs?

I did make a couple of well-received arcs. One or two downgrades because they didn't give the 'phat exp' and were hard and my main arc is buried. It annoys me because it (the arc) actually makes a lot of sense in given the changes to Penny Yin.

Why I don't play arcs?

I'll occasionally play a farm when I'm bored and want to test the performance of an alt or want to farm some tickets for a specific purpose. Otherwise, AE has nothing for me. There's plenty of content in the game.

The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Megajoule View Post
Guess I'm just that naive, then.

And I still think farming is wrong, though I have no power to do anything about it. Positron did, but he didn't follow through.
Wisely.
Persecuting farmers makes about as much sense as persecuting RP'ers.
Less, actually, since farmers provide material support for the game by fueling the market.

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

 

Posted

For all the great arcs that may be out there, I found there was so many more, terrible arcs.

Also, teams don't want them to be tough or they quit. Some of the best AE arcs I've ran in, had enemies that just wiped the floor with IO'ed out, solo 4/8 content (though really, those who have the solo 4/8 content generally only solo specific content their build is setup to go against).

There are some nasty enemies one can make in AE!

But a lot of it has to do with the writing. The idea of looking for someone's pet dog, that talks, while it's being chased by ninja dog catchers may work in something like the Tick, it just doesn't work for me in CoH.

BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by joshdex View Post
You seem to be leaving out the possibility that there's still good stories being made, but not enough people are finding, playing and rating them. Even with advertising, there's only so much you can do if people aren't playing. And good arcs, sadly, aren't always properly advertised. Mine could probably use a little advertising.
Well, as far as Dev Choice arcs go, which is what I was talking about, the problem is that the Devs aren't finding the good arcs. How did they find them before? Did they rely on player ratings?

Regardless, I'm sure the Devs must have the same problem eveyone else does locating the good story arcs amid the mountain of farms, broken arcs, and just plain badly written stories. But not one Dev has come across a single story arc worthy of being nominated a Dev Choice in over a year and a half? I think it more likely they've just scrapped the whole Dev Choice idea altogether.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by dugfromthearth View Post
2. Have a setting for missions for type of mission, at least dividing between farming and story. I am thinking: story, experience, challenge, roleplaying. With roleplaying being personal/SG arcs that they do not intend for outside play. You can only set the arc to be one of these.
This MIGHT work to allow easier searches but theres at least one problem.

As long as "Farming" is perceived to be against the rules and if your story is considered one that you will be punished, than anyone who even thinks their story might be considered a farm will put it into a category other then "Farming."

In order to break that perception the Devs would have to publicly state that farming was OK and also define the line that one must cross to be considered an exploit. The Dev's have said in the past that they will not define where the line is and so unless they change their minds, adding any such system would likely fail.

 

Posted

Quote:
Something a lot of people in this community don't understand (including, apparently, devs) is that you don't get to dictate what other players think is fun.
No, but developers do get to dictate what players are allowed to do, and they should. Lots of people think lots of things are fun for them that are actually bad for the community and game as a whole. Farming has done nothing positive for the game in general and helped destroy MA in particular. Of course, if the devs actually wanted to shut down farming in MA it would be trivial to do so. It all just goes back to the "disappointing toy" vibe they seem to be giving off about MA.

Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"

 

Posted

The usual suspects are here to derail the thread and blame all the ills of the COX world on farmers. Stop you make yourself look small and petty.

The devs are the ones that allowed any mission in the game to be run by one person killing +4/8 enemies no fillers needed. "ANY" complaints or misunderstanding about what the devs today actually feel about leveling speed or speed leveling should have ended last Tuesday with the sale of DOUBLE XP mods on the market.

That is a culmination of a steady stream of movement towards allowing people to choose their own leveling speed that has been on since I came in I8 prior to stuff like XP smoothing , less debt, patrol xp etc...

Face it you don't control the pace people are allowed to level at the devs do and they released the KRAKEN A LONG TIME AGO. It is actually eaiser to speed/power level OUTSIDE of AE, the devs made sure of that and that made AE even less attractive to those that speed level, not to mention the 1500 ticket cap nerf.

People not playing AE has more to do with what Nethergoat has been saying period. Those mad at/wanting to control other's leveling speed etc... go find something useful and fulfilling to do because that petty vindictive thing is just unattractive and you are better than that.

The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.

 

Posted

I create stories with MA fairly often for use in our RP Teams. But besides creating those, playing my friends' stories and the like, I almost never touch it.

I think it is mainly due to the difficulty of teaming with people while trying to enjoy a story I know nothing about going into. This is the same reason I solo content in the regular game so that I can read it first before I team to play it.

As for rewards? I don't really care what they are, as long as I am having fun.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Megajoule View Post
And I still think farming is wrong, though I have no power to do anything about it. Positron did, but he didn't follow through.
Statement from Positron in reaction to accusations of targeting farmers: "We are not targeting anyone's playstyle."

Action: Introduction of MARTY to prevent heavily exploited, well past "the line" rewards.

*Farming* isn't wrong. *Exploits* are. The two are not the same.

 

Posted

Maybe I was just expecting too much control/freedom with the mish options, but my few attempts at AE (for badges only mind you) felt kinda restrictive (like those pants you swear fit, but your zipper says otherwise).

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Venture View Post
No, but developers do get to dictate what players are allowed to do, and they should.
They have exactly one option when it comes to "restricting what players are allowed to do": specifically code it into the game.

Unless they're willing to back up their rhetoric with code it means nothing and the playerbase will happily ignore whoever's up on the soapbox shouting about the type of fun they're expected to have.

Quote:
Lots of people think lots of things are fun for them that are actually bad for the community and game as a whole. Farming has done nothing positive for the game in general and helped destroy MA in particular.
This is comically wrongheaded, even for someone with your track record.
Every time you use the market you're benefiting from the largess of farmers.

Or do you actually think all that surplus junk comes from Captain RP & Lore Lass running story arcs? *eyeroll*

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

 

Posted

Quote:
They have exactly one option when it comes to "restricting what players are allowed to do": specifically code it into the game.
That's not in dispute.

Quote:
Every time you use the market you're benefiting from the largess of farmers.
No, every time I use the market I look at uncommon salvage that used to cost 1-5K and now costs 50-100K or rares that used to cost one million now selling for three. I'm not seeing anyone's "largess" and much of the time get what I want through alternate means rather than pay outrageous prices.

Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Venture View Post
No, every time I use the market I look at uncommon salvage that used to cost 1-5K and now costs 50-100K or rares that used to cost one million now selling for three. I'm not seeing anyone's "largess" and much of the time get what I want through alternate means rather than pay outrageous prices.
news flash:

On the COH market buyers set the price, pursuant to the fluctuation of supply & demand.

Farmers price to sell, escalation is driven by the demand side.

In other words, wag your finger at the spendthrift playerbase who don't care how much play monies they spend on kit, not the farmers who are (I guarantee) listing their salvage for much, much less than people are paying them.

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

 

Posted

I stay away from AE because I'm terrified that I might accidentally brush something Venture made.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by dugfromthearth View Post
To make arcs or to play them?
I mainly use AE to farm. The tickets I earn are used to obtain salvage (when there is no supply on the market or I just don't want to pay an exorbitant price). I also use the tickets on Bronze Class Recipe Rolls. The money I make helps me trick out my toons. I have created a farm for my Brute (level locked at 30). But I usually end up running farms created by other folks because they are better.

Sometimes I use AE to test my toons against certain enemies. Instead of trying to get a correct contact or cycle through radio missions, I'll throw together a simple mission.

On very rare occasions, I'll peek into the MA section of the forum and play a mission listed there. But for the most part, I'm not big on stories.

I won't be using AE to create story arcs for others to play. I'm not a good writer.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Venture View Post
Farming has done nothing positive for the game in general and helped destroy MA in particular.
In my opinion, the lack of Dev support is what helped destroy the MA. I'm not implying the Devs don't want to make improvements to the system. But for whatever reason, the MA has been neglected. With a better search and rating system you would never see a farm. And ideally you would only see missions from folks you have subscribed to.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Venture View Post
Of course, if the devs actually wanted to shut down farming in MA it would be trivial to do so. It all just goes back to the "disappointing toy" vibe they seem to be giving off about MA.
People farm the MA for tickets or XP (I guess folks don't say farm for XP...powerlevel is more appropriate). The easy way to get rid of folks like me would be to remove the tickets (and XP) from AE. You could also nerf the hell out of Tickets and XP (again)...and keep on nerfin' until all the farmers move on to greener pastures. Unfortunately this method only hurts folks who aren't interested in farming.

The difficult way to get rid of folks like me would be to use the Ban Hammer. Why is it difficult? Because then you have to spend time/resources determining what is a farm. You report someone because all of the critters only do fire damage and there is no text/story? What about sneaky farmers who put a story in their patrol farm? What about the newbie MA writer who's story is a little too "farmy" for the anti-farm crowd? The Ban Hammer will either cause me to move on to greener pastures (Behemoths) or figure out how to massage my farms so they don't get banned.

Every attempt at stopping farmers has ended up hurting non-farmers. I like shiny IOs. I am going to continue to farm the MA because it helps me get those shiny IOs. I hope that the Devs get some time and money to work on the MA in the future. And if they do get time I hope they don't waste it on farmers.

Make a better search tool.
Make a better rating system.
Continue adding maps/powersets/enemy groups/other stuff requested by MA writers.
Continue to fix exploits.

Do the above and sprinkle in other suggestions made in this thread (as well as the MA section of the forums) and no one will give a flying **** about farming in AE.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Venture View Post
rares that used to cost one million now selling for three.
Rather hilariously, that's almost entirely due to farmers moving out of AE.

Arc#314490: Zombie Ninja Pirates!
Defiant @Grouchybeast
Death is part of my attack chain.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by dugfromthearth View Post
To make arcs or to play them?.
The search design does not work.

The power sets are not suited for minion and lt creation. If you go through the one star arcs any time someone used power with additional effects the minions wound up stunning or mezzing the person playing the arc leading to the one star rating of death

Ratings should not show until there have been at lease 10-15 people playing the arc. There are some decent one star arcs. However one person rated the adventure as one star killing the story before it had a chance

The AE requires people to be too creative. There should have been defaults using cliches for conversations. This would nudge people along with their creativity.

The AE was abused by groups for badges. If something has 4 stars its not always good

Same old caves, warehouses etc for repetition. It would have been nice to have some new type of map that was thinking outside the box.

The AE is not being maintained. Delete any incompete arc from expired accounts. Its the tower of Babel sorting through it.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Grouchybeast View Post
Rather hilariously, that's almost entirely due to farmers moving out of AE.
I recall when MA first appeared and suddenly all those Pangean Soils & Hamidon Goos that had been selling for 3-4m suddenly crashed down to a million or less- I remember flipping Hamidon's, buying at 500k and selling for a million. Meanwhile, uncommons which had never in the history of the game been worth selling were going for hundreds of thousands, up to a million.

Why?
Because the farmers had moved from the 'real' game, where specific rares were difficult to acquire & uncommons piled up like cordwood, to MA, a much more deterministic environment that instead of giving you random drops gave you vouchers you could spend on whatever you wanted.

Still random, but instead of a melange of inspirations, recipes, enhancements & various flavors of salvage you can get ALL of one thing- say, rare salvage.

And speaking to the efficiency of farmers, that's what most people decided to get even though the highest *profit* to be had was rolling random recipes, crafting the good ones and throwing the rest away. Down side, it took an extra step (crafting) and sell-through was slower. Dump a load of rare salvage on the market and it would be gone the next day- crafted IOs generally take longer.

A long winded way of saying that market prices are dictated not by an all-knowing secret cabal of Farmers, but by the vagaries of supply & demand.

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

 

Posted

Why don't I design? It's just not really my thing. I've considered it, but with how dead AE is aside from farming there isn't really a market for it, and it's not worth the work to create arcs just for myself.

Why don't I play? I do, a little. Aside from farming a claws/fire brute for disposable cash and an easy 50, I've run a few arcs. A few were great, most were mediocre. I think if they would improve the search and rating aspects of AE and do more Dev Choice arcs it would be much better. Even better, if you really wanted to breathe life into it, would be to make a Weekly Player Arc that gives double rewards and that freebies can play. I guarantee with that you would see the AE community spring to life again.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Red_Raccoon View Post
Well, as far as Dev Choice arcs go, which is what I was talking about, the problem is that the Devs aren't finding the good arcs. How did they find them before? Did they rely on player ratings?

Regardless, I'm sure the Devs must have the same problem eveyone else does locating the good story arcs amid the mountain of farms, broken arcs, and just plain badly written stories. But not one Dev has come across a single story arc worthy of being nominated a Dev Choice in over a year and a half? I think it more likely they've just scrapped the whole Dev Choice idea altogether.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=285048

It was run by Freitag around a week or so before, I think, on one of his Thank Goodness It's MA Thursdays sessions. I can't help but think that he heard about it by word of mouth from someone who'd played it about another week earlier. EDIT: Or else he looked at my sig.

In any case, they are still taking the time to look at stuff on MA.

61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Venture View Post
That's not in dispute.



No, every time I use the market I look at uncommon salvage that used to cost 1-5K and now costs 50-100K or rares that used to cost one million now selling for three. I'm not seeing anyone's "largess" and much of the time get what I want through alternate means rather than pay outrageous prices.
This...Before they did whatever restrictions in AE, I could get stuff reasonably from the market. Now I can't really even base my bids on what cleareled last as there are so many people (presumibly farmers) rolling over stock at rediculous prices for things like quick badges and perhaps inf storage.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by WanderingAries View Post
This...Before they did whatever restrictions in AE, I could get stuff reasonably from the market. Now I can't really even base my bids on what cleareled last as there are so many people (presumibly farmers) rolling over stock at rediculous prices for things like quick badges and perhaps inf storage.
I'll take another stab at explaining how this works.

Whatever style they use, Farmers generate a LOT of stuff.
Meanwhile storage in this game is severely limited, as are Market slots.
Thus fast turnover is paramount for any serious farmer.

You don't achieve high turnover by trying to 'push' a price upward, you achieve it by lagging behind the price curve, often well behind.

Think Wal*Mart, not Bloomingdale's.

For example, let's say you need a Chemical Formula and, pulling a ''ridiculous" price out of my hat, the last five went for 400,000.

Now I guarantee you none of those were listed at 400k.


Why?
Because while sales in CoH go to the highest bidder, the market awards winning bids to the seller with the lowest listing price.

And farmers not only love selling suff, they HAVE to sell stuff or they'll drown in their own overstock.

As a market savvy type, if I find myself with a Chemical Formula to sell and I'm looking at a 'last 5' price of 400k, I'm listing mine at, say, 238,009.

And nine times out of ten it's going to insta-sell for 400k.

Is that my fault?
Is that the buyers fault?
Is that the fault of other farmers?

*shrug*


Anyway, the lowest listed item being the first to sell applies very efficient pressure on anyone with a lot of junk to move and limited slots to move it with....like, oh......Farmers.



I'll end this little threadjack here- I would have taken it up in the Market forum, but as a F2P'er I can't get there. =P

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone