MHertz

This is true. However, there is also the effect of filling slots over time, because recipes are leveled. You have to fill slots at 30, at 35, at 40, at 45, and so on, if you intend to be effective. Not all of those recipes will be ideal for your final build. If you first started making IOs around level 30, you won't have a lot of really recent ones if you play on +4. According to my spreadsheet, you'd get about 94 recipes for levels 28-30 while playing +0, but you'd get 38 recipes for levels 28-30 while playing +4. Okay, you say, not every player wants to build out IOs at that level. At this point we have to further divide our population. There are PLers who skip straight to 50 as soon as possible, filling no slots over time; there are people who play the game as they go, trying to fill slots with the best gear available; there are people who make do with SOs and DOs and never get IOs; there are people who want the IOs but feel they aren't a good use of cash until later. The PL crowd, who slot nothing from 1-49 and wait to build out once they reach the top, those guys probably lower overall demand (for lower-level stuff, at least). But even as they're playing at Level 50 on +4, their drops per mission will be lower. They'll be falling behind in production behind players who play +0.

Yes, I know. My argument is that changing the level difficulty nerfs your drops per mission, and drops per level, irrespective of whether you are doing it fast or slow. The important figure isn't time per level, it's mobs per level, because the number of enemies your team defeats is the foundation for the drop rate. The nerfed drop total would hold steady no matter what AE mission you built for yourself, at any drop rate. Playing the mission on +0 yields more drops than playing that same mission on +4, because there's more enemies. Consequently, playing at +0 means you reach level 50 with more stuff in your pocket. This ought to have the effect of depressing market prices. You may say that this is balanced, because it's a tradeoff the player chooses: higher XP, faster speed, and greater theoretical risk in exchange for a lower number of drops per mission. But I would argue that this is one potential origin for imbalances in the game economy.

You ... actually may be on to something. I know you were being flippant, but hear me out. First, here's a question for the thread. Is drop rate still based on a per-mob-defeated formula, or is it normalized to scale with the XP value of the critter? Because if it's the former, you could make the argument that certain kinds of farmers (not all) and certain players who do non-farming missions (not all) are actually increasing demand for certain things faster than they increase the supply. Here's my math: Suppose for argument's sake that the recipe drop rate for Group A recipes is the same as listed here, 2.6667% per minion, and that it doesn't scale with level differential. Let's also assume it takes 9,000 XP to get from level 22 to level 23. And let's say +0 minions at level 22 are worth 52 XP. You would have to defeat 173 minions to get to level 23, and you'd average 4.6 recipe drops from them. As I understand it, it wouldn't make any difference how big the mission was, or how many you fought at the same time; it's always 173 minions to bridge those levels, regardless of rate of speed. Now let's say you were running missions on +4. Now you're level 22, fighting level 26 minions for 110 XP each. Now you only need 81 minions to level up, and you get only 2.2 drops from them — presuming the per-mob-defeated drop rate is still 2.6667%. That's less than half the drops. I plugged in the values on that "Experience" webpage for XP needed to level up for each level through 46, and the XP value of minions at each level. (I didn't have XP values for mobs over 50, so I stopped at level 46.) If you could fight only +0 minions from level 1 through level 46, you'd average 1,132 recipe drops from 42,445 minions. If you could fight only +4 minions from level 1 through level 46, you'd average 676 recipe drops from 25,358 minions (again, assuming the drop rate doesn't scale). Fighting +4 minions over your career from 1-46 results in 40% fewer drops, having fought 17,086 fewer minions. That's the equivalent of playing about 14 additional levels at level 50, just to break even with the amount of recipe drops a normal 50 gets. Ergo, it seems like the thing that affects the market most isn't farming, per se, but level difficulty. Assuming the figures from Live are still roughly in line with those on HC, when you fight tougher mobs, you increase XP gain per mob at the cost of overall drops per level. And as a farm-fresh level 50 has the same number of slots as any other kind of 50, you have a situation where you have more slots to fill, and you've reduced the supply. As I said, this is irrespective of speed, so it's not about farming or PLing. The solo player who plays on +4, one mission every weekend, will have the same overall effect (over time) as a farmer who plays on +4 and power-levels up to 50 in a few hours. You're just going to see the effects later or sooner, depending on the rate of defeats. So if my assumptions are true, you could actually say that playing on an increased level difficulty is imbalanced. It's not good enough. If farmers just switched down to +0, they'd level more slowly, but they'd have more stuff to show for it. You could probably put a dent in the market prices if you farmed at -1 and really cranked up your drops-per-level rate. You'd get 1,290 drops by level 46, a 14% increase over +0 enemies and nearly double the rate of +4 enemies. Of course, my math could be wrong, or the figures could have changed. Obviously this is a purely hypothetical minions-only situation, where in the real world players have the option of creating AE missions that are all bosses (tougher fights for a higher drop rate). And of course any effect on the market depends on whether the player vendors those items or tries to sell or craft them, and whether that player is trying to fill slots with other than DOs/SOs. Otherwise, I think the comparison is fair, but if my math is mistaken here, please correct me.

(My emphasis.) I don't know what the bolded part means. Converts "easily" to a rare?

Here's my answer: I have no earthly idea if it's "imbalanced." I don't have access to any numbers which would indicate what a perfectly balanced system would look like. And I don't much care whether farming is or isn't "balanced." As far as I can tell, we're talking about farming, not cheating. They haven't broken any rules that I'm aware of. This isn't hacking. It isn't item duplication or aimbots or likewise. Farmers are using the same system everybody else does — maybe with a few extra resources, like additional computers — and making XP/inf faster. Is it the fastest way? I dunno. But it's faster than the way I do it. Well, so what? Whatever the fastest method for gaining XP is, that's what farmers will do. It's not the way I play the game, because I know my game has downtime. I talk with people, I crack jokes, I schlep across zones to talk to contacts, Sometimes I Super Jump around Steel Canyon for no reason at all. I visit Wentworth's instead of typing /ah on the command line. Sure, I grumble about these things sometimes, but I could be more efficient if I wanted to. And farmers are more efficient. They know which enemies are easiest to defeat with their builds, they know where to find those missions, and they know how to maximize combat time. I could do that if I cared enough, but I don't. If all the farmers stopped farming and started playing "normal" (whatever that is), I'm pretty sure that nothing would change except the rate at which those players leveled. Again ... so what?

I understand that loot is very important to some players, but let's keep it in perspective. Just because it's something that you want doesn't mean that it's the only thing people want, or that you are empowered to speak for all players. I personally don't give much thought to loot. I don't care for crafting and I don't care about the marketplace — never have, never will. The introduction of Wentworth's didn't keep me from taking a break, back in the day, and Invention IOs lost their shine very quickly after building out one character. I don't doubt that acquisition is something that motivates some players, but let's not overstate the case.

Power Sink. My first 50 on Live was an elec/elec blaster, and there was nothing more entertaining than draining a whole mob down to zero endurance. They stand there and look at you, unable to do anything, as your team pummels them.

Yes and no. On the one hand, if it is possible to gain lots of XP while AFK, then it is possible (if unlikely) to level without skill, practically by definition. On the other hand, even assuming that it is true in theory, I already concede that there's a very small and only hypothetical possibility I would ever meet any such player. All of which is to explain farming doesn't bother me.

I'm not a big fan of farming, and I have to concede this is true. I can only thing of one possible, maybe, kinda-sorta way that farming could impact my game, with a ton of ifs and caveats on top. Farming a character from 1 to 50 in a couple hours could, maybe, produce a player that has no idea how to play that character properly. It could produce a player who considers himself an expert on whatever AT it is, because he has a Level 50 Sizzle/Wham PowerPuncher with fully-slotted Everything Os that he bought on Craigslist or that he farmed up AFK while taking a long hot shower. He's never played that character at level 10, at level 20, at level 30, so he has no idea how to handle mid-game content, or how to prioritize his slotting, or how to deal with certain enemy groups. He doesn't know what his character can handle, or what other ATs can bring to the table. If you ask "how did you deal with Malta and caltrops?" or "should I take travel first or mez protection?" he may not have any clue. He's never played on a non-farm team, so he thinks it's normal to run around mashing buttons in melee range with a Controller and somehow never dying. And this guy might, maybe, someday, team up with me. Or he might team up with some actual newbie who looks to him for advice he can't give. Yes, yes, I know what you're going to say. You're going to say a) sometimes non-farmer players don't know how to play very well, either, and b) maybe the farmer is a veteran from Live who played that AT up to 50 already, or c) maybe the farmer already leveled up a few characters some other way and has a pretty good idea about the content, and furthermore d) if you're not a farmer, who says that farmer is going to team up with you anyway? And you'd be right on all counts: farming is not a guarantee that you'll end up with a player who lacks fundamental game knowledge. It is not a foregone conclusion that the player will thereafter end up on regular non-farm teams, only to screw things up for everyone. I'm only saying this is possible. Like I said, I'm not a fan of farming. But this series of ifs and maybes is the worst way I can think of, where possibly, once in a while, hypothetically, a farmer's playstyle might affect me. It isn't all that much, if I'm honest. So I'm not too worried about farming. Let 'em have at it.

Yeah, thanks, Statesman. Way to go, with that secret pact with Arachnos to keep people from wearing Circle of Thorns robes.

Stepping around the debate around farming, let me offer an answer that hasn't been supplied yet: if everything is too expensive, stop trying to buy everything. Seriously, don't. It doesn't matter. You'll be able to play even without the Best Stuff, especially at lower levels. Your lower-level characters who lack wealth also lack slots. This means they have much less need to fill slots with new toys, and the toys will have much less effect on how well you can play. When my DOs are green, it takes 3 hits for my blaster to destroy certain mobs. When they're red, it takes ... 3 hits. So what did I spend 25K influence on? At that level, not a lot. One less miss in 20 swings? I dunno. It's a minuscule improvement to put a couple of percentage points from a DO into 1 damage slot at level 12. It's a lot more important to put in more hefty SO or IO enhancements when your main attack has 6 slots at level 38 ... but by then you'll have more cash. If you want to be frugal, make a diverse set of alts (blaster, controller, defender ... natural, magic, mutation ... and so on). Start a supergroup and put your alts into it. Drop off those Enhancements for one of your alts to find. Somebody's going to be able to use that DO or SO or recipe you found. Don't get me wrong, you can make money if you want to, but don't feel like you have to.

There's a rumor that somebody is working on a thing, where you go to that one place, and you click something, and then something happens. Or maybe some other stuff happens. But don't quote me on that.

Technically, uniformly bad from 1 through 50 is also "even."

I started a thread in Multimedia, even though it doesn't seem to be a very active forum. I wondered if there would be any new listeners who wanted to discuss the series an episode at a time, or just binge the whole thing. Whatever the board prefers; I'm still new here.

Thanks. I do all of the male voices myself. People have told me that there ought to be video, but that's so much more work than audio, so I stuck with the old-timey radio format. (I even make fun of this format in #17: Port Oakes.)

Then you may be in for a treat.

Some of you who were on Live around 2007-2009 may recall a series of audio comedy skits I did on YouTube called Stan and Lou, featuring two low-level mooks trying to get by in Paragon City. You'll also recall that I stopped making them (and stopped playing COH) due to a number of colliding life events: marriage, school, moving, buying a house, and many other things. Now that COH: Homecoming is out, in the words of John Wick, yeah: I'm thinking I'm back. For those of you who never heard of Stan and Lou, here's a link to Episode 1: Outbreak. If there is enough interest, we can post one new video link a week, or something similar. Or you can just watch them all at once. Or not at all. You got options, is what I'm saying. And for those of you who have been waiting patiently for new content, here it is: Stan and Lou #32: Sharkhead Isle. If you've never listened to these tracks before, you may feel like you're missing something, so I recommend starting at the beginning.

That worked! Thanks muchly.

Thanks for the help! Sadly, the link in the first post doesn't work.

As long as Defenders and Controllers can solo more efficiently than an Embalmed Cadaver, it'll be good.

Off the top of my head, it's a lot less running around to find new contacts and do street sweeps and so on. Travel time is idle time. Even if the XP rewards were the same, minute for minute, you'd make more in AE missions because you don't have to stop to catch a train.

Does anybody happen to know how to extract environmental sounds, like the ambient background noise of a particular zone? Failing that, does anybody have access to Sharkhead Isle and a good audio recording program?

No, it wouldn't make them more fun. Here's why, in my opinion. 1. Current map design synergizes with mob design. The maps are strung out and gangly because they kinda have to be. Enemies have a perception radius; powers have areas of effect. If you condensed the maps down into a realistically square space, the mob spawn sites would have to be closer together. This means it'd be much harder to attack one group without summoning nearby groups. To balance that out, the levels would have to be much bigger, to allow spawn points to be farther apart, which would in turn make the maps seem emptier. Add to that larger space a bunch of geometry to get hung up on, and it wouldn't be very fluid. 2. Map design accommodates tier 1 and tier 2 travel powers like Hover and Combat Jumping, as well as 8-foot-tall players and even taller enemies. A realistic building wouldn't have 15 foot ceilings and extra-wide hallways and large rooms with balconies you can fly up to and stairwells you can jump up. Battles would happen in more compact spaces. Targeting would be harder. Camera positioning would be a battle in itself. Getting through doors would be annoying. You'd end up having a Tanker taking point in a narrow hallway, and half the party can't even see around the corner to target the bad guys properly. Would it be nice to see more varied maps? Sure. Hospitals, schools, apartment blocks, etc. But small and cramped and human-sized, no thanks.

Yes, absolutely, there should be a totally different channel for that. All these people coming into the regular channel ... it's so annoying. And it smells so bad! Some of them can be really fragrant and hang around in the chat for days. ...what? Oh, you were saying farming channel. Never mind.

Thanks, I appreciate it. I'm glad people still find humor in it after all this time has passed.