Ukase

On that, I think we can all agree, it's interesting. So, to sum up, I think this is where we're at: The proposed changes will likely go through. The scalability of afk-farming gives it an edge over pretty much anything - but, since there's only an initial barrier to entry, which every player has gone through, there's really not a true advantage for anyone. But, if the idea of it simply irks, or disgusts, or annoys , or whichever description one chooses, it puts them in a place where they feel like in order to keep up, they have to do something they don't really want to. It seems to me that the HC devs are listening to that, and would rather the farmers instead do things they would prefer not to do. At least, that's how it seems to me, based on reading the anti-farmer part of the debate in this thread. I believe afk-farmers and farmers alike will adapt, most likely within AE. If I/we/they make a little less per minute, it won't be the end of the world. And the addition of reward merits to the various iTrials will certainly boost the speed runner beyond what most afk farmers who only run 1-2 farmers will take in. At least, that's what I think. Only time will really tell. I have learned a bit about some of you in this thread. I have learned that some of you are decent folk, even if I disagree with your position. I have also learned that some of you are ...well, stubborn and don't seem to want to look at other perspectives except through your own doom-colored lenses. I honestly don't even know why I'm still typing, lol. I have a level 22 ice/fire brute that I'm leveling up, without any 2xp buffs, and building off of drops, and using converters to fund the way through. (although I did have an alt help me with invader, cuz I'm not about to run 5 radios and a bank mission 8 different times. I want merits to keep funding my way through, while my billions sit idle and basically removed from the economy - until such time the HC devs slap in a tasty inf sink for me. Or allow us to give away temp powers like work benches and such.

They can scroll up and read your quick thoughts. I agree with everything you stated could happen. It might take a little longer, but it would likely happen to some degree. Just my opinion, and they'll vary. But you did a good job expressing it.

ToS violations are probably what's gotten the devs attention on this whole farming thing. So, certainly any discussion of how such things are done are best left in the shadows. Seed22 just quoted that you, AA, and there's a rad/fire build you shared. It's commonly known that rad/fire, due to irradiated ground has a tiny edge over spines/fire. My data was presented with spines/fire, and I believe CoyoteDancer and others were not even using brutes. While your numbers are useful, and valid, they cannot be presumed to be the only numbers to consider, but as I stated earlier, just one set to consider in the data.

I have never been told anything of the sort. But, I take everything with a grain of salt. Even what you just shared. It is the internet, after all. Believe only half of what you see, none of what you read. Fortunately, all these grains of salt have been shown to not cause high blood pressure if there's a lot of water consumed with it at the same time. It's about the bolus and timing.

Somehow I missed that, thanks for pointing it out. So essentially 20 minutes for both Apex and TinMage, with 80 reward merits, 240 converters, when used properly...that's on average about 20 IOs converted for sale. (a lot of variation, due to rng - RNG is a fickle mistress sometimes. Anecdotally, I burn about 10 converters per IO to get something worth selling for 3M. Please bear in mind, that I've converted 10's of 1000's of IOs. I craft and convert if necessary, every uncommon or rare. I submit that 10 converters per IO IS an average that be trusted if you're converting 1000's of IOs over time, not just a couple dozen. Over time, those are my anecdotal results. I also submit the point that not every player will recognize the best time to convert in category or out of category.) Yomo and others say it's 15. But many of them also convert in the level 30 and under category, which skews the number higher due to more undesirable sets being an option to convert into. Since you use a level 50 tf, presumably level 50 recipes would be used for the most part. That's roughly 60M, so 6M per minute, give or take a smidge. Seems about the same to me. I probably am missing something, but can't see it right now. Gotta jet!

Appreciate the clarification. Still, I maintain using it - unless in a pvp zone or to escape defeat in a master run isn't/wasn't exploitative. It was a nifty tool. Thankfully, when you guys yanked it, you didn't leave us empty handed.

And that is where you fall short of the mark. You cannot assume this. Why? Because only a minor percentage will reach optimal set up. I, for one, would NEVER (unless it was Nemu or another player I trust) trust a build from the forums as being more optimal than my own build. (although if your numbers are accurate, clearly it's better at active farming than my afk farmer is at active farming) Perhaps this is why pvp is set up so abysmally. Some of you design what you think is balance around optimal play, without realizing that 90% of the players do not pursue optimal play. Some wouldn't know it until they saw it. Some wouldn't know it if they saw it. Some can't afford it. Some are too busy looking for fun and can't be bothered with it. The list goes on. Good decisions are not based on what is best for some players, today. They are based on not just what's best for me, but what is best for everyone. And not just today, but tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, 5 years from now. We dare not assume optimal play. And if we do assume optimal play for farmers, we must also assume optimal play for the non-farmer. Let us do a deep dive into players like Stitch, Bloodom, Veracorp, Elmyder...let us consider how many reward merits those players earn in a given unit of time, and their influence, and then compare that to the farmer, and assume each reward merit is worth 1 million dollars, because when exchange them into converters, that's pretty much what you're going to get when you use the converters instead of selling them. But good luck with that. I think they are too smart to reveal such things. Pretty sure a couple of those guys don't even bother counting their loot, it would take too long.

Sorry, bud, but you're not just wrong, you're completely wrong! Let me explain: Ever notice those nifty tips while you load into a zone? THAT is where the SG base macro came from! Not the syntax, but the tool tip explained you could drop into an sg base from anywhere once you set up the pass code. That tip is still active, and if they weren't so random, I'd be logging in and out of missions to try and capture it to prove it to you. How do you think that became available? A pigg farmer? No, a Dev shared the information on a twitch or youtube stream, and other players shared it. It was never an exploit. It worked by design. They took it away because some players used it improperly, to escape defeat in Master of TF runs, and perhaps defeats in PvP. It was never an exploit until someone exploited the way it could be used. Me using it inside of the mission, when the mission completed was never an exploit. It was a handy time saver! Instead of loading into the zone map where the mission was in, and then zoning into my base to go to the next mission, I could skip loading into the zone, saving me some 20-30 seconds. Adds up when you're trying to speed! Marketers do use influence - to buy stuff, generally improve it and relist. There are some crappy marketers who think items should be higher priced and buy a crap ton of one thing, and relist it at a higher price. These are not my favorite people. They make it harder on the new player and I tend to look down on them as unsavory players. You cannot say "as America's Angel has shown", because AA has only shown AA's experience on Brainstorm, not on live. Two entirely different scenarios. AA's numbers are no more valid (or invalid) than any other set of numbers shown, primarily because they assume everyone will use the 2 builds they posted. That is not the case. It is just one case. I will grant you that rewards from AE farming is likely better for some players, but there are players like Bloodom, Stitch, Bright Phoenix, and others who make a ton of reward merits per unit of time - far more than any farmer will, even with the emp merit to reward merit conversion. And they make a damn good amount of influence, too. We dare not assume that because a few farmers do nothing but farm and do it well that their results are typical, and then compare them to an average player. There are many above average players that will out-perform the average player in accumulating influence and reward merits. And the aforementioned players (and a host of others) likely out-perform many afk and active farmers. So many of you look at your own influence earnings and assume your results are typical. I promise you, they are not. You're probably average. Whereas, you compare yourself to above average farmers and find yourself lacking. I look at my numbers compared to AA's and I find my farmers lacking, too! So please, don't spew out these statements which assume facts not in evidence. In summary, just to state the facts: All of us are different. Some will earn influence faster than others. Some of us will earn more reward merits than others. Some of us like to earn it one way. Some of us like to earn it in other ways. There is no right way. There is no wrong way. (unless you're stupid enough to pay real world money for influence. lol, you must be stupid to do that!) I will make more from marketing than from farming. Yet, I'm allowed to continue marketing, raking in the influence hand over fist with no risk at all. But that damn farmer..he's got to repent and change his ways. You've lost your mind. Your internal bias is impacting your thinking. Re-think things.

I thank you for your thoughts. I want you to know, I am pro-afk-farming. I am pro-farming. I'm also pro-play the game how you want, whatever that looks like, as long as it doesn't corral me to play the game in a fashion I would rather not. I farm. I market. I play content. I do it all, but some I do better than others. I market better than I farm. I play content better than I farm. But, I still farm, more to avoid spending influence than to acquire it. The devs, as I understand these mysterious people, have no real beef with active farmers. Even though their risk is minimal, their efforts are not scalable. They're active. So, they do whatever it is they do with their drops, which can vary from player to player. Given what I will call somewhat negative changes to AE on Brainstorm, it is clear that they would like to reduce, if not do away with afk farming. Afk farming is scalable. Because we can have 3 accounts per shard, while I maintain more than 4 accounts is too tedious for me, there may be others that don't play on a primary account and just farm. For them, they may be able to handle 6 accounts, or maybe more. That's a lot of tedium for me, but the inf would certainly pour in at quite a high rate. And it's easy, once you get the build figured out. It doesn't always go perfect for me, but it's certainly effective. But then, I've always maintained that a build specifically for AE, on top of a build for general content would be an opportunity cost. How many maps and conversions would I have to make to get the return on the investment for a specific afk farm build? And, ultimately, given that my afk-farmers already have a build, and can do the job, and they're afk, who gives a crap if it takes them 2 minutes longer than a farm-optimized build? Not me. I maintain that even if players did run a dozen accounts or so, afk, the returns they'd get are a drop in the bucket compared to the total inf that gets poured into the economy every day. Most players that are filthy rich in influence simply accumulate that influence. They aren't mucking with the AH and influencing the costs of IOs, and even if they did, the marketers would keep them in check quickly. The average marketer makes more than the best farmer, hands down - with absolutely zero risk of defeat, and they make it faster. Much, much faster if they price well. And yet, the folks against AE whine about the advantages of farming over non-AE content. It's an apples to oranges comparison we're doing, on many levels. As has been pointed out, different builds, different players, the rng, all give varying results, both in farms and outside of them. I can concede due to the density of mobs that there are more kills per unit of time on farm than outside of AE. But - have we forgotten that teams of 8 get more xp than a solo player? Have we forgotten that XP (and thus influence) is higher outside of AE than in AE? The HC devs have already throttled down the farmer's earnings. And yet, still some of you cry for "less, less, less". A very few of you will not be happy until every farmer has left. To those people, I present to you Rebirth. There are no vet levels. The slog of a grind on the incarnate path is very real for the solo player. Even doing Dark Astoria arcs will not help you much. You basically must do iTrials there. And it's quite cozy. Once you play there, you are essentially going to be teaming with the same people, day in, day out. It's like one big (but small) SG. They are all extremely competent, and they love to mock us as impatient, lazy children. They like to grind for it. And I've tried AFK farming there, and have not done so well. There is no spines/fire combo. There is rad/fire, so I've got one in the works, grinding it up old school style. But, converters are hard to come by as they're not tradeable. You can get them randomly - maybe 20 on your journey from 1-50 will drop. Or you can buy them at 5 reward merits for 1, and pay 25K for the exchange. Yes, the anti-farmer should go to Rebirth. You will like the grind, the different ATs and powersets. The only thing you won't like is at peak times, you might get 100 players. I doubt it, but you might. And because of that, most of you won't go where other like-minded players are. You'll stay here and try to drag the rest of us, kicking and screaming out of the farm and into your bloody mainstream content, with your "You'll play it my way and like it" attitude. Good luck with that.

Thing is - only a fraction of people are going to use those builds. My farmers were around before those builds existed; never saw a reason to change them because my farmers can handle life outside the farm, as they leveled up through content outside of AE. So, your numbers may be added, but to make this blanket statement that other numbers are errors and yours are accurate is ludicrous. It's fine for "in vitro", but this is "in vivo". My numbers are accurate for my farmers. Flea's are accurate for his, etc. Yours is just a single number to add to the total and divide by the total set of tests for each respective criteria. Additionally - your numbers coming from Brainstorm, not live. So they are useful, but everyone else's numbers are from where things are currently to actually determine what the advantage is, if there actually is one.

@America's AngelCan you elaborate on "bunch of inaccurate numbers"? Whose numbers are you deeming inaccurate? And how is it that you believe that your numbers are any more valid than theirs? Because it's unlikely all farm builds are the same, while the influence on a given map, if it's cleared would likely be the same total, assuming the number of mobs are the same, the time to clear that map will vary from farm character to character. So, there is no "X million inf/minute" is the answer. The answer will vary. In some cases by a lot, because in my tiny 3 asteroid map test sample, I didn't clear the maps. Your comment is throwing me off. Explain yourself, please. As for marketers, that varies with each marketer. Some folks like @Yomo will go for volume, but accept a smaller profit. Whereas me, I can't be bothered with any sale less than 3m. Some folks flip salvage. There's just too many niche players to come up with an average for a marketer, particularly when you consider a marketer will likely market with every character they play, with only a certain few set up to market certain things in certain niche areas.

Just my two inf: The reason most point to 125 is because for me, it was simply the first one I ever heard of. Others have duplicated the same map, pretty much the same mobs but with different costumes. @Bionic_Fleaalmost hit on a stroke of genius, having the mobs rez after defeat, thinking we'd get double everything, but that wasn't the case. Killed 'em again for no gain of anything. But it was still a clever idea. If it had worked, we'd be talking about Flea's asteroid map, for sure. I think if the HC devs are really against afk farming - which we know GM_Jimmy expressed concerns about way back when, then all they really need to do is come out and say so. Most of us recognize we're guests here and play at their mercy. For free. I think in this case it isn't so much the afk farming, but the impact (which I've yet to detect) of farming emps, converting emps into reward merits, and then getting whatever folks get with those merits - converters most likely, but also boosters, maybe some folks needed catalysts quickly, or perhaps it's all those emp merits that's been flooding the AH with LotG 7.5% at less than 6M for the past month or so. As has been stated by me before, I don't think the AE changes themselves will stop afk farming much. Maybe a little. For a while. Someone like me - if I'm motivated (I'm currently not), I can spend a little time with mids and boost up AoE and range defense, and possibly decrease some recharge. It's an afk farmer after all. Instead of Hasten, I can go with physical perfection and increase my regen to better handle the extra incoming damage. Absolute worst case, I could just put my heal on auto, and let the blazing aura and quills do the damage. Not like I'd be in a hurry in an afk farm. Still, pretty sure I could drop assault, and go with melee hybrid for extra defense, and go with agility over musculature. Those little changes can add up. It's not like any of my characters are very far off in the first place. Or, I can resurrect my fire/spines tank in lieu of the spines/fire brute. Either way, the folks that like farming will keep doing it, although the required adjustment is just annoying. There was no harm being done from where I sit, and I'd like to think I'm fairly in touch with the market, if not the player base. ******************************* The rest of this is more of a rant than anything else. Ya might want to skip it. ************************************* If it's to corral/encourage folks to team, rather than farm, forget about that. Too many of us just don't appreciate the personalities of too many of those who like to team. So many times I want to pull out my hair after beginning a task force and find I'm stuck with someone who is so clueless about what they are doing, they genuinely have no idea that they're clueless. That's not to say folks have to be a master of the game. But, when you do get your character to 40, you should know how to get to Kallista Wharf. There really is no excuse if you've ever taken a train before on blue side. Villains..I might cut them some slack, but they are villains and deserve some derision. And while I can see my way to understanding why a newer player wouldn't know, surely they must know that if I click on you and it shows me you're level 23, and somehow you got to be in the task force, that means you haven't trained up for 17 levels. It boggles my mind why any idiot would wait that long. 23 levels worth of slots and powers you don't have! Idiot! Now the rest of us have to carry your weak character. It just pisses me off when I run into idiots like that. And that one time I did a TF with SrMalloy's alt, and recognized the name from the forums. Someone else was leading, and it was a positron 1, I think. The league leader had a real life friend on the team, it turned out. The friend of the lead goes afk while in the map, mission completes, leaving someone impatient like me - who was patient for about 5 minutes, then I got testy. I was like, kick this douche. He's inconsiderate. I shouldn't have to wait for some idiot to go afk mid-tf for more than a couple of minutes. And then that 5 minutes turned into 10, then 20, then I think it was about 26 minutes later he came back. Turns out his mother made him do some chore. Damn kids. I get that it's not necessarily the kids idea to go afk, lest his mother beat him, but it still isn't cool. My life doesn't revolve around anyone else's. I refuse to be a slave and wait for people who don't have their act together. Dude was afk longer than it would have taken to finish the tf and finish the next one. Completely wasted my time. If I'd known how long he was going to be afk, I would have just violated my own rule and quit immediately. But, now I can bitch about it, so glad I stayed in. Now, some folks would tell me that things like that are going to occur in a pug from time to time. And I agree. But why should I or anyone else have to be at the mercy of these people? My time is just as important as anyone else's. It's damn rude to not be slotted. It's rude to go afk and not come back for 20 minutes. I get real life can happen, but most folks can control their lives to where this kind of thing wouldn't happen. They'd simply go out the mission door so as to not hold the rest of the tf up. But it probably never occurred to him. Moms can be scary when they want to be. I may come off as some grumpy, angry troll here on the forums, but in game, I go out of my way to be as courteous as I can be. I make sure I carry my weight in a team, at least to the best of my ability. Some guys are so fast getting to the boss, I admit - they're carrying me! It makes me uncomfortable, so I limit those experiences as well. I make doubly sure I have the best IOs for my build that I think I need. Other than those hard mode tfs, I rarely get defeated. Like very rarely. I'm fairly competent, if I do say so myself. I see no reason why everyone shouldn't be at least trying to make their character as good as it can be. If you lack the inf, I get it. I used to be poor. One of my first characters is on torch, a level 20-something scrapper. Still has SOs in it. I really should do something with that character..but I ain't feeling like regen/broadsword just yet. Damn, close a thread for a day, and I had all that bottled up! Sorry!

I kind of feel like I made my point. But since it's re-opened, I'm still not out my gourd. And if I were, I still have Nectanabo's gourd to replace it.

I don't have a favorite. I've probably done 5 radios since HC opened. Might do 5 more before they close. I don't think more folks will do radios; I think they'll adapt to how AE changed and keep moving forward.

Saw someone with an extra zero - 710k for the last 5 converters... But, it doesn't make sense to me that folks would dump converters ahead of page 4. Yes, I can understand converting the emps to reward merits now. But the reward merit to converter isn't going anywhere. May as well keep the reward merits, and if you have too many - convert to hero/villain merits. No cost in doing that, except time. Then convert to converters when you're running low.

I've never tasted Jeff Bridges. But, with that unsavory notion aside, no, I don't think so. The writing is on the wall, and I will take the change from no incarnate progress/vet rewards in AE to the no emp to reward merit conversion as a small victory. It should drive up converter prices, so consider that as a likely effect. But, it could be shortlived. Some folks will find other things to do. But some will either quit, or quit doing incarnate stuff.

They temporarily closed the thread. Now what do I do?

So, first asteroid - 17 minutes, map not cleared, but gonna reset anyway, just the same as I would normally. Inf earned before any sales: 4,416,186 or 259,776 per minute. Inf earned after vendoring inspirations, common salvage, common recipes, enhancements: 4,695,864 or 276,227 per minute. 2nd asteroid - 19 minutes, map not cleared, etc. Inf earned before sales: 4,417,665 or 232,509 per minute Inf earned after vendoring the loot as before: 5,015,920 or 263,996 per minute 3rd asteroid - 11 minutes, map not cleared, etc. Inf earned before sales: 4,048,297 or 368,027 per minute Inf earned after vendoring: 4,701,077 or 427,371 per minute That's all I have time for. It's important to note that when you run 125, there are obviously going to be more mobs in the map when you enter it than after 10 minutes of sitting in the center with burn on auto. This is why the inf per minute is more on the 3rd run than on the first 2, but I'm out of time for right now and have things to do! You can take the numbers and do with them what you like. But, if I don't account for the drops of uncommon and rare recipes - honestly, I wouldn't afk farm, unless it's for emp merits. It just isn't worth it to me except as a passive way to increase influence, which I no longer need. If I do take them into account, see my previous posts about how the afk-scaling comes into play. It is worth it, because it's additive. Not exponentially so, because I can't handle playing 3 farmers on each shard. (well, I think I could, but I want to actually play content. If I had that many farmers going, they'd get congested with salvage, recipes and crafted IOs. It would literally take me an hour or so to deal with all that, and there's only so much time I can actively play in a day. For those of you against farming, you keep doing you. You have your reasons for thinking the way you do. If everyone thought the way I do, the world would likely be very scary! Still, like me, I hope you all can open your minds and entertain the notion that what you think is best may be best for you, but not what's best for the game. Or it may be what's best for the game today, but not what's best for the game next month, or next year. Some decisions are like that. We can't have the benefit of hindsight usually. But those who ignore history are destined to repeat it. Perhaps we can reach some common ground - like once the average player population per shard reaches X, then AE rewards should drop to Z. Or, alternatively, treat AE like pvp zones. When you enter the map, your build stats change to make it untenable. But, until the population picks up, adjusting farm rewards seems counter-productive to me.

That is probably the case with most beginning farmers. But farmers, like many players have public and private chat channels they've joined to discuss which maps give them the best rewards, depending on what they're in pursuit of. Some farmers, like many non-farmers, can't stand the AH. They're looking for influence and vendor most drops because of their distaste for it. Other farmers like myself, are no longer worried about influence or xp, but want emp merits. Some farmers are after incarnate xp or xp in general. Some farmers avoid AE in pursuit of reward merits. Make a build specifically for a certain NPC and rerun certain story arcs through ouro when the mood strikes them.

The problem with dealing with salvage is it is seeded. It would require more clicking than I want to suffer with. Further, it disturbs our own kind, the marketer, and the players savvy enough to realize crafting is cheaper than buying the IO "now". True disruption would be to join forces and just buy everything. Leave no uncommon or rare IO in the AH. Literally buy them all. It would take a long time for one player, but for a dozen focused marketers, buying all of them and placing 10M bids for each one that subsequently is placed for sale...how long would be be able to sustain it, and what would the reaction from the player base be? I often sat upon my big stacks considering buying every pvp recipe in the AH, regardless of the cost. And over-bidding for subsequent listings to ensure I had all the new listings so that the only way to get them would be to buy the ones in place, or use merits to get them. But, inf in the hand is worth 2inf in the bush, right?

I don't create strawmen, lol. But I will badmouth them if they deserve it!

I can appreciate your opinion, but while I don't know Flea personally, I trust him. His game knowledge is top-notch, and he bends over backwards (figuratively) to help folks figure things out. Flea isn't Anti-AE, but I suspect he's more Pro-CoH, whatever that may happen to look like. Flea has farmed his own characters, and may very well do so again when it suits him. I trust he is after the information to help the powers that be make the best decision they can for the health of the game overall - whatever it looks like.

So, let me elaborate. When I suggest that prices will go higher, it's basically a hunch of mine, because I imagine that with the proposed change, there will be some players who farm specifically for emp merits won't do so anymore. Heck, they may quit entirely, I've no idea. My comment was aimed primarily at people who dismiss farming as an exploit. If it were an exploit and treated as such, there'd be a lot fewer items to buy on the AH, guaranteed. That's the point I'm trying to make, to the folks who are "Farming bad! It's cheating! It's an exploit!!" Clearly, I'm failing to make my point, because despite my best attempts to explain that our farmers are what's allowing them to get the IOs that don't drop for them at a reasonable price. Take a look at D-Syncs and Hami-Os. Look at a microfiliament. It's one of 12 Hami's available. Usually sells for 20-50 million, depending on who's selling them when they get them. And some of those D-syncs, in particular the threat/recharge/accuracy - it has sold for the inf cap! The reason the prices of those are so outrageous is because even if my brute could hang with a Dr. Aeon, the odds of getting one of those is damn slim. I'm still better off slaving away in a farm and letting one of my primary characters run Aeon while the farmer does what he does best - sit with burn on auto. But, I promise you, if AE could give d-syncs or hami's as a reward, the prices of those would be 10-20x cheaper. Farming isn't going anywhere. It won't leave AE, because the changes proposed are merely going to slow things down a bit, because our afk-farmers will have to forgo certain set bonus numbers in pursuit of other set bonus numbers to mitigate the increased damage coming their way from AoE and ranged attacks. There is a noticeable difference for my farmers sitting in the middle of the map with burn on auto on Excelsior compared to Brainstorm, the test server. So, please don't worry about "doom". That's just what I think would happen if folks like UltraAlt had their way and farming would be forbidden or discouraged to the point where a player had to choose between farming at some sub-optimal rate or teaming with some player who wants to read lore (slowly) instead of getting the job done. Or teaming with some player who hasn't bothered to slot enhancements, or even train up.

See...counting drops - the drops are where the inf is. I conducted a similar experiment with a player I'd mentioned in one of these posts some time after the no xp/2xinf change. Here are the notes: //EDIT: Maryjane no longer plays, I don't think. If she does, she stays hidden and is farming in some lower populated zone. I met her through the help channel when she was asking intelligent questions about getting the most bang for her buck. So, I supplied her, as a gift, with no strings every winter-O and ATO she could need for the build, and even gave her my build, which she eventually tweaked to suit her purposes. 4 months later, she gifted me with 500M as a thank you. Like any of us, she had her issues, but to me, that was pretty classy. //End Edit As you can see in the notes, and I think it's at the core of the HC Dev's issue is that AFK farming is scalable. Now, the crafting, converting, selling of drops, that scales too, but only to a point, because I promise you, with 4 accounts going afk, you won't be playing the game very much at all, other than to craft/convert/sell, reset. Even when I craft/convert in the missions with burn on auto, I run out of time and need to reset with one, while another farmer is idle waiting on me to finish that. And, when I change things up to try and constantly keep the farmers busy, I end up with trays full of IOs that need to be converted, and things just get congested. I'm often tempted to just sell them for 1 inf to get rid of them - but that defeats the whole purpose of farming in the first place. The purpose is to get those drops, which is where the real influence is. 2-3M per IO for the rares, usually. When you have several hundred drops over the course of a day, it adds up quite quickly. Still, the counterpoint is that these IOs posted sell! And they sell fast. Not because I'm listing them at 1 inf, I'm listing them at a price I know they'll sell at, but above my costs. Generally 2.6-2.8, depending. (I will burn a few converters to get something like a Mako into something that will sell for 1M more) If I'm not doing this crafting and converting, the supply of those IOs will drop, the prices will go up. Nobody wants that, except me, and everyone else that crafts/converts and sells. It's no skin off my teeth, but the uproar is going to be louder when that happens.

@Bionic_FleaI don't have the remotest idea. Those aforementioned characters were afk farmers, but running actively. AFK farm characters, at least the way I run them, sit in the center of the map anywhere from 10-15 minutes to an entire day, depending on what's going on in-game and in real life. I don't know how to assess their average, because the time factor is almost certainly always varied. Now, I can set each of them up in the same map with burn on auto and just check back in every minute or two to see when the map clears, but anecdotally, even leaving them overnight would generally show 1-4 mobs just standing in a group on the perimeter of the asteroid. How would you like me to proceed? Do I count drops? I got a purple on one of those three runs, lol.