Ukase

Candidly, in real life, I've only met maybe 2 dozen people over the past 2 years - and that was online, over Zoom or Skype. I have met some folks in game, over Discord, but I don't count that, as I've no idea what their names are or much of anything about them. They're not really people to me. They're just pixels that I recognize are real people, but not really real to me. But yeah, point taken. Some folks just amaze me with their commitment to escape reality by drugs of some kind or another, only to further escape reality in game. But that's a whole 'nother thread.

And people are so testy when it comes to farming. I don't get it.

I have words to express myself at this, but they're not productive in the least. SMH... But I can't think of any reason a token would encourage RMT. In fact, HC has made things so user friendly for a new player (once they get the lay of the land), nobody sane or sober would ever spend a penny on any amount of inf.

Sorry, a level 50 character has far more than 67 slots. 96 for most, and khelds and veats have even more than that.

I appreciate your experience in other games, but I'm...well, not so knowledgeable about other games, as this is the only one I've played, unless you count Chess and Madden football. Can you expand on how (or even what) RMT means, and how such a thing would encourage it? As for adding market stress, no. I strongly suggest you are not correct on that. Half the guys I know that PL to 50 literally delete every bit of salvage and recipe except the rare salvage and very rare recipes, and maybe the pvps. And the number of those per character is often less than 3-5 recipes that they deem worth selling or crafting. How I would deal with drops or how you would deal with them is not how everyone else would deal with them. I promise you, the drops from 1-50 are meaningless in the AH. You'd never miss them. Why? because there are farmers that fill that gap, and always will, until the dev team makes it unsavory to do so.

So, maybe I am out of my gourd. But I'm not out of Nectanabo's Gourd. Who is Nectanabo? Is he/she/it a farmer? Do they grow gourds? I don't recall any CoT mission mentioning this Nectanabo. Is there a story arc I've missed out on?

I have about a week and a half of pics like this, mostly from early July. Your premise of inflation is very faulty. There simply isn't any. And you can probably thank the panic farming for it. Farming of any kind, AFK or otherwise is GOOD for the game. It drives prices down. No evidence of anything but. This talk of bots and macros is simply talk, from everything I can gather, because if it weren't, we'd see the impact of it in some negative fashion. And if it's bots and macros that are driving the prices of these down, maybe it's for the best.

Wait - what was the title before?

This isn't a farming problem, it's a pug problem.

It's not my intent to nitpick, but I keep tabs on certain IOs - not really routinely checking the prices, but literally listing 3 specific IOs at a price just above where they're selling at to see if the price is creeping up. For over 30 days, I've had the same 3 LotG 7.5% listed at 6,777,777. They haven't sold. The prices of these are not creeping up, or, if they are, it's not by enough to meet a noticeable threshold. Otherwise, these would have sold by now. They have not. In 27 days, they've not sold. And, frankly, I'm glad, as it means prices (for this anyway) are lower than they have been, and so far, are remaining lower. There is no inflation issue on HC that I can tell, except I do see an upward push, which I always see on the weekends of: Kismet Accuracy, Steadfast Protection 3%, Achille's Heel Chance for resistance debuff, and few others, that are not generally dropped on level 50 farmers. Once a month or so, when I farmed more often, I would run for tickets to pursue these and list them. But, since the last patch, there's been more to do, so I've farmed less, and well frankly, farming is tedious sometimes. (all that converting can be time-consuming!) You may think there is, and you're entitled to believe it. But I've seen no evidence of it. Prices for me have been the same for just about the past year or so, since they nerfed the 2xinf/noXP.

Not to nitpick, but that is not the literal definition of inflation. I do understand that for some folks, having a huge stockpile may cause them to spend more, as the value seems to be worth less, since they have so much. But, I'm the son of an economist. I know full well what utils of satisfaction are, and I believe I know the influence value for a given IO, because I know how to make them. Or, alternatively, convert something into a specific one. The literal definition of inflation is a rate of increase in prices over time. Funny, the more influence I make, the cheaper things in the AH seem to get. So, no, while I can understand a stack of inf like mine could be problematic for a day or two in the hands of a savvy, but ill-intentioned marketeer, any disruption would be short-lived due to actions by other marketers. Now, if you take away the emp merit to reward merit conversion, you're just leaving the casual player at the mercy of the more sinister, selfish player. It's a bad move. In fact, it's a horrible move and will not resolve any issues with the alleged bot/macro players that do not exist as far as I know. A better move would be to list emp merits for sale on the AH, or better yet, as an inf sink at the merit vendor. Then I don't think I'd ever farm again, and finally have something to spend my influence on.

I do want to take a moment to remind myself and everyone else - get on Test and try somethings out. And while some of us may have different opinions, I think we all want a healthy CoH, even if what we might think that looks like may differ. If I've rubbed some of you the wrong way, it's not my intent. My only real desire right now is to hear from the dev team which explains their reasoning, and what they expect to accomplish. Conjecture is fun, but right now, until we hear from them, that's all it is. That's not to say I must hear from them. I just want to. It's their game, I'm just a guest.

I'll have to take a peek at those numbers this Tuesday; I hope I remember!

I am not perfect. And it is fair to say I can be obtuse. But to label my success as a marketer as a problem is just silly. Why is it a problem? Because I carry a billion inf on every character, except for a few challenge characters who've yet to earn it? I see no problem with it. I see it as a successful solution to the problem the game presented me with. Problem: Not enough loot to buy what I want. Problem solved. What is it that is a problem about me having influence? How does that impact the game in any way? Because I might go postal and buy some IOs that people want to sell? I can't buy what they don't list. And I have never bought a bunch of one IO to relist it. I don't roll like that. I wouldn't appreciate that as a newer player trying to buy something, so I wouldn't do it to someone else. Further, I would offer the argument that the players with the most influence are the ones who are the most generous with it. That could be because they have it, or it could be because they're somewhat responsible for how they use it. Opinions vary, and it is quite clear my opinion is very different from yours. Give me some facts. Something I can look at, so I can better be objective. Right now, it seems like an attack because I'm successful at doing what any 6 year old could do, but many of you don't want to, so I'm a "problem".

If this is happening, it's news to me. Further, if it is happening, how would any of us know about it? We don't have access to what's going on in someone's mission, unless we're in the mission with them. So..what's the real story here? I would like to think I am only a few days to a week behind, before I learn of the latest and greatest way to milk a new strategy. Troo mentioned this as well, and where there's smoke, maybe there is some fire. If this is the case, then yes, it should be addressed, but I do not for a moment think this is why the devs are looking to add this change. Where's the evidence of that? Converter prices and numbers are stable on the market. The only real change I can see is the price of LotG 7.5% has dropped about 500k - 1M. (selling for less than 7M instead of the usual 7-8M ) And that's a good thing, I would think. People talk, word gets around, people hear things. But, this is the internet. I believe none of what I read, and only half of what I see. If this is going on, let's cite some sources. If you'd rather not state things in here, send me a dm, I'll happily back off if this is going on - to a point. I'll be wanting to know how they did it so I can suggest how to prevent it. But at the same time, I don't want to know, because I don't wish to be grouped in with the folks that are doing such things. And to be clear - I've no issue with macros. I use them all the time, when I actively play. I can't auto-fire an macro, so I wouldn't be able to do so in my afk farm. As for a bot? That's way beyond me.

Please know that I don't wish to argue, only to provide a different perspective. Sorry, but I don't see it as an issue. What does it do? Provide some players with an alternative to mainstream content. It allows players to accumulate the resources for the items they want more quickly. I don't see those as an issue. It is literally a non-event that nobody would never even know is happening if folks weren't openly sharing how they do it in an effort to be helpful. Nobody would have a clue it was going on if folks weren't looking to ride that gravy train. I don't think anyone would think there were any issues. But, since folks know about it, and it bothers some people for some reason, it's an issue. There really are no tangible negative consequences from what I see. I understand that when folks think about it, it can seem...unsavory, and insult their sensibilities a bit. But it's really no different when you're on a team and you go for a bio break while the team proceeds with the mission. You're getting rewards and doing nothing. Granted it's usually just a moment, compared to a longer term with the farmer, but where do we draw the line? It's may be slope that's more slippery than you think.

It's not a short answer, but I'll try. The problem in my mind all started with the HC devs demonstrating their power by seeding salvage. No advance warning (that I was aware of, anyway), just logged in and saw that suddenly the salvage was seeded. I'd had hundreds of rares that I'd posted in whatever range they were going for. Suddenly, the salvage is seeded and I've got to pull them all back and relist. And for me, it wasn't so much that they made the move on the salvage, but that they can do whatever they want, to hell with how it impacts any player. For a time, and it may surprise some folks - catalysts used to sell for 4-5M!! So, I would convert my reward merits to those, and sell them. I remember making 500M one morning and just having a huge rush. I think it was an endorphin high, really. A bit dangerous. I used to gamble in Vegas, and it was very much like hitting a Royal. In my mind, I knew it was fake money, but in game, it doesn't feel fake. It spends just like in the real world. But there's no way to earn any interest, so if you want the pile to grow, you can let it trickle in and just play, or you can farm and market and watch it grow exponentially. I did my level best to make sure that no matter what the HC devs did, I'd have influence. Why so much? Honestly, it's more out of a consistent routine than anything else. A routine which I've dropped some time ago, because I do think 500B is enough - enough to kit out my next 2800 or so characters without having to sweat much of anything - except incarnate materials, because I can't buy those. To get those, I used to lead the odd Master of Underground, maybe a BAF here and there. But I quickly learned that this new player base has a small percentage of players that are illiterate, or for reasons that are just too stupid to accept, play with the chat window closed. It's this small percentage of players that just sucked the fun out of the experience, so unless it's one of two sets of players, I'm not likely to participate in any iTrial, (at least, on Excelsior) And it was that small percentage that drove me into AE to get my incarnate materials. I still do the odd Magisterium and Underground. Occasionally, I'll get "stuck" doing a TPN or Keyes, two iTrials that are as stupid as they can be with their repetitive nature. (Three reactors are two too many, and that TPN is just the worst task set in any iTrial. Go in this building, go in this other building, go back to that one, etc. Just stupid. I can't believe we let the original devs get away with that trash. If it's not in pursuit of a badge, I will never do an iTrial again. It may be worth adding that I work from home, and it's an easy thing for me to tab out, move a character and get back to work. Occasionally, after a work call, I might be able to do a mission. I've had solo Yin TFs last 8 hours because of having to tab out for work. Farming is just an easy thing to do while working remotely. Back to the inf - after a year or playing, I didn't really have much, maybe a couple billion. Thing is, if I did the "buy now", a lot of my builds with my affinity for Shield Walls could easily cost me 400-500 million. I still have a list of AT/powerset combos I've not tried, and variations of powerset combos I have tried that I've yet to create. 500B is the number. Any less, and I might have to farm again - and in my mind, given the way the HC devs have a propensity to enjoy things in game that I do not, I knew days of farming are numbered. In particular afk-farming. So, to me, it would have been setting myself up for failure if I didn't make as much as I could. In a way, I feel like I was productive enough to ensure I'd have enough regardless of what the devs did - unless they deliberately targeted me specifically. Thus far, I see no reason why they would do that. I have no regrets, because it's a delight to be able to pick and choose moments when I want to team, as opposed to having that urge to get incarnate materials, and balancing that with my desire to not deal with the percentage of players that are stupid. It is also quite a joy to be able to gift a pleasant leader with a sizable donation to match what they were giving for the kill shot on Hami or the drop ship. Or to simply give some winter sets to someone else who wants to farm. (When it's my idea to gift, not theirs! I can't stand a beggar. )

Man, you really nailed it! Those devs need to roll that damn change back. I have 5 characters that I need to respec out of Rune otherwise! There really wasn't a reason to change that! And if I'd known that change was coming, I'd have bitched about it, I guarantee it!

Fair points. And a good question. For the record, you only need one computer. A very strong hamster can run ..well, anecdotally, my i7 that only recently had 16 gigs of ram could run 4, at least, without issue. Mind you, my graphics card was an Nvidia GTX 1050 (now upgraded), but Tom's Hardware showed it to be in the bottom 12% of cards out right now. So, not many resources at all are needed to run multiple accounts. And I only have 4 accounts, just for the record. Tried running all four, and my system handled it just fine, but I could not. I ended up with too many damned enhancements that needed to be crafted, converted and sold. It just took too much time. I did that for like a day and learned quick it was more work than I wanted to do. Now, I can understand why folks might be puzzled by someone like me would choose to play in such a way where I would pretend to be Scrooge McDuck and swim in my loot. In all transparency, as a player, I'm only slightly better than mediocre. I use the arrow keys to move. My reflexes are slow. I build my characters more for order than chaos. (Order is defense, chaos is dps). There's a balance, mind you. Too much defense, and you lack the dps to get out of difficult situations. Not enough, and even though the dps is high, it's not high enough to tackle some AVs without an adequate layer of mitigation. It takes practice, I think to get that balance right. Some folks have mastered it - those guys that level to 50 in the farm and suddenly do master trial runs on a character that's never been on a team before... those are the guys I'm trying to measure up to, really. So, I make sure I have all the influence I need just to keep up and feel slightly better than mediocre. Marketing is really the only part of this game I'm good at, so it makes sense to me to do that more than the other stuff. I do enjoy leveling characters up, though. There are still powersets I haven't tried, although I remain disappointed at how similar many powersets are. The icons, the effects...a lot of them seem like the same thing, just a different name. Like Broadsword and Katana. Strong similarities in those two sets. Play one, you've played the other. Sure, small differences, but for the most part the same. But, I digress. Just wanted to make the point that I do play through the game. I do not PL characters I play, at least not most of the time. There have been a few that were just too painful, like a dom or a controller. I don't team below level 50 very often, and those ATs, the way I make 'em, tend to really suck. I think the only reason I think folks are against the farming thing, as you stated, "it feels wrong" is because those that do not farm are actively seeking XP or reward merits or both, or perhaps, just a fun team to pass away an afternoon. And when you don't farm, and you (not you, the OP, but the collective you that may be reading) want to outfit your character, and you see that some asshat is selling a cyto for 300M, that probably feels really wrong. And some of "you" feel like you have to farm even though you'd rather not to afford these items. I can see where that would cause resentment towards the farmer that's already rolling in influence.

I'm not sure how many of you are readers of the Market sub-forum. The potential for these shenanigans is certainly there, but fear not, readers. Some of the more savvy marketers know how to deal with situations like that. Sure, if I wanted to, I could buy every purple in the game right now. And potentially re-list them at a price that's 12% higher. But guess what? I'm not the only marketer, and I promise you, other marketers would see that move, possibly even as it was happening, and just flood the market with purples, selling them at 10% below the previous price and I'd lose money for who knows how long? Maybe, if I have enough, I can buy up the supply the first marketer dropped in. But ultimately, I would end up with too damn many purples. It would take me months to recoup the investment, if I could recoup it at all. Generally, no shenanigans can continue forever, or rarely more than a few days. The thing with the uncommon salvage..well, they're seeded. So, someone has to pay 90-99k more than they otherwise would, no real harm in that. Just annoyance. The only way it would be kind of worth it is if you did a million sales of them. While that's possible, I can't fathom the clicking to make it possible. And even then, too many clicks for the inf you get. (for me, anyway) I do think it would be fun to have a global name next to each item for sale after it occurred, lol. That might certainly bring prices down. But that's another post for another thread.

You are misinterpreting the TOS. It specifically states 3 accounts per shard. So, technically, a player could run 15 accounts, 3 per server. I promise you, any more than 4, unless you just delete most every drop, you're gonna be too busy crafting and converting to get any real fun out of that - but fun is subjective. To me, 4 is too much work. A lot of crafting/converting going on. It's a set up for carpal tunnel for sure.

This letter...I don't really know if it addresses me or not. I mean, I haven't farmed since I learned they were not going to remove emps from AE. And prior to that episode of farming, I hadn't actively or afk-farmed in...a month or so. I just don't feel like it. I've just been playing when there are specific SG events. But I still believe that some that express themselves here are in such a different frame of mind regarding this subject, I have to ask myself if I'm being obtuse. I may very well be. The way you frame this letter, "Other changes however are targeting extreme offenders...." So, my question for you is ...what do you consider an extreme offender? And why are you using the term "offender"? To my knowledge, there is nothing against the rules about farming, afk or otherwise. So, I think this is probably the wrong word, or I'm missing something. If it is as you say, the "few AE farmers abusing exploits or other tactics" are forcing changes, then I think you must not think too highly of our HC dev team. I don't think they are specifically targeting folks who are abusing exploits. They have not stated what their reasoning is. Some suggest they want to bring the rewards for non-AE in line with AE. They seem to be doing this by offering additional reward merits for completion of various iTrials. They seem to want incarnate characters to participate in iTrials and level 50 TFs. They seem okay with folks farming if they want to, but they would prefer we did not. The only thing I can't fathom is why it matters in the first place. If they wanted to do something about folks who exploited something, first - they'd have to know it happened. And to know it happened, they'd probably know who did it. Warn, then ban. Problem solved. See, I don't view afk farming as an exploit or abuse. I view it as clever play. But, clearly, not all of you feel that way. Some of you are so vehemently opposed to the notion, you'd rather I stopped breathing and quit the game altogether. It's all good. I have felt that way about some folks I've run into in game, which is really why I spent a lot more time farming than playing. Some of our player base are truly mean-spirited and grossly immature. Overall, a nice enough bunch, but some truly mean people in the midst. I no longer care what they do. I'll do what I want to do, and with the network I do have, determine my best path with the information I have. Just know that I'm not motivated by rewards. I'm motivated by the path of least resistance. I just think the whole debate is getting tiresome and it's long past time for the HC devs to state what's on their mind with this change. What their goal is and why they think is necessary to implement it. We have a lot of clever people here that might have a better solution, if they specifically state the problem. I know some have mentioned reward/time metric, but I just don't think that's it. I think the idea of someone like me farming a character to vl 45 to get 250 emp merits and then using them to get 7500 converters is the issue. They want the converters to be priced higher, for whatever reason. Not sure what price they have in mind, probably a lot more than they are now. And that's just conjecture on my part, but I do know that there aren't enough merits to feed me and everyone else on the AH if I'm farming. I just burn through too many in a day. That's really the only reason I started to do it. I looked to get some, and I was..there's only 4400 on the AH? I need 10X that! ( I don't like buying them in bits and pieces. If I have room for 180 bids, each one will go for 10 converters at a reasonable price.) I had to spend about 30 minutes opening winter packs just to get the reward merits. Thankfully, they're going to leave THAT conversion alone. For now, anyway. I know they have expressed concerns about afk farming in the past, as Flea was kind enough to use his might search-fu to find that post. And that could be it...a sentiment from over 2 years ago. I would just appreciate some confirmation from the powers that be. Not speculation by other players.

You say it's not playing the game. I say it is playing the game, just not the way you play it perhaps. So, I've proven long ago that I have a computer I can keep connected and can passively (and actively) inflate my wealth. What's wrong with that?

"when there's an outlier that can cause a problem".... Where's the problem, tho? Let us say that there is indeed a reward/time advantage for AE farming. Why is that a problem? What is the problem with that? Nobody is being forced to do this if they don't want to, but everyone can farm if they want to. So, there's no disadvantage to anyone. I just don't see that it's an issue. So what if Farmers get paid more than non-farmers. It's irrelevant. The folks that don't farm because they don't want to shouldn't care, because they don't want to farm. And that's fine. But to punish farmers because they don't want to is not fine. A rising tide elevates all the boats. So, increase the rewards of non-AE content to rival farmers. (However that's determined is beyond me.) If we punish the farmers because they make more for doing less, what about the marketers? We make more than farmers doing even less! We don't kill a damn thing, but time, and get exponentially more! Are you going to then remove the auction house? Only allow folks to buy one item per day? Or only allow folks to sell 10 items a day? Where does this line get drawn in the concrete? (as opposed to sand) In some ways, I look at this like the government trying to take away my hunting rifle because it's a gun, and a gun in the wrong hands can hurt people. You want to erode my rights for no other purpose than you don't want to hunt, and perhaps you're worried my rifle would be used in some random school simply because I have one. I see no reason why farming hurts the game in any measurable way. I see no reason why farmers making influence more easily than non-farmers is an issue. If only certain people could farm, yeah, I'd say there's a big problem. But everyone can! Yes, I can see how players might feel slighted because one player has more resources than another. But that's not the fault of the richer player. It's the fault of the poorer player for not taking advantage of the knowledge, skills and abilities they have. Now, if they have no desire to farm, as I said, that's fine. They can still make plenty of influence just by using the drops they get in game. Farmers are gonna farm, and no rules (except a no-farming rule) are going to change that. I think you're not going to get what you expect by getting what you want. I could be wrong, though. I've been wrong before. But, given enough time, the players will come up with the next big thing, and then the people will cry aloud once more, "it's not fair!". It is fair. It hurts nothing that I can see. You can't say "if they weren't farming, they'd be teaming". This is not a fact. It's conjecture. And making a change on conjecture is not wise. Increase the rewards, and the folks that farm for rewards will go. The folks that farm for fun will not. The folks that cannot farm due to changes (or will not) will likely find something else to do. You may see that as a benefit. More names to get. If that's your position, I can understand that, at least. But if I just play the game, I'll keep my names anyway. But to go about saying farming is hurting your characters somehow...that's nonsense in my mind. I don't see how. Maybe you guys are just wanting to drive away all the farmers with some noble intent of having the game "pure", so you can be totally immersed in your characters without a care in the world, no idle chatter about "lowbie dominator looking for AE cuz I don't have perma-dom" to intrude on your finer sensibilities. I have no idea where some of you are coming from.

How about they wait until they do that, then change things?