Ukase

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.

Ha! you might have a point there!

If it's useful, I just did one meteor run of Brigg's 125. Took my afk farmer just a smidge less than 6 minutes to clear the map ...a lot slower than I expected. I made 5,523,525 in that time, not counting drops. So, 920,588 per minute. My next afk farmer with a slightly different build, as I got a little smarter with the incarnate stuff (musculature over agility) and different slotting in a few powers fared a bit better. It finished in a smidge over 5 minutes. (same meteor, same map, same influence earned) 1,104,705 per minute. A 3rd farmer got the same inf in about 5 and a half minutes, so my average for actively farming is about 1M per minute, give or take a bit. It may be worth noting that all three of these farmers leveled up outside of AE and have solo'd all the tfs for TFC, but probably used a summons from p2w for help with dps in some cases. So, I don't consider them actual farmers, but characters that can farm.

Not really, it's more focused at the folks that would have the farmers of AE leave AE behind because they believe they're exploiting the game. It's simply raising the point that farmers generally list the drops on the AH. Some craft/convert, some just list recipes, and of course, I guess there are some who just delete everything but the recipes they know they want or can sell instantly for more than just a pittance. So, if folks like UltraAlt get their way, and AE Farmers are corralled into other non-AE activity, or simply stop playing, the goods on AH will decrease. Prices will increase. But, I guess some folks don't care, or haven't considered the impact that a poor decision like this would have. Some folks don't realize that crafting, converting and selling IS the game for them. That's what they think is fun. Personally, I don't ever want to do a Lambda again. Nor a Synapse. I likely will, for one reason or another, but it will be something I tolerate, not something I enjoy.

Building a farmer is not extremely expensive. But, I guess that depends on what you deem expensive. If you know how, it doesn't cost you anything but time. It will cost what I consider to be "house money", but it doesn't cost my characters anything. I have this strong regret that I never opened up my own "build store". A player sends me his projected build in Mids, and says he'd pay 500M for it. I say, "Nah, I can acquire the IOs for that build for 250M." And it takes me an hour or so, done. Or, better yet, I say, "Well, let me do the shopping for you, and in an hour, I'll give you the IOs, you pay me 500M". I'd have tons more inf than I have now, I think. Depends on how many customers I'd get, I suppose. With the exception of Hamis and d-syncs, and the Overwhelming Force, every other IO can be converted into any other IO, as long as it's the same type - pvp or pve, or purple. So, every IO except very rares and pvp costs about 1M. Very Rares cost only about 12M, and PvP IOs cost about 3M. And the only reason those prices are so high is because converter use can add up when the rng doesn't work with you. There's really no such thing as a build that costs over 200M unless the person is too impatient or just doesn't care to understand a cheaper way of getting the enhancements they want, or it could be they're blissfully ignorant. I honestly can't tell you anyone I know that doesn't use IO sets for the set bonuses as soon as they're able. I don't think I've ever teamed with anyone at level 50 that didn't have a wall of set bonus info in their character info screen. I really think that if these players do exist, they are new, and haven't figured it out yet, or are very few and far between. Like maybe 5% of the community. I could certainly be wrong, though.

It is not an exploit. It working exactly how it was designed to work. Just because you think it's an exploit doesn't make it so. And even if it were an exploit, it doesn't hurt you. It doesn't hurt anyone. It is benign; harmless. I seriously want to challenge you to consider the idea that you're wrong. Just consider it. I am not saying that a farmer's life is difficult. I'm not saying that once you get a farmer going it's not fairly simple to make influence. What I am saying is that whether there's AE or not, there will be farming. It's not going away. So, if it's not going away, then what's your beef? You think it's an exploit because a farmer can earn influence faster than you can? Big deal. There are dozens of speed runners who earn influence faster than you do. There are dozens of casual players that earn rewards outside AE faster than you do. Big deal. It's not an exploit. It's by design. Why is that so hard for you to accept? Farming is what makes this community healthy. So, let me ask this: how do you slot your characters? SOs? Because if you use IOs, I'm curious how you get them. From the AH? Odds are, a farmer put it there. Are you subsidizing the farmers, and then complaining about them in the same post? Or are you legitimately spending 5870 merits for you final build? (roughly - 100 merits for purples, ATOs, Winters, PvP IOs, 50 for the lotgs, and most other IOs.) I just tallied up the reward merit cost for my farmer's build, that's how many reward merits I'd have to spend to get them, going through the merit vendor. For the sake of argument, I can imagine I'd get several drops as I played that I could use - so you're telling me you do 5000 merits of content as you level up? No? Where are you getting your IOs from? If not the AH, then your experience is perhaps similar to maybe 2-4% of the player base. Doesn't mean your wrong for doing it that way, but it does mean you're unreasonable to expect the rest of us to do content your way. Again, farming is good for the community. It's good for the game. It is not an exploit. If you don't accept that, then I have no hope for you. And, again, where do you get your IOs from? Who do you think put those in there for sale? Sure, some might come from a random casual player, but odds are, the very folks you're trying to belittle and degrade as "exploiters" are the ones that are subsidizing your fun with their efforts.

No, seriously. That's what she told me. I had some trauma as a kid, and I haven't really emotionally progressed since then. You can ask my ex-wife, lol. Additionally, while I may age in calendar years, I'm in better physical shape than when I was 30. So, I don't mind developing maturity, but I sure as shit refuse to grow old. I plan on being able to carry a bag of groceries up a flight of stairs, get up off the ground should I fall down - though I hope my balance and core strength will avoid that scenario. I also plan on being able to walk a mile in 20 minutes or less for the duration of my life.

I must have missed this in any earlier post. What would you like to test, where would you like to test it, and when would you like to test it? You can DM me. I'm busy for the next few hours, but after that, I can make some time, I think. Give me several time ranges over the week, happy to help!

I can't show you a guarantee. But, I can anecdotally promise you, that if there are outstanding bids for the item, it will sell quickly, if not instantly. But, that depends on the item being listed and how much it's listed for. If there's no demand for the item, that's what converters are for. I'm sure most of us have read posts from certain players who list everything for sale for 1 influence, and claim they get plenty of profit, all things considered. I'm sure my method of using converters gets me more profit, but I'm putting in more time in the process than these folks are. Nothing you don't already know, I'm sure.

Doooooooom!!!! In all seriousness, I do understand that neither are going anywhere. Most of my replies are to folks who, for reasons of their own, would like to see different things: 1. AE rewards reduced to be more consistent with non-AE content. 2. Elimination of fire farming altogether because they don't like it and consider it an exploit. I've got no beef with the Dev team as things stand now. I do however get irritated by people who present these statements about the game's "economy" or the health of the game itself, as if they were some sort of subject matter expert on the topic when there's no evidence that they know what they're talking about. The HC Dev team is going to do what they're going to do, and they seem willing to listen, which is one part of what I require. The other part is the rationale behind certain decisions which impact some of my game play. It was like pulling teeth, but I finally got the second part. But some of these folks come up with their arguments in favor of their own preferred way to play, but take the position that my play is somehow unsavory and damaging to the health of the game - yet they can't present any evidence of this, nor refute logic when it's presented to them. They seem to think a player having a stack of influence is "inflationary", when there's no evidence to support this. Items on the AH are cheaper now than they have been since the game re-opened. Clearly, all the farming and marketing that's going on has been nothing but good for the game, if the price of IOs are any indication. (although they could be artificially suppressed due to lower demand) Add to that, it's kind of fun to challenge folks with contrary opinions. I do my best to remain open-minded. Maybe I'll learn something. Stranger things have happened. But I will never take assertions by a poster in this forum as fact, unless I already believe it, or know it to be true. If it's not something I currently believe, then I'll challenge it. Isn't that what these forums are for? To share information, opinions, etc?

My therapist called it "Arrested Development". Apparently, I keep repeating my adolescence trying to get it right. In real life, I'm only good at maybe three things. One of them is losing my temper and shaking my fist at idiots whose identities are unknown to me simply because they refuse to see things my way. Go figure.

"Including Florida" lol

So, I fixed that for you. The way you had it was completely wrong. And even my corrected form is wrong. Using game code is simply playing the game. Just because some folks think outside of the box, that's not an exploit. That's value-added unintended bonus. A better example of an exploit would be if I discovered that killing a -3 lieutenant sniper on a roof of a building in PI gave me a very rare recipe every 2nd time I defeated him and proceeded to let him respawn hundreds of times to do just that. That would be exploiting a flaw in the rng recipe drop code. The AE system, when you create the npcs to defeat, there are sliders to make them super tough for more xp, or not so tough for less xp. There's no flaw at all. No exploit. It's by design.

So, the part in bold is a really interesting theory! I know nothing about "design philosophy". I'm not real sure I could define it. It's semantics, but AE is not an exploit. Is it being used the way Paragon Studios imagined it would be used? Yes, it is being used in the exact way they imagined it would be. That said, it's also being used to "farm". What a term, "farm". Farming in real life is traditionally meant to invest resource in the hopes of getting far more return. Plant seeds, harvest. Feed pigs, breed pigs, slaughter the fattest ones. With the way we refer to farming, many of you are unaware of the time it takes for a new player to make a character that can do this. It's almost idiot proof now, granted. Copy one of the many builds, market a bit, or play for merits as you need to, or simply work you way into the build you're looking for. Either way, you're investing your time and energy to make a character that can withstand what most non-farmers cannot. It really doesn't matter what Paragon Studio developers said, or were aiming for. They are not here. They no longer have skin in the game. We are a fraction of the size of the old CoH player base. It makes sense to me to not even consider the original plans that NCSoft and Paragon Studios had in mind. It's an apples and oranges player base. It's not a pay to win model. It's not a subscription model. It's a rogue server that is emulating a darn good, if slow (because of the volunteer status) developer studio. AE and farming are an integral part of CoH. The influence that a farmer earns really shouldn't matter to anyone. Why? Because all that influence does is help drive down the costs of IOs. All that influence they have is spent on alts, I suspect, or stashed in unobtainable bids or email. Or maybe they're having a costume contest every now and then. All of these habits farmers have - stashing inf, or spending it, they don't hurt the casual player in any way. They have no impact on their game play. And I cannot fathom how anyone sane can consider AE farming an exploit. An exploit is doing something that generates an advantage. It's not an advantage if anyone can do the same thing. I do understand that some of you would retort that if they did the same thing, we'd have "City of Farmers". Newsflash - we have had City of Farmers since the Fire tank was born. The only difference now is that because HC is free to play, anyone can make multiple accounts without paying an extra $15 per month. That's the only real reason why there are so many folks with extra accounts that have farmers. Because we can. It's even encouraged, because Jimmy himself has stated that farmers are good for the gaming community. What he did question was the AFK-farmer. Again, it's not an exploit to use AE to farm. It's perfectly reasonable, and hurts nobody. If it weren't for the folks to lazy or to ignorant to make their own second account and farm themselves, 90% of you against farming would be blissfully unaware of them. I do not see how farming harms anyone. I do understand that someone getting PL'd and knowing nothing about the game...yeah, what that player ends up in a team I'm on, it's a sad situation. But that's not really on the farmer, that's on the player that has so little knowledge of what they're doing, they are genuinely unaware that they don't know what they're doing. But, again, farming is not exploitative. Anyone can do it. Just because you don't want to...that's sounds like a personal problem. I understand that some folks have this ideal way that they think the game should be played. Folks join together, team up for a common goal, and everyone shares the proceeds automatically. Some folks crack jokes, folks get to know each other and laugh and have a fun experience. But not everyone is going to find that pursuit so ideal. Some folks want to speed through. Some folks want to kill 'em all. Some folks want to farm. If you're not on the team, it has nothing to do with you, doesn't impact you at all. When someone runs 6 hami raids, back to back and alts out and scores 480 merits in about 90 minutes, nobody's fussing about that. Sure, they coordinated and got the job done, so there was a slightly higher degree of risk. But not by much, really. 50 folks buffing up with incarnate buffs and zerging hami in 60 seconds isn't hardly a risk these days. But it goes on routinely. And it should! Let these folks make their loot if that's how they want to! Some player named Blapperella was running an Ouro Positron AGAIN today. I swear I see them forming up for that once a week, at least. It's merits, and they're probably pretty quick at it. Good for them. Is there risk? Maybe. But not much, once you get your team composition squared away. All these players make influence and merits their own way. And, if I'm not on their team, it's none of my business. Let 'em do them. So, with regards to farming, I just wish all of you who are against it would realize what I do: It hurts nobody. If anything, it helps the community by having more items in the AH for folks to buy. I'm sure I'm coming off as obtuse, and I suppose that's fair. But I don't see the harm. In what specific way does a farmer hurt the community? The game? I keep reading, "If farming didn't give a ridiculous amount more rewards, nobody would do it." That may be true. And to that comment, I reply, "Then it's a good thing it offers more rewards. We need to incentivize farming! Without farmers, the cost of IOs is going to go up! And that's fine by me. I'll be quite alright. But you do realize, I hope, that there are players that think 20 million influence is unobtainable! They are level 20 or so, have maybe 100K influence and know nothing about the market, know nothing about how to make influence - but they've heard about the LotG 7.5%. They know these are a favorable enhancement to have. If you guys have your way, these poor folks are going to be blowing their merits on recipes instead of simply buying one for 6M (going price now). If farming is reduced, that price point goes up, guaranteed. I say this to be helpful. You do not want to reduce farming. I can see the case for reducing or eliminating AFK farming, although I think the case is weak. But active farming? It's not an exploit at all. It's no more risky than folks in a radio mission in PI, folks in an MSR, or folks in a hami raid, or folks running an itf. And the rewards for active farming might give more influence due to the density of the mobs, but farmers don't get reward merits, so it's pretty much a wash.

First, I think this is a great question (well, set of questions) for us to ponder. My gut tells me that we would need a lot of participation to get a more precise picture to account for outliers. About 3 years ago, I think. Maybe 2.5, I counseled a new player on the basics of farming, gave her the IOs needed and my build. (and much to my surprise, 4 months later emailed me 500M inf as a repayment, even though it was a gift) Since then, she tweaked the build a bit to suit her own playstyle, and would run 3 farmers on the same map routinely. She tracked her earnings, and was puzzled to learn that despite her actively farming, (the two other accounts would also be brutes with burn on auto, set to follow her primary), my afk farming gave me more influence because I actually crafted/converted/sold the uncommon and rare recipes. The reason was scale. I could conceivably have 3 farmers on each shard. She could only control one farmer at a time. And, even if the rng is stingy, because of converters, the hills and valleys of the rng were smoothed out. Simply because the afk farmer can scale the running of maps, I don't know how we can reach a true apples to apples comparison. Add to that, the speed runner can certainly acquire merits very quickly. On Excelsior, someone like Stitch or Confusion? (aka Bright Phoenix), or Marsh - those guys seem to run TFs or iTrials in succession on a routine basis, and do so in a speedy fashion. But, it's not so much the merits they earn - but what they'd do with them. Converters? Boosters? Or just buy ATOs, purples, or Winters? Or some other recipe? For something like this, I would call on a more scientific mind like @Bopper. Never met the man, but in my mind he's to CoH like Brad Schoenfeld is to the science of resistance training. But, with the latest call for testing hard mode ITF, he's probably too busy right now. Not to do the testing, mind you, but lay out the framework for the tests. Metrics to measure and what content should be run to measure them, etc.

Sorry, @lemming. My ability to quote portions of a post and such is limited. In this post I'm quoting, you have a quote, some comment that you cut and pasted from somewhere, and I'd like to see it in context, but have no idea where it came from. Could you point me in the right direction?