Coyotedancer

Like I said earlier, that's the one huge advantage of farm maps... The density of the mobs. The guys were more into Deep Rock Galactic yesterday than the City, so I actually got to play around a little with the fireproof version of my DB Scrapper on Harvey's demon map and my S/L farm-capable DB/Rad Brute on Wolf World. They're leveling what will be a rebuild of the Fireproof Scrap design on my secondary account. In spite of the "outside" mobs giving more XP than the farm critters do on an individual basis, running through those Old School maps is a slower way to go. I knew those two wouldn't plow through the goons quite as quickly as my dedicated fire farmer goes through hers... neither of them have Burn, and that does make a significant difference in kill speed... but the space between groups also put them at a disadvantage. It was hard to engage multiple groups at once, especially on that huge ruins map, and with nothing patrolling you have to go searching for targets. As for INF-per-minute.... I could believe 2-2,5m per minute on the space map for a pair. I'm pretty sure FCM and I could do that taking Ossuni in duo with his fire-farming Blaster. Those two together can clear that map in a pretty brutally effective way... But if someone is managing it solo, I really want to see their build. It has to be a thing of truly ludicrous, overengineered beauty.

I was pretty much the opposite... If I was making, let's say, one of my Oranbegan characters, having to wait until they were halfway through the game to get their glowing eyes was just annoying. It bothered me more than having to wait a shorter time for a cape on some of the others.

Okay, after running around a bit with Arachnos scanner missions on my two Energy Aura characters, the results are interesting. The Psi/EA Stalker has some minor Toxic and Psi defense and resist from her powers and enhancements... 10.5 Psi and Toxic defense in Hide, 5.17 out of Hide, with 16.2 Toxic and 11.75 Psi resistance. She typically solos at +2/x4, so that's where I left her difficulty. I avoided using her Barrier or any inspirations. On the live servers, she can handle Arachnos relatively easily at that difficulty level. I rarely had to use her heal. On the beta server, there was a noticeable difference in the amount of damage she took from the groups, particularly the ones with two Tarantula Mistresses. That got painful FAST. With the new aggro thing, two groups with several Forts each that spawned close together very nearly knocked her down. Fast recharge on her heal is all that saved her. The DP/EA Sentinel I took in also has some defense and resistance, so he wasn't going in naked either, so to speak. He has 11.59 Toxic defense, 11.23 Psi defense, 16.84 Psi resistance and a fairly respectable 30,33 Toxic resistance. I also set him to +2/x4. The Live server version of Aken can handle that on Arachnos maps, but it can get a little dicey. He ends up relying a lot on his heals from EA and his Epic. I also avoided inspirations and his Barrier, like I did with Ajda. Unlike his stalker cousin, I actually didn't notice a lot of difference between his Live run and what happened on Beta. I suspect that's because he keeps his distance, and so wasn't getting smacked routinely with Toxic melee attacks. All in all? The beta changes probably won't make as much of a difference to him as they will to Ajda. Unless I drop him into melee range with the goons.

To see how /EA holds up, I can move my Psi/EA Stalker over to do some running around this afternoon. It's been a while since I went Arachnos-bashing with Ajda, but I don't recall the current live-server version of her having exceptional trouble with them. If the beta version does, that'll tell us at least a little something. I also have a DP/EA Sent I can try out, although Aken is already a little squishy against the spiders. XP

Mastermind Demons and Spine Burst are the ones that give me the ear-heebies.,,, Enough so that I have a keybind that puts Amtes' demons into the Praetorian Salute emote to shut them up any time I have to stand around with them, because that's the only way I can stand to play her. And I specifically made my two farmers Claws/Fire instead of the more popular Spines/Fire, just so I wouldn't have to listen to that constant *FwhapFwhapFwhap* thing, 😝

That would be tough to do with Ossuni... She's a very, very specialized build. That's why I want to try out Ironhorse and Fireproof!Kes in both AE and the Old School farms. That's a farer comparison I think than putting their times against Suni's.

Something else to keep in mind re: the current AE rewards... They've already been nerfed a couple of times since Homecoming went live. What we get in our farms these days is considerably diminished from where we started. I keep seeing claims that we're getting orders of magnitude better returns from farming than is even possible in regular content, but I'm not sure non-farmers really have a solid idea what our numbers actually look like. I suspect, when it comes to active farmers at least, we may be pulling in somewhat less than you guys expect. Just to give you some "real world" numbers to play with... When I jump into an Atta's Cave style farming map with Ossuni and a level 50 sidekick like Cantus (that Sonic Defender whose iToys I've been working on lately-), it takes me a little under an hour to clear the place if I'm taking my time, Zen style. I vendor common recipes and enhancements, sell off the yellow and orange recipes and the salvage on the auction house, keeping any purples and a few favorite PvP recipes for my own use. I also keep catalysts, since I like attuning sets on the support types I build to run at mid-level. When all is said and done? Those two characters will end up with around 25m INF each, sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less depending on drop luck. So, call it somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million for the hour. It's a nice chunk of change, but not quite in OMGOUTRAGEOUS territory. (Ask Yomo or Ukase how much a marketeer can make in that same hour for comparison-) It takes three or four runs in total to make enough to fully equip a character like Cantus. (That is to say, a solid but not min/maxed bleeding-edge build, using attuned sets... and minus any ATOs, PvP specials, Hamis or Purples that I might want to give him. I don't ever buy those. I pull them from my stash. If I *did* have to buy them? Double the number of farm runs it would take to finance the build, at a rough guess.) How does that compare to an "old school" farm run on Council Earth, Wolf World or Harvey's demon map? Now THAT is the interesting question! It's something I'd love to know, honestly, and have a plan to find out... I have a character who can S/L farm (*pats Ironhorse on the head*) and I recently rebuilt the DB/WP "Fireproof Scrap" that I had back on Live, who was originally built to handle Harvey's demons at +4/x8 on their own. My plan is to run them through an hour's worth of demons and werewolves a few times with the same level 50 sidekick like Suni would have in AE, and then compare the results. My expectation is that the Old School results will be a little below AE's, but not for the reason you might expect.... that is to say, the AE mobs giving too much. No, I suspect it'll come down to the two "outside farmers" being slower to clear the mobs. They're a DB/WP scrap and a DB/Rad Brute. Neither has the one big speed advantage my Claws/Fire Brute has... Her Burn patch. The solution? See how those two characters fare on an AE Fire and S/L run! I... just have to actually find the time to do it. Which hasn't been easy lately. Real Life is getting in the way of my game time, dammit. *shakes tiny, experimental farming fist*

Okay, I'll bite this bait and out myself. Again. I'm one of those former score players. And if you think that we never had any disagreements amongst ourselves or never dared to question what our own Powers That Be wanted to do... I have a nice beach house in Arizona to sell you. There were some epic arguments on a whole host of subjects. No one from that bunch is a stranger to disagreement, I promise you. Leo himself once called me "delusional" for disagreeing with him. Which didn't stop me from arguing my point. "Yes (wo)men", indeed. 😝

Bridge repair work has to be paid for SOMEHOW... I mean, after all those cuts to the highway department's budget-

I haven't gotten any death threats yet, but it's probably only a matter of time. 😝 I haven't kept bookmarks of dev statements over the last couple of years, but just two recent ones that made me raise an eyebrow on the "preferred playstyle" front are over in the beta threads. One involved how much of mistake the dev in question thought that the vet level iBit grants were (The implication being they disincentivized getting those materials the team-centric old-fashioned way, with some mention of the "content development devs" being displeased about the current state of affairs-). The other had to do with the new Cim repeatable missions being "solo" content that had been designed specifically so that it might actually require a team to complete. No one statement has ever been a direct and unmistakable smoking gun, granted... but after awhile it has started to look like there are preferences when it comes to how they expect and want the game played.

That's part of the thing, though... A few dev statements have been made that do make me wonder. It's not just a matter of other players being vocal about their preferences. Players have been grumping and accusing each other of "doing it wrong" for as long as we've had a game to play and forums to argue on... It's also not only about changes included in Page 4, or what's being done and discussed right now. Recent threads have just brought the observation more into focus, I guess. The level of hostility in a few of them has been unusual, even for a gaming forum. Anyway, I'm just going to sum up and say that this particular player at least feels like they're slowly being voted off of our proverbial island and I'm grouchy about it.

That wasn't a threat. It was just a statement. I have no interest in trolling anyone, honestly... I just see a direction in many of the conversations here and in the changes being made to the game over time that I don't really agree with or understand the motivations behind given the nature of the game. From here, it looks like lining up a particular preferred playstyle. It's fine if you disagree. We're never all going to agree on anything... But that doesn't mean I'm trolling you by raising the issue or making the observation.

Maybe not, but if I really wanted to troll you this isn't the way I would do it... In the end, I suspect you and Moon and the rest are going to win. Those of us who don't fit the mold will find other games to play.

'Not the first time someone has decided I'm a troll for not agreeing with the direction something seemed to be going...

I'm getting the feeling more and more these days that a vocal segment of the forum population, and at least some of the Powers That Be. have a very definite "type" of player that they want to encourage, attract to these servers and keep engaged.... Team-oriented, challenge-oriented, all-about-the-struggle sorts with Lore/Plot Snob tendencies (Not Roleplayers, mind, but people willing to put up with buckets of exposition and all of the god-awful writing of the legacy content). Anyone else is "doing it wrong" and seems to be seen as extraneous, or even actively harmful to what they want the game to be. Farmers (Active, AFK< whatever. We're all BADWRONGEVIL, apparently-), dedicated solos and small-team players, casuals who couldn't care less about Hard Modes, people who are here for the spectacle more than the backstories? Undesirables. Not the target audience. Not the 'right kind of people'. I don't get it. I really don't. One of the real strengths of the City has always been its variety of playstyles. Solo, full team, farm, roleplay, read all the things Loregasm... It all works. Or at least it always has. Apparently that annoys some people.

The whole Uncanny Valley thing has always hit some people harder than others... I've noticed that a lot with the photographs of my ball-jointed dolls. Reactions vary across the whole spectrum, from "Hey, those are cool" to "OMGNo! Get those creepy things away from me!". I'd be surprised, based on that, if we all had the same reaction to the CG images or realistic animations. Me? Those images cause no discomfort at all... The only similar thing that's ever freaked me out even a little was the Red Queen from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland movies. Her huge head really bothered me for some reason. Doll-wise the only ones that give me the heebies are Reborns. Those hit me pretty hard, so I *do* understand the feeling.

Ask my lady mages how happy they are that only male toons got the second group of Circle bits... The horn gloves, the caped shoulder piece, the Death Mage kilt and spikes... 😖

Heaven forbid anyone actually admit that hunting down 50 DE fungus monsters and then taking their lunch money to Azuria might not actually be fun... 😝

It's true....

The only characters on the map when I farm are typically Sunni and one of my own alts. Of *COURSE* the alt is a "sitter"! I'm not nearly coordinated enough to actively run two characters at once. 😆

It's fun once or twice in a kind of "I wonder if we can actually pull this off?" sort of way... but the number of times you have to repeat the arcs to actually build a character's iToys just sucks every single ounce of fun right out of them after awhile. That's one of the reasons I really hated the first AE change removing vet levels and their attendant rewards. Tossing that Sonic in with my farmer was a whole lot less annoying than leaving him in DA to re-run Heather and Mu V for his iBits.

As long as you HAVE a gourd, does it really matter whose it originally was? I mean,,, Your gourd now, right?

I'm just not online when iTrials are formed... Even though I actually do enjoy a couple of them, they just aren't a reasonable option for everyone. Also, not every character is suitable for running through Dark Astoria. (Not to mention how tiresome re-running those arcs over, and over, and over and over again gets, even on something that's good at it. On, say, a Sonic Defender? Deity help you. It's tedious beyond all rationality. o_O) The level grants are one of the single BEST things added to the post-Live game, I think. Regardless of server populations, along with iXP everywhere and taking the time gates off of DA, it allows those of us who can't (or don't want to-) grind iTrials a chance to complete our characters in a way that suits our play-styles and circumstances. With all due respect... changing that would be a pants-on-head STUPID move.

If that's really the belief of the Powers That Be and they ever act on it... Frankly, that tells me that my time here is probably limited. As I said in the other thread, pushing us back into "Team or Else!" for Incarnate progression would end my ever making another character. And that's the thing that would make me walk away. As Krimson said earlier, I suppose it's better to know that sooner than later, but it's still a disappointing revalation.

And right there is where you pushed me straight into "Nope"-territory. That makes them much less useful than Emps to those of us solo-Incarnating characters.