ShardWarrior

You can get rid of AE entirely and farmers will just move to the old farm maps, if they do not leave the game all together. It is not going to magically increase the number of people playing story content by suddenly forcing farmers into it.

I would also add the ability to add in Elite Bosses into each mob.

Well no, nice try but that is not what I was referring to and I believe you know that. I made specific mention of edge cases. Just like any other content in the game, there are edge cases where rewards are greatly outsized to the time, effort and risk involved. See the speed TF runs I mentioned. Following your logic, all of that content should be nerfed too because there are players who can game the system and earn full rewards within a handful of minutes. Even iTrials are being sped through with less than a full league. Thank you for posting. I find it interesting there are not any hard numbers posted there as they used to share back in the day. I also note that he refers to the "small subset of players" engaging in farming. It would be interesting to see stats on how many DFB runs are being done as well since you can bypass most all of the early game by running through it a few times. This bit is interesting too - Progression is too easy, nobody will run Incarnate content I cannot speak to all servers, however iTrials are run quite frequently on Excelsior and Torchbearer, at least during the times that I am online. The problem with iTrials here is that most require a full league.

Excellent question.

Twisting my words to fit your incorrect narrative does not bolster your statement. There is a lot of non-AE content that can offer outsized returns for the effort put into it. See the various speed TF runs. Those upset the whole time/effort versus reward ratio, perhaps even more so than AE farming. You keep asking everyone for data, yet I have yet to see any from you. Do you have any that shows AE content is that much superior to non-AE content? What reward goals are we talking about? XP? Inf? Reward merits? IO recipes? Special enhancements like Hami Os? Incarnate materials?

The question proceeds from a false assumption. AE does not always have dramatically outsized rewards. That might be true for a few edge cases, but it is not true under normal circumstances. Depending on what your reward goal is, there are many ways to get certain rewards faster than AE farming. It is the extreme edge cases that should be addressed. Surely there is a way to track accounts earning billions upon billions of influence across multiple characters in one day. Supposedly there are ways to detect gold farmers. Can the same type of code and tools not be used here?

That is definitely not universally true of everyone and it is more applicable to commercial games as there is a financial incentive for companies to keep accounts active. The longer accounts are active and keep playing, the longer they are paying. Homecoming is not a commercial venture. I would add that it seems folks here have found a pace that they find enjoyable and feel like they are earning something for their time. If most people truly wanted instant gratification, more people would be on Brainstorm rolling up as many free, fully kitted level 50s as they wanted each with limitless billions of inf. Let us not forget, Homecoming has added great new story content, new powersets, made balance adjustments and upgraded the back end code. None of it has brought in large masses of new players. They can continue doing the same and there will still not be masses of new players coming in. Removing AE will not bring in masses of new players. Personally, yes I would. I am fortunate enough to enjoy what I am doing. I have known quite a few people over the years who could have retired early or were wealthy enough they did not need to work, but chose to because they liked what they did for a career. I do not expect others to feel the same.

I would love to see Godzilla/kaiju level monsters introduced.

This is spot on. I would love to see the objective data that AE farming is the sole reason for the declining population and not other factors. Until then it is all assumption.

You seem to be making a rather large assumption here. Is AE the sole problem? Are there any other contributing factors? Outside of our own social circles, none of us know with any degree of certainty why other players come and go. Just being honest, I think a lot of people here want to lay all the blame of all problems on one thing in particular and are viewing the game through rose tinted glasses. The game is old. The engine is old. The game cannot compete with newer titles with more frequent content updates. That very well could be a contributing factor to population just as much, if not more so than AE. It is a mistake to try and single out AE farming as the sole reason for everything wrong with the world in my opinion.

You are assuming that a new player would get bored quickly and leave. For all anyone knows, they will become another 18+ year veteran like the rest of us. Nobody knows.

So the fact that there are a great many veteran players here who have been playing for 18+ years, have not gotten bored and left - which directly contradicts your "people will get bored and leave" generalization - is not enough proof for you? Ok..... 🙄

I did not say that no one should have or share an opinion. You are of course welcome to share your opinion, same as me and everyone else. Nor am I saying anyone is right or wrong in how they choose to play as I said in my post. I simply pointed out that the generalization you made is false and can be proven to be false by just looking around. Facts are facts.

Side question for you - can melee classes get Sister Valeria/Valkyrie's powers? Please say yes. 😁

I play most on Excelsior and there definitely is quite a lot of people in LFG asking for farms. To be fair though, there are also quite a lot of people advertising teams for TFs and other non-AE content too. During my usual play hours, I think I see SBB and ITF being advertised every few minutes. iTrial activity seems to have picked up as well.

There were many things that got added to the game like PvP, the Auction House, Villains - the list can go on. I also would not agree that AE surpasses the rewards from all the content all of the time. It depends on what you are comparing here. Are you comparing this to your average non-AFK farmer? Or the edge case AFK farmers? If the former, given how quickly some of the TFs can be sped through, those merits and/or unique enhancement drops can add up pretty quick. Especially when the TFs/SFs are the WST. Market Crash can be sped through and is a guaranteed purple recipe drop first time your character runs through it whereas purple recipe drops are random in farming. You can rack up influence fairly quickly running radios or farming PI portal missions too. Hami raids go quick with some very good rewards. SBB can be farmed for the Overwhelming Force IO drops that are worth a nice bit of inf in the AH as well. Enterprising players can rack up quite a bit of valuable stuff pretty quickly without ever setting foot in AE. Personally, I very much enjoy having the option to alternate between the regular content and AE. It is nice to have all the options. If you are strictly speaking about AFK fire farmers, I admit I do not know enough about it to really make a comparison there.

Fair enough and no apology necessary. Everyone has views and opinions that are shaped by their own biases. We all could come up with fantasy "what about this" scenarios of what a new player may or may not do. Best to leave the decision on what is best for them up to those unique individuals. I like the believe they are smart enough to find their own way and make their own decisions.

Well no, I said absolutely nothing even remotely of the sort. Again, you are making assumptions about what a potential new player may or may not do.

You are making a rather large assumption any new players if they do find the game will not want to play through the story. It is much, much better to let people decide for themselves what is and is not fun for them personally. If a new player wants to team up, solo, play through the story or hop in an AE farm, more power to them. That is the beauty of what we have here. There is something for everyone. Stop worrying so much about what new players may or may not do and let them make up their own mind. Focus on what you find fun and stick to that.

This is unequivocally false. All veterans posting here in these forums and playing the game have been here going on 18+ years. We are still playing. A great many of us will be here until the server collapses or the world ends, whichever comes first. We have not gotten bored and left. There is absolutely positively no reason whatsoever to falsely believe there are not others who will feel exactly the same. The game could be altered to make your every wish come true and there will still be people who will come and go. As for what makes CoH great, there are many different reasons for many different people. Please stop judging others on what brings them joy and what they should or should not enjoy in playing the game. There is no right or wrong way to play.

Had some free time this morning and rolled up a Temporal Warrior Stalker to test. I spawned in RV as expected and spoke to Castle to level up. Character creation and leveling is working as expected. I did not get a chance to test going over to Pocket D or any SG bases yet. Question - would it be possible to add quick access to the other PvP zones in RV? Would make things a bit easier I think to travel back and forth without having to rely on Pocket D.

That is not really balanced with merit gains from normal content though.

Depends on what rewards are important to the individual. Fire farming may have better XP/inf/salvage etc returns than running a +4 ITF. However, if the reward you are looking for is playing with a group of people and running content together, then the ITF is more rewarding. The inverse of that is also true. I think it a mistake to be so laser focused on one kind of reward in these discussions. Just my 2 inf.

So it is possible and we can expect this next update then? 😁 Yes, of course I am joking.

As I understood it this would only be possible by a complete engine rewrite. Champions was the next generation engine after CoH.