Please uncap Hami zones again....

[TCUFROGS]

I for 1 loved how we could ZERG Hami and move on, I do like the fact that you kill him properly now, but maybe make 2 zones 1 for people who want to zerg it and others who want to do the fight. It is hard enough to get merits to support my ALT addiction, but now it is a grind I don't know if I can handle. 

[Warlawk]

Or... you know, don't.

 

200 merits in an hour is something like 8 times the intended rate. It's easier than it ever has been to fund alts, ruining a cool event by allowing it to be brute forced down by three times the intended number of people is completely unneeded.

[Hedgefund]

Let's be frank, 200 merits is the floor, many people (100% of people that are me) brought in a different alt for each round for 400 merits total.  

 

So to the "leave the zone cap alone" crowd, are you ok with the reward merit going to about 10 merits?  Because that's the amount that aligns it somewhat with other merit rewards.

[Echo Night]

Longish reply.

 

TLDR: Cap sucks, but is needed. This is the End Game baby!

 

So, the way I see it is, you're going to have three main types of people looking at this from their own perspectives. The first type is those that have their main and a few, maybe all of their alts fully geared out due in part because of how the raid was handled the last few months. The second type have at least their main geared up and don't really care. The third type (which is where I lie) don't have any of their chars to include their main, geared out at all. This could be for various reasons. Altitis for me, only back for a short time and a little one. I've only been back for a little over a month, maybe 45 days and roughly around the time that the game came back, my daughter was born. I'm a single father of four, so you can imagine where the bulk of my time gets spent. I had no idea that this game was back until I read a post over in DCUO that it was indeed back. I didn't hesitate and dropped the cash grab DCUO like it was a bad habit. It was. Well, so is this game, but it's a bad habit that I love. Btw, I'm not blaming anyone for my lack of 50's or pointing fingers or even suggesting any sort of compensation for my loss of time. I'm just laying out my facts and presenting them in a way that you may understand. Again, no blaming. Not blaming...

 

Within the last few days, I finally got my first 50, ran a hami (at level 49) and was disappointed with how quick and easy it was to take down. No mito phase, no need for an hours long wait and relatively no pre-planning. Some of the things that made a hami raid great, for me at least. I arrived an hour before hami-time. This is the part I don't like. I didn't know that there wasn't a zone cap so like live before, I was there an hour before I thought the raid would commence, just so I could be one of the 50 lucky ones. I hate having to stand around for an hour (when I could be earning) waiting for the raid to begin. The only thing that makes the wait worth while in the slightest, is the other players in the game. Seeing names I haven't seen in years is great and all, but not worth an hour long wait.

 

Sure, some people will say that I don't have to run the raid, but, I want to run the raid. It's fun when it finally gets going. But the cap always bothered me. I remember many a time where even an hour before the start time, not being able to get in. So, I'd stay at the door with a few others and move back and forth endlessly, hoping that I'd get lucky and get in. This sucked. That also meant that some poor unfortunate soul, dc'd and most likely wouldn't get back in because of the cap.

 

But here's the rub. I understand the need for a cap. This is end game stuff and it's not supposed to be "easy" or over and done with within 15 seconds or 45 seconds if run thrice. Ask the Avengers if End Game was easy. Black Widow and Iron Man died for Pete's sake! It should take time to plan and it should take some effort to complete. For me, running one raid before the cap was put back in place (literally the next day) was a bit of a downer until my noodle remembered that there are so many other ways to earn merits that don't involve a one hour wait. One hour of play time, sure. But that's infinitely better than not earning anything at all for one hour. Also, and I know that this will not be a popular suggestion, but maybe the devs should look into eliminating incarnate powers during the raid. We successfully completed it hundreds, thousands of times before incarnates, so why is there a need for them now? Hami hasn't evolved to a higher power since sun set low those many years ago, so why the need? Make Hami Great Again I say!

 

Echo Night - October Rust

[swordchucks]

5 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

for 400 merits total. 

400 merits only has a general value of about 100mil inf.  That's less than fire farmer can make in an hour.  So... your efforts put your rewards almost as high as someone sitting in AE and killing fire mobs for an hour?  Should we break out the torches and pitchforks because you're breaking the economy by almost rivaling something that hundreds of people are doing constantly?

 

In any case, I fell like the RWZ change is the one that makes the most sense to roll back without a lot of adjustment.  RWZ rewards were already pretty in line with other activities and having more people didn't really influence that.

[Corruption]

I don't think you understand how absolutely broken the Hami zerg is. The raid was designed for 50 players without Incarnate powers. Let alone 100+ players with incarnate powers. 

 

There's something seriously wrong when it takes 20x longer to form up than it does to actually complete the raid. The zerg is done in under 20 seconds, that's just absurd. 

 

With that said, it would've been nice for the devs to communicate that the increased zone cap was a bug. I don't think that's asking much. 

 

[Steampunkette]

6 minutes ago, swordchucks said:

400 merits only has a general value of about 100mil inf.  That's less than fire farmer can make in an hour.  So... your efforts put your rewards almost as high as someone sitting in AE and killing fire mobs for an hour?  Should we break out the torches and pitchforks because you're breaking the economy by almost rivaling something that hundreds of people are doing constantly?

 

In any case, I fell like the RWZ change is the one that makes the most sense to roll back without a lot of adjustment.  RWZ rewards were already pretty in line with other activities and having more people didn't really influence that.

"This exploit isn't as bad as the other exploit so we should just have both exploits" is not a good argument to get the cap raised.

 

It -is- a good argument to get the other exploit dragged into line, kicking and screaming.

[Corruption]

1 minute ago, Steampunkette said:

"This exploit isn't as bad as the other exploit so we should just have both exploits" is not a good argument to get the cap raised.

 

It -is- a good argument to get the other exploit dragged into line, kicking and screaming.

A fire farm isn't an exploit. 

 

The zone cap is a bug and a Hami raid should be compared to other end game content, not specific min/max scenarios. 

[Steampunkette]

3 minutes ago, Corruption said:

A fire farm isn't an exploit. 

 

The zone cap is a bug and a Hami raid should be compared to other end game content, not specific min/max scenarios. 

Fire Farming is an exploit. You get a massively disproportionate Risk to Reward Ratio. That is to say no risk and huge rewards.

 

You're right, though, that it was a bug... But it was a Bug people exploited for fast Merit Gain. Again, Risk to Reward.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Steampunkette

[swordchucks]

2 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

"This exploit isn't as bad as the other exploit so we should just have both exploits" is not a good argument to get the cap raised.

The thing is, I'm not arguing for an immediate raising of the Hami cap (the RWZ cap, yes - not Hami).  I think the answer for Hami is probably a zone cap based on performance (things get weird at 150 people, I know, so probably a good bit less than that) and a scaling difficulty so that it's possible to do with different sized groups and remove the possibility of the zerg rush.  I want more people in my Hami raid, but I don't want it to be one big rush to burn the thing down.

 

I'm just saying that 400 merits in about an hour isn't hugely out of line with the long-established profit level of AE farming.  Someone more knowledgeable than I am can comment on the history of it, but my understanding is that AE profits have always been very high and are generally accepted.  Having an activity that could almost rival that isn't a burning house that has to be addressed right this second, which is how this was addressed.

[Steampunkette]

1 minute ago, swordchucks said:

The thing is, I'm not arguing for an immediate raising of the Hami cap (the RWZ cap, yes - not Hami).  I think the answer for Hami is probably a zone cap based on performance (things get weird at 150 people, I know, so probably a good bit less than that) and a scaling difficulty so that it's possible to do with different sized groups and remove the possibility of the zerg rush.  I want more people in my Hami raid, but I don't want it to be one big rush to burn the thing down.

 

I'm just saying that 400 merits in about an hour isn't hugely out of line with the long-established profit level of AE farming.  Someone more knowledgeable than I am can comment on the history of it, but my understanding is that AE profits have always been very high and are generally accepted.  Having an activity that could almost rival that isn't a burning house that has to be addressed right this second, which is how this was addressed.

Back on live it used to be possible to make AE NPCs with no ranged attacks, hover your butt into the air, and farm from complete safety. It also used to be possible to make an entire enemy group made up of nothing but Rikti Comm Officers to open portals so you could farm the entire group of Officers after you destroyed their portal for extra XP on every spawn.

 

Paragon Studios made it so the AE did -not- reward XP at all. And then made it so that the AE didn't reward any influence or item drops, but instead gave you tickets you could use to buy items like you were at Chuck E. Cheese's.

 

Thanks to Arcanaville, a separate setup was designed where AE NPCs got different XP Values based on which powersets they had and how many of the powers of those powersets they were given access to. With a blanket "All enemies get 1 ranged power at minimum" to avoid people exploiting the game design setup. Now you can get normal rewards -or- Tickets.

 

Fire Farming is just another gameplay exploit like hoverfarming or Commfarming. You go into a situation you can't get killed in because you've stacked the deck against the NPCs. You've made certain they'll do minimal damage to you and you'll do maximum damage to them. 

[Foxfyre]

Gonna go ahead and chime in here.

Did we have fun with the Hive not having a cap?  Sure, we had loads of fun!  But you know what?  I honestly had more fun doing the raid last night the old school way than I'd had in a long time.

Running in and beating down Hami in 20 seconds wasn't fun anymore.  And I really don't believe anyone can say it was.

For further thoughts, read my post here:  

 

[swordchucks]

1 minute ago, Foxfyre said:

I honestly had more fun doing the raid last night the old school way

That's fair, but I personally did not.  The tone of the raid was very different and, frankly, a bit boring (as a controller, I was mostly hitting two buttons the whole fight).  Maybe it'll even out and relax in future weeks, but the first night wasn't encouraging. 

[Corruption]

You were always able to get influence and xp in AE missions, unless this was changed shortly before shutdown. 

 

Fighting enemies of a certain damage type is not an exploit in my opinion, there are regular missions where you can do just that. The xp values still scale depending on the powers and enemies still have a ranged attack. 

 

There were legitimate exploits in AE that Paragon Studies fixed over the years. 

 

 

[Steampunkette]

3 minutes ago, Corruption said:

You were always able to get influence and xp in AE missions, unless this was changed shortly before shutdown. 

 

Fighting enemies of a certain damage type is not an exploit in my opinion, there are regular missions where you can do just that. The xp values still scale depending on the powers and enemies still have a ranged attack. 

 

There were legitimate exploits in AE that Paragon Studies fixed over the years. 

 

 

What do you consider 'Legitimate Exploits'?

 

What's your minimum Threshhold of something being exploitative?

[Corruption]

26 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

What do you consider 'Legitimate Exploits'?

 

What's your minimum Threshhold of something being exploitative?

 

I consider the old ambush farms the devs on live never fixed to be an exploit. There were fire farms where you could stand in one place and hit the target cap with all of your attacks until everything was killed. 

 

That obviously was not an intended game design. Creating mobs of a certain damage type is an intended game design. There might have been oversights in the beginning, but changes were made to address them. Herding is still required to maximize AoE attacks and a min/max builds are needed in order to survive. You can still be killed quickly with a damage resist capped Brute if you don't have sufficient defense. 

 

Now back to Hami raids. I don't think the amount of merits is the issue. I can run a bunch of Task Forces for over 200 merits in less time than it takes to form up and complete these broken raids 3 times. However, it really should require me to cycle through my attack chain more than once to complete what's supposed to be some of the hardest content in the game. EoEs are supposed to be a necessity, but they weren't needed for these zergs unless you were tanking. 

 

 

[macskull]

2 hours ago, Steampunkette said:

Fire Farming is just another gameplay exploit like hoverfarming or Commfarming. You go into a situation you can't get killed in because you've stacked the deck against the NPCs. You've made certain they'll do minimal damage to you and you'll do maximum damage to them. 

By this logic, a team of 8 competent players running any content in the game is an exploit.

[Steampunkette]

2 minutes ago, macskull said:

By this logic, a team of 8 competent players running any content in the game is an exploit.

8 players working together to minimize the risk they each face is the game. Like... That's the point of it.

 

One person soloing +4x8 while being in no danger, and doing it fast enough to earn hundreds of millions of influence in an hour, is not. ESPECIALLY when the content created for the activity was -designed- by players to be fast-farmed. Like. Weaknesses explicitly created for maximum NPC slaughter in minimum time.

 

That's not "Hunting Council 'cause they're pretty easy since most of their damage is S/L". That's stacking the damned deck in your favor.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Steampunkette

[subbacultchas]

I haven't had much to say on the Hami changes. I just found out today that they were live.

I've run hami the past two months more times than I could count, probably running it 4 nights out of the week. About a month ago I stopped breaking whatever I was doing to run it, because even thought the merits were great, it really got old doing this with no risk. Only twice I've done it where we messed up and triple bloomed. I'm sure if Foxfyre is saying it was getting boring too, a lot of other people who don't frequent this forum felt the same.

The only thing that bothers me personally, is that I had the chance to make a couple billion inf easily over the last few months, and now others will not. It doesn't bother me that they corrected a wrong, and I believe them that they did, but that it's given me an unfair advantage over others. I just don't like it much, but that has more to do with me personally than any dev choice.

[macskull]

4 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

8 players working together to minimize the risk they each face is the game. Like... That's the point of it.

 

One person soloing +4x8 while being in no danger, and doing it fast enough to earn hundreds of millions of influence in an hour, is not. ESPECIALLY when the content created for the activity was -designed- by players to be fast-farmed. Like. Weaknesses explicitly created for maximum NPC slaughter in minimum time.

 

That's not "Hunting Council 'cause they're pretty easy since most of their damage is S/L". That's stacking the damned deck in your favor.

Almost everything we do as players in this game is to stack the deck in our favor - hell, just look at how OP a single character is even at base level compared to your average NPC, and then compare that to most other MMOs. I don't need to use an AE mission to make that kind of inf or XP, it's just a little faster and a little easier. If you really want to stop something like that then sure, you can disable XP and rewards for AE missions, but I think if that were to happen a not-insignificant portion of the playerbase would either significantly cut down on their play time or jump ship to a different server.

[Steampunkette]

3 minutes ago, subbacultchas said:

I haven't had much to say on the Hami changes. I just found out today that they were live.

I've run hami the past two months more times than I could count, probably running it 4 nights out of the week. About a month ago I stopped breaking whatever I was doing to run it, because even thought the merits were great, it really got old doing this with no risk. Only twice I've done it where we messed up and triple bloomed. I'm sure if Foxfyre is saying it was getting boring too, a lot of other people who don't frequent this forum felt the same.

The only thing that bothers me personally, is that I had the chance to make a couple billion inf easily over the last few months, and now others will not. It doesn't bother me that they corrected a wrong, and I believe them that they did, but that it's given me an unfair advantage over others. I just don't like it much, but that has more to do with me personally than any dev choice.

Easy answer: Costume Contests! Run 10 costume contests for 200 million inf, each!

 

Or less for more. Or more for less. Whatever!

 

2 minutes ago, macskull said:

Almost everything we do as players in this game is to stack the deck in our favor - hell, just look at how OP a single character is even at base level compared to your average NPC, and then compare that to most other MMOs. I don't need to use an AE mission to make that kind of inf or XP, it's just a little faster and a little easier. If you really want to stop something like that then sure, you can disable XP and rewards for AE missions, but I think if that were to happen a not-insignificant portion of the playerbase would either significantly cut down on their play time or jump ship to a different server.

Comparing CoH NPCs to the NPCs of WoW is a false equivalence. WoW wants you to fight 1-2 people solo and then more than that gets you killed. CoH wants you to fight 3-6 solo to start with and work your way up to something more Comic Booky.

 

And no. It's not "A little easier". It's -ridiculously- easier. Like scales of magnitude easier to get soooo much more inf in such a short period of time compared to being out in the regular missions made for the game. You don't earn hundreds of millions of Inf fighting the Council in Peregrine Island every hour. The farm missions are designed, from the ground up, to cram as many NPCs into the maps as possible.

[subbacultchas]

Oh I am not too worried about it Steampunkette. I've given away probably half a billion or more already, so I think I've done enough to assuage that feeling. Time will tell, right?

And the rest? Well let's just say I've got 5 fully IO'd characters and two more in the works. I don't feel bad enough to unslot them lol.

Edited September 11, 2019 by subbacultchas

[Profit]

I think the game a me shaming needs to stop. Just because you feel farming is an exploit doesn't make it so. I feel base building hurts my pool of potential teammates for content I choose to run because some base builders will build for 12 hour stretches. See how silly that sounds? 

 

You people who enjoy basebuilding, you build those massive things, some days I get an urge and troll the forums for base codes just to have a look, not often but I do. You people who enjoy slaughtering mobs by the masses and making billions of inf doing so, you farm your heart out. Inf means nothing in the current economy and likely won't ever with the massive seeding going on. You people who enjoy bashing each other's skulls in Warburg, let me find you a bigger stick so you can bash harder. 

 

But it stop the game shaming. At the end of the day, of you don't like how someone plays the game, ultimately it's not your call and you have NO RIGHT to tell the farmers/base builders/pvpers/rpers/marketeers/badgers/content runners how to enjoy the game. And no, your math doesn't matter and neither does the way you feel about said activities.

[Steampunkette]

7 minutes ago, Profit said:

I think the game a me shaming needs to stop. Just because you feel farming is an exploit doesn't make it so. I feel base building hurts my pool of potential teammates for content I choose to run because some base builders will build for 12 hour stretches. See how silly that sounds? 

 

You people who enjoy basebuilding, you build those massive things, some days I get an urge and troll the forums for base codes just to have a look, not often but I do. You people who enjoy slaughtering mobs by the masses and making billions of inf doing so, you farm your heart out. Inf means nothing in the current economy and likely won't ever with the massive seeding going on. You people who enjoy bashing each other's skulls in Warburg, let me find you a bigger stick so you can bash harder. 

 

But it stop the game shaming. At the end of the day, of you don't like how someone plays the game, ultimately it's not your call and you have NO RIGHT to tell the farmers/base builders/pvpers/rpers/marketeers/badgers/content runners how to enjoy the game. And no, your math doesn't matter and neither does the way you feel about said activities.

Base building doesn't drive influence inflation to affect the entire game's economy.

 

RPing doesn't let you corner the market.

 

And Teaming instead of Base Building doesn't deprive anyone of an awesome base to look at.

 

Nor does Soloing 'rob' anyone of the chance to play with others.

 

But Marketeering and Farming? Those things have a much wider impact than someone hanging out and deciding which potted plant to put in the corner of their house. Especially when you can exploit the game mechanics to gather wealth -far- more efficiently than doing either of those activities normally.

 

That's why the TFs got Reward Merit Nerfs. That's why the TFs got Reward Merit Limits on how often you can get rewards. That's why the AE was patched to no longer give XP or Item Drops. That's why the Aggro Cap and Target Cap got put into place.

 

Farming isn't bad. Grinding on mobs for a few hours to grab some Inf or just enjoy the feeling of beating up wave after wave of gormless minions isn't bad. Farming in an exploitative manner that skews the risk to reward ratio? It's a lot more hazy.

[Profit]

No it's not hazy at all. We have the ability to make our characters as customizable as possible. If someone wants to be impervious to fire they can. And that's awesome, right up until they try to do a stf on that finely tuned farmer. They get their butts handed to them. 

 

And for what it's worth, I can have a Hami, stf, lrsf, done in roughly 45 mins. Flood the market with 3 hamis and never mind the inf gained from destroying all those mobs. Also known as farming. Just not in the AE. But I guess that's an exploit to? Maybe I'll just run Harvey's demon map and remain impervious to fire. Also farming. 

 

So no, your arguments don't hold water because if someone wants to solo, I've lost a potential teammate. Roleplayers hanging out in PD all day long? same thing. Base builders? No they can't leave their base to team and that is making people miss out on those perfectly designed bases because time doing content is not time spent building.

 

it sounds like you, and lots of other people still have issues with live pricing. Do you know why prices were that way? No market from the beginning. People had tens of billions of inf when the market showed up and it's not that way now.

 

So no, it's not an exploit. What you need to do is ignore it, because it really doesn't effect you. Converters are everywhere, ATOs cost 10 million from readily seeded superpacks. You can get any io you want within 10 conversions from just drops. Need a Hami? Go fricken Hami. But lay off the farmers because the situation now is nothing like it was before economy wise. And your heartfelt arguments don't change that.