Everything else sucks compared to AE farming

[jubakumbi]

1 minute ago, The_Cheeseman said:

Sure, you may not have any problem with loot boxes, you may even enjoy them, but that doesn't mean they are harmless to society as a whole. There are a ton of examples of methods of psychological coercion that have been made illegal for consumer protection--just consider Ponzi schemes, or subprime mortgage securities, or similar shady business practices. You could blame the victims of such manipulation for being weak-willed or ignorant, at least until somebody uses such methods to take advantage of you. None of us are immune to the flaws in our psychology, and I think it is both right and proper to expect negative consequences for those who seek to exploit those flaws.

I hear you. I do, really.

I think about this stuff all the time, everyday, actually.

My father was a compulsive gambler to many.

The first time I walked onto a casino floor as an adult with money, I had my wife put the credit cards in the safe w/o me knowing the combination just in case.

I work in the finance industry, helping to implement marketing software to get people to spend more money.

..so yeah, it's something I think about and study.

 

If the companies stop using this method to fund things and use other methods, I would use those.

 

I simply don't think this is an area where other people have the 'right' to restrict me as a consumer from being allowed to buy randomized virtual loot to support a game company.

I realize another way to say the same thing sounds like 'regulate the predatory gaming industry to protect vulnerable individuals'.

 

It would not be the first thing that the herd disapproves of that I love, and I get tired of having things I like taken from me, just like everyone else...

[Neogumbercules]

On 9/25/2019 at 11:43 AM, MunkiLord said:

No. The ease of leveling up new characters is the single biggest factor in me sticking around, I have zero desire to grind out character after character for 100s of hours.. If you don't like it, don't do it. Stop trying to ruin other people's fun.

Agreed and I strongly believe they should revert the AE XP nerf as well. I look at a game like Diablo 3 as inspiration. The game is old and the journey to the level cap is just a means to an end... Creating a character and build and playing end-game content. 

 

The sidekick/exemplar system means any character can do any content. This game is 15 years old. Most people playing it have been there done that and just want to try out new build combinations. 

 

Letting people power level faster would get folks out of DFB and into task forces and incarnate content. What's wrong with that? 

[Haijinx]

28 minutes ago, Neogumbercules said:

 

Letting people power level faster would get folks out of DFB and into task forces and incarnate content. What's wrong with that? 

Wait .. you want people to level even FASTER?

 

/jranger

[Neogumbercules]

11 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Wait .. you want people to level even FASTER?

 

/jranger

Hell yeah. The end game variety and the sheer number of build combinations would support it. 

[swordchucks]

14 hours ago, Neogumbercules said:

Letting people power level faster would get folks out of DFB and into task forces and incarnate content. What's wrong with that? 

All this would accomplish is leaving level 50 littered with discarded characters like level ~20 or so is now.  If you are just going to level it up to try it, there's a Beta server for that.  What I really don't understand is why you'd want to encourage more people to play the farming mini-game instead of the game-game. 

 

If you really want a fast way to level an alt, then there should be an end-game item you can buy with non-farm currency that can insta-level a character.  Let's say it's 1000 reward merits.  Heck, let it go on the AH.  They'd probably go for ~250 million and serve to take some inf out of the economy and serve as a way for non-farmers to make money.

[ZeeHero]

Selling merit things has worked WAY better for me than boring AE farming. dunno what the OP is on about.

[Snakebit]

14 hours ago, Neogumbercules said:

Agreed and I strongly believe they should revert the AE XP nerf as well. I look at a game like Diablo 3 as inspiration. The game is old and the journey to the level cap is just a means to an end... Creating a character and build and playing end-game content. 

 

The sidekick/exemplar system means any character can do any content. This game is 15 years old. Most people playing it have been there done that and just want to try out new build combinations. 

 

Letting people power level faster would get folks out of DFB and into task forces and incarnate content. What's wrong with that? 

I really do feel you on this, but you can tune up a 50 on the test server pretty fast. One session will tell you if you like the toon or not and the effort needed to get from the CC to a kitted out 50 really is minimal. 

 

I'm not a huge fan of the content below 32 but I feel like I get through it plenty fast enough. I don't run task forces except for the occasional Yin/Market Crash and I don't do a whole lot of radio missions solo. I mostly find street mobs or hit a few non-farm arcs set with specific mobs I like to fight on specific maps (like Tsoo or Warriors in ship maps or Croatoa) and I spend a bit of time running Ouro. 

 

From 32 on up through 38 I like to take my time while the build matures and then blow through the earlier 40's to about 45 and slow down again. 

 

The pace of what we have right now is very suitable to a lot of playstyles.  I can't see buffing xp gain for the sake of buffing xp gain. 

[Haijinx]

5 hours ago, Neogumbercules said:

Hell yeah. The end game variety and the sheer number of build combinations would support it. 

It takes about 1 night of power leveling to hit 50.

 

It takes less than a week of PUGs 

 

Solo, at +0, x1 2-3 weeks.  

 

Any faster and they should just give you a level 50.  

 

 

[QueenBethari]

Hello, everyone! I played CoH for a couple of months in 2011, so the game is still pretty new to me.

I've been playing MMO's in general for many years. I've got a severe case of altitis and I've always been a painfully slow leveler. I really like the way AE farms are. I think it's really awesome to catch up on levels, then go back and play the story missions. It still takes me weeks to level a character, but with AE farms I can gain levels much faster.

I really appreciate this option for people like me who haven't gotten very good yet at the game.

[EyeLuvBooks]

On 9/25/2019 at 10:58 AM, quixoteprog said:

While I agree that farming is more rewarding thant SOLOING content, I don't think it is as off kilter as you think. It is true that you can progress REALLY quickly, especially in early levels, but the risk of dying and running up debt does not seem to me to be much less than running three or four DFBs, and you don't level THAT much faster. I have NEVER face planted on one of those.

 

I remember that it took nearly two years on Live before I got a 50 (the alt-itis is strong with me). After that, I averaged one every 2-3 months until shutdown. I don't want to do that again.

 

I also remember people charging Inf to PL other characters. I saw a little of that after the Return but I haven't seen such posts in months. Why pay when almost daily there are calls for PI +4/x* Council radios or people in the AE offering to let others door camp?

 

The most fun I have is doing the MSR (often run several times a day) or a good team in PI. Yeah...you can solo yourself to 50 in a day or two if you can stind running the exact same thing over and over but I can't. I was on a PI team just this morning and when one isn't running I hop on a high-level and start my own. The xp speed is crazy on a good PI team and IMHO it's a LOT less boring than the AE.

[GamerKate]

I had 36 alts back on Live but only a few at lvl 50, and now I have 9 at lvl 22 or so. I’m a story-hound so I very rarely farm, and even when I do it’s on occasions such as getting to Doc Delilah at lvl 19.5, where I need half a level to unlock her arc, do I’ll go do a DiB until I hit 20. I have done the moon map farm a few times when i couldn’t get on a DiB

 

I have done The Hollows, Faultline and Montague Csstenella umpteen time’s now and I have got to the stage where it’s kind of like farming, the various maps and missions are so familiar lol. Some people have said they farm because they’re bored of playing the same content over and over but isn’t that what farming is?

 

Redoing the same content over and over with different toons has become something I now look forward to. I have beaten Arbiter Sands on 9 different ATs and powerset combos, and it’s interesting to me to think ‘ok, next mission  Arbiter Sands, how shall I approach him on a TA/A defender?’ or whatever my new toon is. 

 

And that I think is pretty  much the same mindset taken by people who like to farm to 50 and then play their toons through the incarnate trails over and over, they’re seeing how to apply new sets to the same content. We’re not so different. 

 

i’d personally go crazy if I had to do the same map in the AE from 1-50. 

 

But each to their own, CoH is a big sandbox and there’s room for us all. 

 

Just please don’t make the normal content any faster at levelling. We already outlevel content at the rate we go. 

 

For some of us CoH continues to be ‘journey not destination’. 

 

MCM

 

ps I also like the destination, I have v fond memories of incarnate content from Live. I’m just really savouring ALL the content, I’m in no rush to get to 50 yet 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

This isnt the first game Ive seen the debate of risk vs reward vs time vs reward debate come up. DDO aka dungeons and dragons online has seen this very debate pop up over and over through the years. I think on DDO its a more heated topic because of the many years of PnP table top play we have under our belts and the constant of a DM to regulate the challenge and rewards based on a given group.

 

But both boil down to the same basic thing. If I am doing something of greater risk do I not deserve more? A good example of this is in CoH when you solo set to X8 you are getting every bit of XP that would normally be split up among a full 8 man party. In DDO due to xp being awarded at the end of completion and killing not mattering all that much, people zerg there to no end because every extra fight is a waste not more xp.

 

So on one hand CoH has already handled one aspect of the situation. When we take on greater personal risk we see a direct rise in our XP earned, so if we can kill at a very high rate then we end up earning more then slower killers against fewer foes. The idea some others have put forth in this thread about certain mob factions giving more XP imo actually has merit based on CoH already rewarding based on difficulty.

 

We all know why people are farming council over just about every other faction. We know why folks are complaining about the threat the debuffing mobs of ToT to lower lvl characters represent. Because we know which groups are easier and which are nastier to the average build and player.

 

We could easily double the XP rates for groups like malta and the carnival for example, hell could likely triple or quadruple the xp given by the Ruluruu and 99% of players would still avoid the shadow shard like a pool filled with the contents of an outhouse. Heck I think we could all agree this wouldnt be only high end factions, the Vahz, the various praetorian mobs, all could give about double the normal xp, and have higher drop rates for rare goods. IMO anything that would encourage players to push the boundaries of their comfort zone would be a good thing.

 

Now if we could only get an update to the dif scale system to allow us to pick what type of mobs, add random buffed mobs, or add abilities to mobs like granting them all flight would be imo a great addition letting us fine tune the content we play.

[Frostbiter]

I'm going to add my 2 cents into the "xp rates don't need buffed" crowd. There are plenty of ways to do that yourself already and for those of us who like the leveling experience through the content it's far too fast to do more than a story-arc or maybe two every 5 levels. Even 30-40 only took me 4 story arcs and that used to be the painfully slow levels. I think we need a new xp rate that matches what it was on Live personally. 

[GamerKate]

I think it took me well over a year, maybe even 2, to get my first 50 back on Live lol. I always had altitis, so at that point I might have had a few more in the low 40s. 

[MunkiLord]

38 minutes ago, Frostbiter said:

I'm going to add my 2 cents into the "xp rates don't need buffed" crowd. There are plenty of ways to do that yourself already and for those of us who like the leveling experience through the content it's far too fast to do more than a story-arc or maybe two every 5 levels. Even 30-40 only took me 4 story arcs and that used to be the painfully slow levels. I think we need a new xp rate that matches what it was on Live personally. 

Is the base XP buffed over how it was on live?

 

FWIW I'm not opposed to your suggestion at all, if some people want less xp I'm all about giving them that option. 

[Frostbiter]

6 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

Is the base XP buffed over how it was on live?

 

FWIW I'm not opposed to your suggestion at all, if some people want less xp I'm all about giving them that option. 

No I'm mistaken, I looked back at the patch notes and it was set back to 100% XP Rates on 5/19/19. 

[golstat2003]

On 9/27/2019 at 11:05 AM, swordchucks said:

All this would accomplish is leaving level 50 littered with discarded characters like level ~20 or so is now.  If you are just going to level it up to try it, there's a Beta server for that.  What I really don't understand is why you'd want to encourage more people to play the farming mini-game instead of the game-game. 

 

If you really want a fast way to level an alt, then there should be an end-game item you can buy with non-farm currency that can insta-level a character.  Let's say it's 1000 reward merits.  Heck, let it go on the AH.  They'd probably go for ~250 million and serve to take some inf out of the economy and serve as a way for non-farmers to make money.

This actually isn't a bad idea.

[MunkiLord]

25 minutes ago, Frostbiter said:

No I'm mistaken, I looked back at the patch notes and it was set back to 100% XP Rates on 5/19/19. 

I still like the idea of giving people 50% xp(or whatever number) if that is what they want. In fact, I think a slider would be ideal. 

Edited October 8, 2019 by MunkiLord

[Snakebit]

10 hours ago, MrCaptainMan said:

Some people have said they farm because they’re bored of playing the same content over and over but isn’t that what farming is?

 

So I played from Issue 0 for 5 years and then I left for about a year and then played again for about 6 months, kept my sub active for a year or so. I didn't actually cancel it, my debit card expired. So I've played from both perspectives, which is grinding up new toons without travel powers or inherent fitness, when mission bonus was half what it is now, and when you could easily hit the debt ceiling by sticking with a weak PUG. No IO's, no set's. Everyone was scrambling to fund their alt's with SO's and it was an actual problem to level too fast through the 20's. You could easily run out of missions, which left street grinding. Then they changed the debt structure so that running missions was more efficient than patrolling, so  you could no longer find patrol teams. So when you ran out of missions you could either solo street spawns (while struggling to fund your DO's). Farming did eventually sprout up and the dev's nerfed the game realllly hard.

 

So pretty much everything that can be done I've either done or done something similiar enough to say "yeah, done that but at level 20 instead of level 50 +2 level shifted with 10 to 20 times more offensive and defensive power". It's all the same now. Speed ITF is a shorter version of FrostFire but easier. But only just recently did I roll an actual farmer with the intent to power farm to max efficiency. I'm not quite there yet, but it's getting close. I can now PL my main account toons whenever I feel like it, or don't. And I was surprised at how NOT GRINDY feeling it is. I can jump in fast clear or long runs and I can focus on one thing....clearing spawns in the shortest possible time. I don't know if you ever played Gran Turismo, but I get the same feeling of satisfaction from tuning the build and running it as I did tuning and running 1,000hp burners and running Laguna Seca. I'm a much bigger fan of doing that right now than I am TF's. 

 

Plus I don't have to set foot in another damned cave. 

[MunkiLord]

20 minutes ago, cejmp said:

I don't know if you ever played Gran Turismo, but I get the same feeling of satisfaction from tuning the build and running it as I did tuning and running 1,000hp burners and running Laguna Seca. I'm a much bigger fan of doing that right now than I am TF's. 

I prefer Burnout Paradise because I don't have to use brakes. It's like Scrapperlock on wheels.

[StratoNexus]

5 hours ago, Frostbiter said:

I'm going to add my 2 cents into the "xp rates don't need buffed" crowd. There are plenty of ways to do that yourself already and for those of us who like the leveling experience through the content it's far too fast to do more than a story-arc or maybe two every 5 levels. Even 30-40 only took me 4 story arcs and that used to be the painfully slow levels. I think we need a new xp rate that matches what it was on Live personally. 

I think the current rate matches the rate at shutdown, but I may be fancifully misremembering. I think farming is pretty good at the current level of gain, although I could see adjusting it down to 40% instead of 50% (but I honestly do not care either way). I do like that farmers are crafting IOs and selling them as well as their recipes on the market. Thank you all very much for that.

 

At this point I wish there was a setting to gain XP, but not actually change my security level until I hit a trainer. While leveling up in mid-mission is sometimes fun, I often find myself turning my difficulty level up before entering a mission when I am sure to level early on in the mission, because I don't want to fight most of a mission at an easier than desired setting (and then forgetting to turn it back down for the next mission and fighting a difficulty level higher than desired for a mission). Additionally, I have now out leveled a zone three times when I did not want to (and I have successfully actively managed turning off XP when needed for 4 other characters). Yes, I can (and did) use Ouroboros to run the missions I out leveled, but I generally prefer to run missions while in the proper level range plus Ouro does not always get everything right for some of the Praetoria missions. The first time, I thought I had one more level until I out-leveled the zone. The second time I had xp shut off, then turned it back on for one thing but forgot to turn it back off. The last time I swear I had XP shutoff but the settings had reset on the next login (or there was human error, but I am pretty sure I did this correctly).

 

I do not mind turning XP off, but it is very frustrating when a simple mistake causes me to lose out on getting through all the contacts I desire.

[skoryy]

 

Honest question, if y'all are tired of caves and task forces, then what exactly are you doing with the new characters you're farming for?

[Snakebit]

10 minutes ago, skoryy said:

 

Honest question, if y'all are tired of caves and task forces, then what exactly are you doing with the new characters you're farming for?

I get my characters to about 38 and then run radios with a hefty dose of Abandon Mission, join the task forces and trials I like (Yin, any of the respect trials, Market, TTtV, etc) and patrols or some of my own AE missions that some may consider farms but don't fall under the usual umbrella of "farms". 

[roleki]

On 9/25/2019 at 11:43 AM, MunkiLord said:

No. The ease of leveling up new characters is the single biggest factor in me sticking around, I have zero desire to grind out character after character for 100s of hours.. If you don't like it, don't do it. Stop trying to ruin other people's fun.

This.  Not everybody has a burning need to run through the same content 1-50 on every toon, then spend eternity running the same 4 TFs to slog their way to T4s, and frankly, if I tried to level an Ice/TA the old-fashioned way I would claw my eyes out.  So I farm my alts.  I get fresh 50s, the community gets a bunch of recipes and salvage they otherwise wouldn't have, I don't see what the problem is.  

[Scientist]

I like the options available now, from double XP to turning it off (though a friend has seen a bug where XPs turned back on for him after logging out and back in, that was annoying).  I have never been into the AE or other mission map farming, but am happy it supplies the market, and cutting AE XPs by 2x early on seems to have been about the right factor to send people to a wider variety of content and apparently reduce load on the servers a lot.  I'd rather make my money marketing, but I'm glad other people enjoy farming and buying the stuff I'm selling.  

 

When starting on Homecoming, I've gotten 3 characters to 50 quickly by a mix of TFs and joining +4/x8 council teams, so I can participate in high level content in any of the major roles needed, support, tank and dps.  I've got several others where I plan to play a lot of solo, story arc stuff because it has been many years since I've seen it, so they will be many months to 50.  One character is shutting off XPs for much of the 1-20 range so I can duo Praetoria with a friend and see that, most of which I never did in the original game.  I like to do a variety of things, and CoX is supporting that.