Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[Zeraphia]

Just now, Shadeknight said:

Fire farms are still the go-to. They will be until they do something other than a very minuscule change.

Stop over-exaggerating, please.

"Very miniscule" overtime becomes "very large" if "very miniscule" adds up just enough. They have already nerfed AE farms before, they are now nerfing them again. I think around a third of the gain of what you used to be able to make overall is actually not an exaggeration, that is not miniscule. Perhaps this indicates other activities should be rewarding other gameplay styles better and not nerfing?

[Obus Form]

Just now, Murcielago said:

I enjoy constantly changing market dynamics, making massive amounts of money the same way gets boring after a while. Give me real and measurable challenges. 

We got a bull here

[Kanil]

8 minutes ago, Not Horus said:

...true.

 

7 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

False.

 

6 minutes ago, Not Horus said:

Wrong.

 

Right!

[Peerless Girl]

1 hour ago, mrultimate said:

Once again the little crybabies get their wish. It wasn't hurting anyone. Feels like "YOU WILL PLAY THE WAY WE WANT YOU TO OR ELSE"

Yes, that's called "game development" every dev team and publisher does it. You just aren't used to it being done again on CoH. Be glad you have a game.

[SuperDan]

2 minutes ago, lythy77 said:

This change sucks plane and simple. I love farming i play a lot of toons im a real hardcore altaholic. i love messing around with builds and playing them.  then i get bored and make something else and so does my kids.  I do their builds and we play many alts.  i wasn't hurting anyone. i farmed a lot and only just had enough to kit the kids out as we waste so much inf.. why ? because we found this fun and kept us playing.  i know many of you will disagree and the trolls will be out in force but this is how i feel about the situation.  its been this way  for a very long time.  

Same boat....

With 2xp I've amassed 17 50's from casual play since last June (about half of which were plvl'd to late 20's). Once I get to 50 and unlock alpha, I decide whether or not I want to deck a toon out based on how fun it is to play or what I think its potential could be based on playing it to 50 with standard IO's. Then I'll come up with a build and start farming for inf to deck him out.

 

Out of those 17 50's I only have one that's completely purpled out. The rest are budget to midrange builds.  About 1/3 of those 50's were melted down to provide hancies for other 50's I wanted to maximize. I sell purple drops for 1 inf, rare salvage for 1 inf, everything sold for 1 inf. I'm not looking to take advantage of anyone, in fact, I want to help people that don't want to farm as much as I can. It's people like me that keep the market seeded with rares. And my guess is it's farmers like me that help keep prices somewhat stable.

I'll repeat what's been said here again... If you want to keep the market under control, start by going after the marketers and nerfing enhancement converters. 

 

Law of unintended consequences...you'll see a spike on multiboxing AE  and afk farming, which is a huge server load. Extrapolate action/reaction from there and see how far it goes.

[Infinitum]

19 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

I've got people saying that farming will still be the go-to. It's just no longer an absurd lead over things.

Which is good.

If You think farming yields more than trading you are not up to speed on any of this.  Trading can get you 250 million every 30 min if you are good at it.

 

Farming is less boring and more of a community activity, so yeah lets discourage that. *rolls eyes*

[Herotu]

10 minutes ago, Kanil said:

 

 

 

Right!

1+2+2+1

Edited March 31, 2020 by Herotu

[Bopper]

I feel bad for the devs. They work their asses off for free to develop new content (powerset, 5 IOs, new pool, etc), and the day they get to offer it to the community and enjoy a moment of accomplishment, everyone complains a nerf to influence farming is ruining the free game they play. The same game brought back from the ashes a year ago, that we never thought would happen.

 

Let's be honest, farming still makes a boatload of influence. I am not a hyper efficient farmer nor did I every disable my XP for influence, and yet farming still made me tons of money. Learning now of the exploits that could be achieved (patrol xp + 2x influence +level 49), it wouldn't surprise me if someone was outpacing me with afk farming. Good for them. I bet it was fun while it lasted, but I am suspicious of claims that they are the reason the market doesn't collapse. The market will be fine. Between merits, converters, seeding, super packs, and regular farming, nobody will have a hard time making what they need. 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Bopper

[Peerless Girl]

51 minutes ago, SuperDan said:

 

Tagging this phrasing on to the back end of a massive nerf - one that wasn't mentioned until it was taken live, mind you - makes it feel like the origination of the Regen nerf on live, all the way back in I2-I3. The devs nerfed that set so hard over subsequent updates that it played completely differently and actually underperformed compared to the rest of the sets. Something similar will happen here. You tinker with economies enough, a collapse of some kind will eventually result.

Alarmist is Alarmist. It wasn't a stealth nerf, it was an exploit. Exploits are specifically not listed in patch notes. My assumption is this has been in the works for a VERY long time, and just happend to be enacted now. This has been an issue since those options went into the game, back on live.

[flyinggecko]

24 minutes ago, Murcielago said:

So you're making 180m after an hour of playing. I make that in a day with 15 mins of my time while still being able to play other content instead of endless farming. 

LOL! Yeah, 180m ... not counting the salvage, enhancement, and recipe drops... on three accounts simultaneously. 

[DR_Mechano]

If ever there was a case of 'closing the door AFTER the horse has bolted' this 'fix' was it. Fixing the exploit I understand but then nerfing the inf gain...*eyeroll*, this needed to be done ON LAUNCH of HC not now, over a year later, all it's doing now is pissing people off and making it so the haves (the people with 2 billion inf on multiple characters) are in a MUCH better position than the have-nots and that is, if you pardon my language, frankly fucking stupid.

 

Even IF these fix does actually do something, it's going to take probably like MONTHS to actually take effect, like well over 6 months as people burn off any major excess inf they have and, as mentioned, it doesn't hit the people who actually roll around in inf, those that use the market via the convert flipping trick, all you've done is just smash the supply chain for regular players.

 

 

[DR_Mechano]

2 minutes ago, Peerless Girl said:

Alarmist is Alarmist. It wasn't a stealth nerf, it was an exploit. Exploits are specifically not listed in patch notes. My assumption is this has been in the works for a VERY long time, and just happend to be enacted now. This has been an issue since those options went into the game, back on live.

No the exploit was earning more than double inf WHILST HAVING PATROL XP, the exploit was not the, working as intended, double XP when exemping option. They fixed the exploit and then REMOVED that option...so yes, it is a nerf, reading comprehension much?

Edited March 31, 2020 by DR_Mechano

[Peerless Girl]

38 minutes ago, Inflated Donkey said:

Yes, they exist and are basically ghost towns.  I don't understand your point.   is this just the "if you don't like it you can get out" thing?  There are 0 comparable alternatives to homecoming. ZERO.
 

And a year ago there were ZERO CoH's and there never would be again, and before that there was no alternative to Cryptic/Paragon either.

[hazygreys]

Just now, Peerless Girl said:

And a year ago there were ZERO CoH's and there never would be again, and before that there was no alternative to Cryptic/Paragon either.

Not quite true, is it tho. 

[Freeblast]

57 minutes ago, SuperDan said:

 

. These days you can simply go play on another server.

Have a safe trip?

[Crysis]

44 minutes ago, SuperDan said:

I think the bolded point has a lot to do with it.

With double xp you could easily level a toon from 1-50 within a few days of casual play. Plvl them to 50 in a few hours. Have them completely purpled out in a matter of a week or so of casual play/farming.

You do that with enough toons and eventually it gets old for everyone, save the hardest of hardcore CoH fans.

I’d argue the overwhelming MAJORITY of the playerbase here are returning players looking for a retro experience.  So basically, we are already starting with the same diminished playerbase we had back on Live, but without a marketing campaign to support new player recruitment, it’s totally word of mouth.  Thus, you’ve got a few thousand players who basically control the outcome of this server, or any like it.

 

And at a few thousand active players, a loss of even 10% of those is going to be noticed.  Perhaps not in the marketplace immediately given the Devs seeding models.  Simple math.  This game can’t afford to be expelling any members unless we want Homecoming to eventually look like Thunderspy or any of the others from a “boutique membership” perspective.  Then again, given the origins of Homecoming, perhaps this is exactly what they desire....a very small, very hardcore but “select” user base.

[ForeverLaxx]

51 minutes ago, Zeraphia said:

Look, I'm sorry and I'm really not trying to personally attack you but I despise this line of arguing grotesquely. "Well, if you don't like it, just go live in a different country." Playing a game and which country you live in are obviously different, but the principle that you have friends and communities made on this server and this game are still there. This line of arguing does not bring about any positive changes and it undermines others' opinions. 

Not that I disagree with your premise, but the person you're quoting was using the "go to another server" as a threat against making "unpopular" changes. They weren't telling people to leave; they were telling the devs that if they tinker too much then they won't have any players anymore.

[Indystruck]

Gotta say, "thanks alot crybabies for this horrible nerf, you got your way now, are you happy?!" is an odd take. Mostly an odd, projectionist take.

[Inflated Donkey]

11 minutes ago, Bopper said:

I feel bad for the devs. They work their asses off for free to develop new content (powerset, 5 IOs, new pool, etc), and the day they get to offer it to the community and enjoy a moment of accomplishment, everyone complains a nerf to influence farming is ruining the free game they play. The same game brought back from the ashes a year ago, that we never thought would happen.

 

 

 

 

 

If this was a concern of theirs, there was an easy way to avoid it.

[Peerless Girl]

7 minutes ago, DR_Mechano said:

If ever there was a case of 'closing the door AFTER the horse has bolted' this 'fix' was it. Fixing the exploit I understand but then nerfing the inf gain...*eyeroll*, this needed to be done ON LAUNCH of HC not now, over a year later, all it's doing now is pissing people off and making it so the haves (the people with 2 billion inf on multiple characters) are in a MUCH better position than the have-nots and that is, if you pardon my language, frankly fucking stupid.

 

Even IF these fix does actually do something, it's going to take probably like MONTHS to actually take effect, like well over 6 months as people burn off any major excess inf they have and, as mentioned, it doesn't hit the people who actually roll around in inf, those that use the market via the convert flipping trick, all you've done is just smash the supply chain for regular players.

 

 

My guess is dev resources were busy...y'know actually making the game work at that point. Please do remember this is a VOLUNTEER team who are not getting paid for this. This should've been done back 15 years ago by Paragon, by your logic (and yes, it should've been).

[Peerless Girl]

5 minutes ago, hazygreys said:

Not quite true, is it tho. 

More or less it is. There was no working emulator/private server during Paragon's time. SEGS never actually got anywhere to this day, to my knowledge.

[honoraryorange]

3 hours ago, The Curator said:

The following change was omitted from the beta patch notes due to a related exploit:

• Influence gain can no longer be increased by disabling XP

We’ve made this change to reduce the influence income gap between players who farm and those that do not. The amount of additional influence gained by abusing level 49 missions simply wasn’t healthy for the overall economy of the game, and generally unfair towards those who play standard level 50 content instead of farming.

 

Additionally, there were various exploits that could be abused in order to further increase influence gain through this option.

 

Overall, we concluded it was best to remove the mechanic. Even with this change farming is still far more efficient than every other method of influence gain.

So first, I don't necessarily disagree with this change, but....

 

The fact that this was slipped into the final build without getting comments on the test server is extremely underhanded and a very shitty move on your parts.

[Inflated Donkey]

Just now, ForeverLaxx said:

Not that I disagree with your premise, but the person you're quoting was using the "go to another server" as a threat against making "unpopular" changes. They weren't telling people to leave; they were telling the devs that if they tinker too much then they won't have any players anymore.

I think this is why you see the slow, incremental changes. when the server first launched vanguard merits were worth more and AE gave full xp.  They have slowly whittled away at farmable rewards rather than chop them down in one big swing to keep people from flocking elsewhere.  No one wants to be the first to go start populating a ghost town server so they just put up with change after change because there is no reasonable alternative.  If they had axed it all at once, perhaps people wouldn't have been so invested and may have jumped ship.  

Or i'm overthinking it.  What do i know?  i'm no one.

 

[Crysis]

30 minutes ago, Murcielago said:

I enjoy constantly changing market dynamics, making massive amounts of money the same way gets boring after a while. Give me real and measurable challenges. 

And I don’t think you should be able to make more influence on the marketplace in some ways versus others.  I think all marketplace sales should return a flat X in influence gain as your “selling fee” and all should have fixed prices.

 

Why should you be able to profit at a higher rate than someone else who puts in the same time playing this game?

 

And if you detect sarcasm here....I think it’s justified.  We should all be equal, the mechanics should all pay out the exact same amount per minute of playtime.   The only thing that should matter is the level of pre-coded content you play, scaling from +1 to +4, modified by group size, just like influence gains work today.

[MunkiLord]

All kinds of drama here, fun! But seriously, this change will most likely not be nearly as doom-y as some people are claiming. And if it is, the devs have already demonstrated their willingness to undo changes or make additional changes based on new circumstances/data. People should chill a little bit.