A question for farmers

[Replacement]

I made a Fire Farm Tanker for Science™ as a point of comparison to my friend's Brute around the time the Tanker changes hit.  I was curious to see how much the increased target caps would help a Tanker keep up.  Don't get me wrong; I hate spending my limited playtime playing the market instead of missions, and I was tired of being poor, so it was also a pretty nice stimulus package for some toons I actually care about.

 

Turns out, I also cannot stand farming.  Ever since I started just converting Merits to cash (I guess I thought it felt like selling proof of my accomplishments, so I was reluctant - Merits didn't exist when I played on Live yes they were, I just forgot about them), I've found my (slow) farmer just isn't typically worth the effort.  Does it make money faster? yes.  Does it make it so fast that it's worth the lost time?  Not for me.  I now mostly use this character to skip some levels with friends' toons, especially when we have a concept group we need to catch someone up to.

 

If anyone is curious about how I feel overall about farming on Tanker: Minions and LTs melt fast enough to be competitive.  Bosses go so slow compared to Brutes that I often consider just ignoring them.  But I never do.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Replacement

[Heraclea]

I finally finished levelling up a fire armor character a couple months ago.  Not really a farmer build, either (DB/fire brute).  I thought I'd give fire farming a try. 

 

I got bored very quickly with the standard issue, played more than a thousand times, fire farms.  Mowing down characters in player costumes and all identical attacks was interesting maybe twice.  I didn't recognize many of the player costumes, either.  However lucrative it might be, it just wasn't holding my interest, and Dual Blades doesn't really support an AFK farming play style either. 

 

Time to adopt, adapt, and improve, I guess.  I made my own fire-tuned AE story where the mobs had interesting jokes to tell.  I tried to have it make sense why these characters would be there and why they would all have fire attacks.  The result was still rather rudimentary, and the missions are a bit harder than conventional fire farms, because I mixed up the attacks used by certain characters.  Like most of my AEs, there are also elements of tank-challenge in it; it's genuinely hard to keep the ally NPCs alive at +4/8.  I also added some features I had not seen in other fire farms: the NPC allies will guide you to mission goals if you can keep them alive.  I'm sure I'll get bored with farming this one too, but I think it has more personality than the standard fire farms, which is one thing I look for in AE missions. 

[MunkiLord]

I farm solely to powerlevel my alts. I don't enjoy it, which is why I usually try and influence whip other people to powerlevel me.

[Machariel]

I kind of enjoy farming as a zen activity and a good way to kill time, get some inf, maybe a few recipe drops.  I don't do it on the "fire farm" in AE in particular, but rather I run the battle maiden map on my plant/fire/fire dominator, but I don't think that's a very important distinction. 

[SeraphimKensai]

I farm slightly out of nostalgia, slightly out of the desire to level another alt although I'm running out of combos I really want, and slightly out of giving myself something that do while I watch Netflix or Hulu as I can pretty much zone out the game and grind out a lvl 50 or damn close to while watching a movie.

 

My 1 day record is 6 lvl 50s in 1 day.

 

That all said I don't play too much lately, as well be been extremely busy with work as I work in a public health.

[roleki]

I farm to level and kit my alts.  I don't find it any more tedious or enjoyable than the usual spate of radio missions or PuG arcs, but there's the added bonus of not having to pay strict attention to what's going on in-game so I can do other stuff simultaneously.  And when it's over, I get fresh 50s with builds that I am interested in using during MSRs and stuff.

[First Player]

Influence and PLing friends who need/want it.

[Ironblade]

On 5/14/2020 at 10:26 AM, Greycat said:

How many of you farm because you enjoy the act of farming, and how many do it only for the rewards?

Basically, neither.

I will run a farm map maybe 5-10 times in a MONTH, purely for variety.  The rewards are nice, the actual farming is kind of tedious, but it's DIFFERENT.  Like when I'll spend a couple hours doing exploration badges in multiple zones.

[Yomo Kimyata]

To OP, I don't farm for profit, but I gave it a shot last year and found it entertaining to an extent.  That said, I haven't dusted off that farmer in months.

 

I wrote a post about it!

 

 

[Borderline]

Anyone who says they farm because they enjoy it is a liar. There are ways to make it tolerable - personally, I watch TV while I farm because you don't need to pay 100% attention to the game when you do it - but the trade-off you make for the tedium of farming is the faster acquisition of resources, be it XP or inf or whatever. That's the reason why people farm for whatever resources they're farming for.

I've had all of my major characters fully IO'd and levels for months so I don't really have a reason to farm on a regular basis anymore, but I'll do it when I come up with new characters or when friends need to be powerleveled. For me, I'd rather farm and quickly get to 50 and have plenty of resources to trick out my new character than roll up a new alt and level through story arcs/TFs/regular content. IMO most of the built-in content for this game is god awful, but some really fantastic RP campaigns can be created through a combination of AE and custom bases. For that stuff I like to have all my powers unlocked and I don't want to deal with playing an unbuilt character, which is pretty much my main motivation behind farming.

Edited May 17, 2020 by Borderline

[Apogee]

I farm from time to time, same as I run any other content, and I enjoy it. Calling people a liar for enjoying something you do not is a bit harsh. Not everyone in this world feels or thinks as you do.

[Crysis]

On 5/14/2020 at 10:30 AM, Silverado said:

Farming is just about one of the most tedious activities in the game. There's a reason why so many people run builds and maps that allow them to farm while afk.

No, buying stacks of recipes, stacks of salvage and sitting there clicking converters is the most tedious activities in the game.  Perhaps figuring out which recipes can create the most value in the shortest number of clicks is a cerebral pursuit of enjoyment, but I’d argue the same for using MIDS to create the perfect build is the same.  But the actual act of Marketeering is incredibly tedious and has nothing to do with playing a superhero, which is the point of this game.

 

Farming isn’t by any means the MOST enjoyment I get out of this game, but at least I’m actually focusing on targets and some degree of strategy to try to min/max my efforts and using the actual “superhero” game mechanics to do it.

 

Except for AFK farming obviously.  Which is neither tedious nor time consuming.  It just runs in the other instances while I’m actually playing in the foreground.

 

To directly answer the question, I used to do it for Influence and PL’ing to kit out my fleet of alts on primary account.  I was a “buy it now” player and barely crafted anything for the first 8-10 months of the game.  But I had far, far more influence than I had alts to outfit so that eventually slowed down considerably.  I’ve burned through several billion in influence in past few months since I slowed my farming down, and from here on out given the recent influence nerfs, likely will only AFK farm.  But I did enjoy trying to “beat my time” when active farming.  It was more fun than running solo PVE content and faster than trying to form a team.  I really didn’t find repeating the same AE fire farm any more/less boring than repeating the same kinds of content missions over and over again.  I skip over the dialogue boxes at this point in PVE anyways, having played them so frequently.  

 

Honestly, Brutes and the Fury mechanism makes ANY content other than run-and-smash irrelevant.  Farms feed this the best.

 

 

Edited May 17, 2020 by Crysis

[Coyotedancer]

6 hours ago, Apogee said:

I farm from time to time, same as I run any other content, and I enjoy it. Calling people a liar for enjoying something you do not is a bit harsh. Not everyone in this world feels or thinks as you do.

 

Word.

 

Hate to break it to you, Borderline... But some of us REALLY DO enjoy farming.

No joke. We have fun doing it.

[Bill Z Bubba]

10 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

Word.

 

Hate to break it to you, Borderline... But some of us REALLY DO enjoy farming.

No joke. We have fun doing it.

 

I enjoy hitting 50 in 2 hours instead of slogging through content. And I say this with a demon/time MM that's been 100% solo/no-PL gold side and she just dinged 34 last night.

I actually find very little difference in the meditative properties of farming and scrapping through max diff end-game missions. It's all just killin stuff. And I'm still surprised out how much I missed it all when it was gone.

 

Hell, that's probably why I'm sittin on nearly 40 lvl 50s and have deleted twice that number already. Something that would have never occurred back before the snap when I wasn't a farmer.

[Borderline]

6 hours ago, Apogee said:

I farm from time to time, same as I run any other content, and I enjoy it. Calling people a liar for enjoying something you do not is a bit harsh. Not everyone in this world feels or thinks as you do.

 

24 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

Word.

 

Hate to break it to you, Borderline... But some of us REALLY DO enjoy farming.

No joke. We have fun doing it.

What you're saying is absolutely valid, and power to you if you think it's fun. I've got no problem with farming obviously, as I do it myself. I just think it's boring as hell for a vast majority of people who do it, especially for people who do it a lot.

 

So sure, maybe not everyone who claims to enjoy farming is a liar. Some are just masochists.

[Coyotedancer]

57 minutes ago, Borderline said:

So sure, maybe not everyone who claims to enjoy farming is a liar. Some are just masochists.

 

That we may well be. XD

 

But, like Bill, I enjoy throwing my characters into big messes outside of farming, too, so I suspect it's all related. Enjoying one side of it is a reflection of enjoying the other. 

[Crysis]

I’d also like to say that thanks to Brigg, farming on HC is actually a lot of fun.  It’s always a hoot to me to burn down some big community names and I’ve greatly enjoyed seeing all the different and varying costumes.  Made it a lot more fun than nameless Council or glowie bodies.

[Coyotedancer]

I owe Zombie SO MANY nachos for burning down his clones… So, so very many.

[Nafsmar]

On 5/14/2020 at 7:16 PM, Saikochoro said:

Power leveling my alts is 100% of the reason I farm. Getting some influence and drops while I do it is just a happy coincidence. 
 

This is what I do as well to the T.

[FourSpeed]

Well, having written the Guide that the OP is following (Thanks! Hope you're enjoying it 🙂 ), I have somewhat mixed feelings on farming, oddly enough.

 

First, I did that guide, mostly, because I'm a marketeer (in Live, and now, here), so, the *fun* part for me was actually, *** "how cheaply can I build a viable farmer?" ***.  For me, it was never about drops, shinies, or inf gain - the AH already covers that for me.  Rather, the simple build challenge, and then seeing how it stacked up with the "Mega-Builds" (much better than I ever imagined, actually) was the primary motivation. It was only after I'd started with the build that it occurred to me that it might also serve as a simple, self-funded, introductory primer into the playstyle that farming offers, for other players who might otherwise shy away from the idea (mostly due to the expense of the High-End builds that are commonly used for farming, for example).

 

That said, it also had a secondary purpose for me, which was to PL some fondly recalled characters from Live, on HC.  Since I'm a 95% solo player, it conveniently provided a nice way to get some of my favorite characters rebuilt here, using a 2nd account, without having to run those toons from scratch again.

 

Interestingly though, as folks responded to Borderline's post, I too found that I DO actually enjoy it ... on an occasional basis. It's sort of like an MSR, in the sense of the chaos, particle effects and general explosions, etc. but on a single player level.  You can kinda tune out strategizing (which most of my squishy toons usually need), and just enjoy the pretty light show. 😉 In fact, with that point in mind, it's mostly, just a bit of a tactical break for me, so I've *never* afk farmed, but intentionally do it as a no brainer, change of pace. 😉 In that regard, it's actually somewhat relaxing. Also, it's a short-term run, if you only have a few minutes to play around.  I rarely run a 5-part mission (like @Grigg's #2915) more than once in a session, but if time is short, or I have nothing special I want to do with the current alt I'm leveling, it's a fun little break.

 

Otoh, farming isn't something I do often, or even regularly - usually, I'm much more focused on the solo toons I'm dabbling with. I probably only ever run my farmers (one on each account) once a month or so, just for a bit of mindless chaos.  The inf and drops are useful, and I realized that those rewards might actually be a priority for some of the folks following my guide, but amusingly, my own farming toons are substantially less affluent than my primary characters (on either account). Go Figure.  😄 

 

To conclude, I think farming is a viable playstyle that offers several benefits, but like most other activities in the game, it's not one that I'd consider doing exclusively. Each of those pursuits can be fun and rewarding, and for me, the most fun is when I can dabble in any of them as the mood strikes me during a gaming session.

 

 

Regards,

4

[Ironblade]

On 5/17/2020 at 2:13 PM, Borderline said:

So sure, maybe not everyone who claims to enjoy farming is a liar. Some are just masochists.

This is your recovery from your original nonsensical statement?

I find farming tedious.  My girlfriend finds it genuinely entertaining.

Open your mind.

[Ukase]

I used to farm because I thought it was fun. Seeing the purple lettering flash across the screen when I was struggling...that was pretty fun, got my endorphins fired up. Now that I'm what I would think is one of the richest players in the game at well over 100 billion, I'm at a point where if I keep farming, I'll have more and more stuff to craft and convert and sell. The amount of effort to craft, convert and sell is a fixed amount of effort for me. I'd craft and convert for 10 minutes in the morning, and 10 minutes in the evening - and let the rest, if any, carry to the next day. 
 

Now that the prices have dropped...my inf will go even further, so I see no reason to spend my time doing this. If the players want cheap LoTG, let some other sucker lose 2m inf every time they sell one, because it's obvious people were willing and able to pay 7-8m. Want to let it go for 5m, knock yourselves out. But I'm not playing that game. It's not enough to be worth the time. So, despite having 3 accounts and a very worthy spines/fire brute on each account - the only purpose they now serve is to occasionally help alts with Vamp Slayer, Werewolves, Freaks  and Fakes for the accolades. 

 

So - my thoughts now - I don't really enjoy farming. It's repetitive, and boring. That's why I set the brute farmers up for afk farming. Two accounts could farm while my main account would actually play. Now, I just play with any one of the three accounts while the other two are logged off.  

Fact is, I've even been playing on Rebirth because there's no more challenge to this version of CoH. Fully stocked sg base, all the badges, the only thing I've not yet done is play every AT/Powerset combo. Working on that. On rebirth - it's almost exactly like live, so it's a lot more grindier. Nobody farms there because there's nobody to buy what you're selling. 

[Borderline]

8 hours ago, Ironblade said:

This is your recovery from your original nonsensical statement?

I find farming tedious.  My girlfriend finds it genuinely entertaining.

Open your mind.

Open my mind to what? I've already explained that I understand people enjoy it, I just also think those people are crazy. There's no need to get upset over a harmless joke. There's certainly nothing that I've said in this thread that I feel the need to recover from.

[Crysis]

7 hours ago, Ukase said:

On rebirth - it's almost exactly like live, so it's a lot more grindier. Nobody farms there because there's nobody to buy what you're selling. 

I’m kinda glad you said this.  I play on Rebirth a little also, and it’s like a barren wasteland filled with misfit toys.  Seems very empty.

[brigg]

On 5/17/2020 at 12:19 PM, Crysis said:

I’d also like to say that thanks to Brigg, farming on HC is actually a lot of fun.  It’s always a hoot to me to burn down some big community names and I’ve greatly enjoyed seeing all the different and varying costumes.  Made it a lot more fun than nameless Council or glowie bodies.

@Crysis, it was my pleasure. 🙂