farm requests

[presto2112]

this has prolly been brought up before

 

but there is a farm channel, can we direct folks from LFG over to the farm channel? it's like 4 out of 5 messages in LFG are people begging for farms

 

or maybe build it into the clients as an "offical" channel?

Edited September 4, 2021 by presto2112

[srmalloy]

It would need to be added as a 'standard' channel with its own tab in the default chat configuration, and even then you'll have people who keep flogging requests for a farm in LFG because "nobody listens to the Farm channel", and if you don't make it part of the standard chat configuration, no one will use it because they don't know how to set it up, or again "nobody listens to the Farm channel".

[Shenanigunner]

9 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Global channels get forgotten quickly and requesting a spot on a farm is still Looking for a Group. Even if you don't like it, the players are doing nothing wrong. 

 

Absolutely true, but there are definitely several different communities of player and giving each its own corner of the room, without necessarily isolating or "banning" them, would reduce a lot of pointless friction.

 

A comfortable side lounge for the entire power-build/power-level/farm/end-game contingent would be... welcome in many ways. By both sides.

[presto2112]

yeah i don't think they're doing anything wrong. i farm... a lot.. big fan

 

just seems to be so much traffic for it that it may warrant its own space

 

we've tried on excelsior to have a "got farms" channel but hardly anyone seems to know about it, so maybe having something official would help

Edited September 4, 2021 by presto2112

[Ukase]

I'm sure I'm in the minority. I see folks sometimes let their conversation meander a bit away from LFG, and get closer to a "help" kind of topic from time to time. Sometimes more of a "General" conversation instead of specifically LFG. 

Usually, left on their own, these conversations fizzle out after a few comments. But, many times, these folks are not left to police themselves. Invariably, someone well-meaning will chime in: "take it to Help" or "Plz take it to General Chat". 

Sometimes, I'm a bit contrary. And I'll chime in - "But I don't like General Chat! They talk crazy there."  Obviously, I'm being silly - but if I were to really say what I want to say, I might get a touch of the ol' ban hammer. I will never understand why some players want to be the chat police. Well, maybe I get it. I like to tell folks there's no such thing as a guild or a quest here. And there are certainly no Luck of the Gambler enchantments as far as I know - but then I'm just poking fun. I usually add a 😛, so that makes it okay, right?! 

I mean, I can get it if it's something that's been going on for more than 2 minutes. But seriously, folks - what's the real harm? So someone asked a question in the wrong channel. Or said something in the wrong channel. It happens. It makes no sense for the offending party to re-ask their question in help when everyone saw the question in LFG. And if the question gets answered in LFG, I really don't see the harm. But, man, some of you are darn touchy about your chat channels. 

I wonder if maybe some folks have their channels set up a certain way  - where too much chatter makes the recruiting calls scroll up too quickly? Is that it? That's the only thing I can think of. But, as we all know - the way I think and play - and the way others think and play sure isn't going to be the same. Am I missing something? 

Should I have been toilet trained at gunpoint? I dunno. Chat in whatever channel is open. Let people be. Ya don't like what they say, the /gignore works. 

Edited September 4, 2021 by Ukase

[Snarky]

better than this.  Teach people how to farm.  As in make an alt account and farm yourself.  So much faster and less drama.  

[Dona Eis Requiem]

This discussion is as old as AE itself, unfortunately. 

The best option/solution I've seen suggested to keep all players considered, is to enable a text-specific Ignore for chat.

I dunno how much that would require by way of untangling the code spaghetti, but it would be lovely if possible.

[Shenanigunner]

46 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Good luck with the segregation approach. Sounds very 21st Century. 

 

Well, that or or very early 20th. 😄

 

Quote

 

My solution is probably not the popular one. I would say grow a thicker skin and don't let lines of text bother you OR learn to use the ignore function. I see posts that bother me too but most of that can be dealt with using tabs and the scroll wheel. 

 

As far as chat goes, I really don't care. I find Help useful, keep General up just for amusement and nerf all the others, so the "fifty players whining for a farm mission" bit doesn't bother me.

 

It's more the overall community, in that the power players have a tendency to make their opinions rather loudly known when, say, someone asks about slotting a "gimp build." I don't see many casual/fun/flexible players loudly arguing about the exact IO sets you must have to be one of the anointed... but Statesman help the guy with a wussy fun build who ignores a powermax player's "suggestions."

 

So. I don't see giving them their own kingdom to rule and advise each other at that level to be a bad thing... not for the rest of us, anyway. But maybe being The Boss of Youse goes with the max-IO-set mentality? 🙂

 

Edited September 4, 2021 by Shenanigunner

[Shenanigunner]

19 minutes ago, Krimson said:

The thing is, the problem is not players who are using LFG to look for a farm. As has been established, they are doing nothing wrong. So why should THEY be the ones who get segregated, when they are not the ones with the problem?

 

1) I'm not talking about chat, although I realize that's the OP's point. Farm requests are as valid as any other LFG post. No argument.

 

But 2) I'll stand by my comments that the power-gamer subset doesn't exactly stay in its corner... in chat, in forums, in Help or in any other way. I've had to close General or Help to blank out endless, name-calling battles over how you can't possibly-possibly play this build, or this powerset, or without 2B in IO sets, and you're just a gahdam moron to even try. The whole streak of players that see nothing but fully-buffed 50+ end-game point are, not to put too fine a point on it, often obnoxious and clueless as to boundaries. It's not us feeble, flapping, fool-around players who have the problem; we tend to stay in our corner.

 

And 3) I disagree with your entire point that this is somehow on the players, as an unorganized mob, to deal with. One faction shouldn't be polluting the game for another, and if giving them their own sandbox to crap in and slug it out, IO set by IO set, is the solution, so be it. Don't excuse them or make it individual players' problems.

[skoryy]

I haven't seen this as much of a problem on Everlasting, but if it is a problem elsewhere then a separate channel might be a good idea.

 

What would also be a good idea is a 'farm' tag in AE so I can sort out AE story content.  Right now its a chore to find any that's not marked with a dev star.

[presto2112]

10 minutes ago, skoryy said:

I haven't seen this as much of a problem on Everlasting, but if it is a problem elsewhere then a separate channel might be a good idea.

 

What would also be a good idea is a 'farm' tag in AE so I can sort out AE story content.  Right now its a chore to find any that's not marked with a dev star.

 

yes that is an excellent idea. there are some great stories in AE but they are difficult to locate

[MHertz]

Yes, absolutely, there should be a totally different channel for that. All these people coming into the regular channel ... it's so annoying. And it smells so bad! Some of them can be really fragrant and hang around in the chat for days.

 

...what?

 

Oh, you were saying farming channel. Never mind.

[A Cat]

3 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:

 

1) I'm not talking about chat, although I realize that's the OP's point. Farm requests are as valid as any other LFG post. No argument.

 

But 2) I'll stand by my comments that the power-gamer subset doesn't exactly stay in its corner... in chat, in forums, in Help or in any other way. I've had to close General or Help to blank out endless, name-calling battles over how you can't possibly-possibly play this build, or this powerset, or without 2B in IO sets, and you're just a gahdam moron to even try. The whole streak of players that see nothing but fully-buffed 50+ end-game point are, not to put too fine a point on it, often obnoxious and clueless as to boundaries. It's not us feeble, flapping, fool-around players who have the problem; we tend to stay in our corner.

 

And 3) I disagree with your entire point that this is somehow on the players, as an unorganized mob, to deal with. One faction shouldn't be polluting the game for another, and if giving them their own sandbox to crap in and slug it out, IO set by IO set, is the solution, so be it. Don't excuse them or make it individual players' problems.

Damn, my experience with Everlasting's general/help has been pretty positive. I think the worst argument I witnessed was an admittedly ugly free for all over what style of pizza was the best. 

[TheZag]

Theres certainly a server population component involved in how many are asking for farms.  In my short periods on excel in support of a friends event,  the chat is flying by and i cant wait to get back on to torch.

 

I wouldnt have an official channel made though.  LFG is for exactly that.  Even when its not a group im trying to join.

[arcane]

Heavy handed solution in search of non-existent problem therefore must vote no.

[Dahkness]

I usually keep my LFG tab closed unless I’m looking for a group. Do you have it open the entire time you play? Are you constantly Lfg’s?

[Xenosone]

23 hours ago, Krimson said:

 

Good luck with the segregation approach. Sounds very 21st Century. 

 

My solution is probably not the popular one. I would say grow a thicker skin and don't let lines of text bother you OR learn to use the ignore function. I see posts that bother me too but most of that can be dealt with using tabs and the scroll wheel. 

Considering how reddit homecomming is, grow a thicker skin is not something you want to be telling people lest ya get banned.

 

Take your farming to farm channel or give me more ignore slots so i can ignore the power beggars. What i have now isnt working.

[presto2112]

thank you all for the replies, my question was answered :)

 

see you in game

[Outrider_01]

On 9/4/2021 at 3:31 PM, Snarky said:

better than this.  Teach people how to farm.  As in make an alt account and farm yourself.  So much faster and less drama.  

And this is why he is called Snarky.  Roundabout way to sound insulting to lazy people and helpful at the same time.

[Ironblade]

On 9/4/2021 at 8:02 PM, Krimson said:

The thing is, the problem is not players who are using LFG to look for a farm. As has been established, they are doing nothing wrong. So why should THEY be the ones who get segregated, when they are not the ones with the problem?

You have it  backwards.  It's to the farmers' ADVANTAGE to have their own channel.  Back on live there was a player-made global channel for marketeering - not because we got pushed out of the other channels, but because we WANTED our own place to discuss the subject.  And it was a public channel, so anyone with an interest could join.

[Miss Magical]

I think this is just a symptom of this game's failure to properly incentivise different types of content. AE farming is the biggest and most obvious symptom of this problem, but balancing farm rewards alone won't fix it, because it's far more widespread than that. Almost all content seems to have been made with the assumption that players would do them just because they exist, without thought as to how they fit into a coherent reward scheme, resulting in entire swathes of the game's content being dead zones. If any MMO's newest expansion zones were ghost towns, like this game's are, heads would roll at the studio. No surprise this game got shut down!

 

You may say, "but Miss M, does it really matter if nobody plays some dinky level 1-20 zones, especially when the game no longer needs to wring subscription money from players by preventing them from grinding too fast?" Yes, absolutely. There are players who play purely to accumulate rewards, players who play for the story, players who want to team with others, etc. and none of these playstyles are inherently wrong. For as long as the normal story, missioning content is also the content that provides the best rewards, they have a win-win situation. However, if you create one specific kind of content that provides disproportionately high rewards for low effort, then those who play purely to accumulate rewards will naturally congregate there, and resist any changes to it in order to preserve their golden goose. You've now produced two warring camps, and worse, arbitrarily decided that one playstyle should have vastly greater rewards than the others.

 

Yes, there will always be differences in playstyle and rewards that are difficult to accomodate. But where possible, it's in the interest of the game and its community to minimize rather than exacerbate those differences. Yes, some people will demand the freedom to only camp in their sweaty little basement and do nothing else. But theirs comes at the cost of a far greater and more important freedom - the freedom to be able to play whatever you want because the entire game is your playground.

 

For an MMO to have lasting, broad appeal and a thriving, vibrant community, all content should be incentivized and all players should be encouraged to mingle and play together, regardless of their motivators for playing. And the way to achieve this is through a balanced, coherent reward system that properly incentivizes all kinds of content. Fail to do that, and you're left with a 17-year old dead game, which survives only on private servers played by a diehard few, who no longer have the manpower to fix this kind of systemic problem.

 

[Nerio72]

I don't recall anyone saying ban the farmers. This topic is about chat channels. Would a LFF channel be a bad thing? I don't think so. Would anyone use it? Hmmm. I don't even think most people have a problem with "looking for farm" posts. It's the looking for farm spammers.

And it's ok for people to dislike something that doesn't bother you. You can't tell them what to like or dislike either. But ya are.

[Neiska]

My thoughts for what they are worth.

 

1.) I have seen some people say farming is bad. My honest reply is, why is it bad? Farmers do more than just mindlessly grind away for money/exp, and they have several positives.

 

They spend more money into the economy. Moving wealth is always a good and healthy sign for a community. And for those who use the AE often have several characters that eventually, all require enhancements. I would bet that AE users/Famers make up a sizeable chunk of auction house activity.  Without such persons or such a high turnover of new characters, the market would grow stale due to supply out growing demand. "Everything would be cheaper!" you might say, but that also would devalue INF more than it already is. At least currently there are some INF sinks and uses, and demand. Plus, with such demand a new player or At without much in their pockets can get lucky, find a purple, sell it, and be largely set for themselves all the way to 50. Without the AE this might not be possible, or at least, the flow of money might slow to a crawl.

 

Some like myself "Shadow Sponsor" events. Just last week I went to a smaller SG hosting a rp event, so I came in and ordered a Bloody Mary, and donated 1 billion to use as they pleased.  Some of us host events as well, such as costume or origin story contests. And a lot of the time unless INF is involved, people wont come. Also keep in mind that people can have multiple accounts, and all that "1 billion CC at Atlas" money has to come from "Somewhere", and considering the frequency of such hosted player events, vs the time required to accumulate such numbers in the "open world", I would bet that the vast majority of money for such events comes from Farming/AE. No one is going to make that much INF doing open world stuff in a month, much less week. So without the AE you might very well see a noticeable drop in such events, or at the very least, their rewards.

 

Many folks like myself like to build characters, and no that isn't always power builds either. I have made builds based on theme, roleplay, or even purely chose ATs and Powersets purely for visual effects sake to use in small RP events, just to add that extra spice to them. I know it's not much, but we use the tools we have. And farming is a great tool for those of us for whatever reason like to try many things.

 

For some of us we have already played through the stories a few times now, and don't want to go through all the time for a build we want to try for whatever reason, only to hit level 38 and go "Op! well, that didn't work!" or "Eh.. I'm just not feeling this, Imma try something else." If we had to go through the monthly effort to level up a character each time in such a diverse game, I suspect many players would suffer Burnout. Personally I would have likely moved on long ago.

 

It is also a tool. You can pick your damage types on different environments. Want to see how well you do vs fire enemies? How about toxic? Psi damage? Against things higher level than you? Want to try and beat up a GM solo? You want to play but don't have a lot of time to do it? Or have to step away often when real life calls? Then AE is a great option.

 

Another thing I would like to highlight is that you never know who is sitting at the seat of another character, and this is true of all games. One friend of mine who shall remain nameless only has one hand and is missing fingers on that one as well. Yet he plays. He may be slow, but I think that's pretty amazing. Using myself as another example, in another game I used to be a high end raider. But I ended up quitting because as time went on it became less and less fun because I am in fact deaf IRL, and more and more fights and tools such as DBM are sound based. In a new fight that you have only read about, with so much going on at a time, its quite easy to miss a flashing word or warning. And I don't hear the loud kaboom or alarm blaring. The results from that were disheartening and depressing to say the least. For those who consider the farmers here "toxic", I can only politely gesture to the Raid Community in other games where people are called out for not gearing to the umpteenth degree or not min/maxing to be .0032% more effective. (And yes, I have had that argument before.) 

 

How does this relate to CoH? (Whom I hasten to add, does have a more friendly and welcoming raid scene than other games!) Well, on your random TF groups, its very much go-go-go-go where everyone assumes everyone already knows everything. My friend I mentioned no longer does TFs, because he is too slow to keep up or contribute. By the time he gets there, the fight is over and the "Mission Completed" flashes overhead. This is nobodies fault directly, it's just how it is. But that is why he told me he plays AE things more than open world content. He can fight AVs and GMs there. He can go at his own pace. He controls the game interaction, and can play with whom he wants to. And I think that is okay. 

 

Finally, like it or not it's something to do. Sometimes, its just quiet. People are standing around quietly roleplaying, or no one is doing missions/tfs etc. So instead of going around the world, you just load up an AE to play until a friend logs on in an hour. Its a timesink, and its a good one. 

 

2. ) As far as the Farm Channel itself, well, I would like to point out to those who might be unaware, that there are Farmer Discords out there. There is far more activity there than there is in the LFG channel, at least where farms are concerned.  There are many folks who run entire farm groups and you ever even see or hear them. And until I just mentioned them, some of you might have never even known they were there.

 

And topics like these are why. Farmers aren't mustache twirling villain's in the dark, nor are they economical masterminds whom seek to dominate the value of your INF. (Its funny but some of the richest folks I know are level 2-5. They are the die hard rpers who and play the markets between their rp, and have never stepped foot in an AE, TF, or Raid.)

 

Now do I think a Farm Channel is required? No, not really. I see all kinds of things in all of the channels. From mistells to embarrassing emotes. While I am not personally bothered by such things and laugh sometimes, I can understand how some might see them as aggravating or irritating. But I think a Farm Channel would further divide the community, which I don't see as a good thing, but I would urge people who feel in such a way to use the tools already provided such as the Ignore tool, if they feel so strongly about it.

 

But for those who are arguing that Farms don't belong in LFG, I would ask why not? Looking for Group is empty of context. It isn't the "Looking for Task Force" channel, or the "Looking for Raid" channel. Its the "Looking for group" channel, which is used for people to run TFs, Raids, Paper Missions, Story Missions, or just run around the open world. But Farming is Grouping. For someone to make that argument about Farming not belonging with the other activities and was singled out by itself, makes me wonder if the heart of their argument is really "Farming isn't legitimate play." 

 

For those arguing for the removal of AE, I would like to highlight that AE is keeping a good portion of folks still around, people who do more than only just AE farms. And the AE being removed would do more harm than good. That, and I strongly oppose the entire mentality of "People who don't enjoy the game exactly as I do are wrong." 

 

In closing, the proposed Farm Channel itself, well, I would consider it an issue, but a minor one, and hardly worthy of such measures, particularly when tools such as the ignore and closing or moving the LFG tab already exist. This goes doubly so for the size of the staff, which is indeed a volunteer staff, whom I would rather see them work on more things such as bug fixes or additional powersets and content.

 

Just my thoughts about it.

 

Best wishes to everyone out there, wither you Farm/Use the AE or Not.

 

P.S - An afterthought. One thing I would support would be adding a PVP channel. While I am not a PVPer myself, to my limited knowledge those who do enjoy hardcore PVP do not have any such tools or channels to find others of a like mind. And I believe that such a channel might attract others who enjoy a similar gameplay. As well as finding others whom also enjoy that kind of gameplay can be difficult, from what I understand. So a dedicated PVP channel may help with that.

Edited September 6, 2021 by Neiska
Added a PS

[arcane]

I don’t think partitioning our already tiny server communities is justified just because a small contingent of fussy people are unable to bear sharing their LFG channel with people interested in different types of groups - even if they have significant contempt for said people.

[Crysis]

I guess I’m in the minority.  I’m far more thankful we have this many players around to clutter up the umpteen channels than I’m worried about people staying in any one specific channel.  The chaos of in game chatting makes this the “Massively Multiplayer” part of the game for me.