Is farming an imbalanced method of earning ingame rewards?

[Ukase]

7 hours ago, tidge said:

EDIT: I should add this note: In a market niche where I routinely made ~6Minf for certain pieces, the market fell such that I'm lucky to make 4Minf, and routinely the pieces go for low enough prices that I make much less.

Anecdotally, the IOs I used to make 4m on, I now only make 3. This could be due to me asking for less - but I started asking for less out of competition. Others were undercutting my price by 25%. And not just one type of IO, but almost all of them. 

Unbreakable Guards, I could list for 3.7 and get 4. Now, I list for 2.7 and get 3. Now - sometimes, I get 5 or 6M, but on average, it's 3m. The price of these and Aegis have dropped 25% in the past year.  (since the nerf to no/xp 2xinf) 

Numina and Preventative Medicine Procs - same story. They've dropped 25% in the past year. 
Sudden Acceleration Kb-kd - also dropped 25%

Blessing of the Zephyr KB protection has dropped 50%. 
LotG 7.5% - this has dropped from 7-8M on average to 6-7M on average. 

Obliteration quads and proc have also dropped 25% in the past year since the 2xinf nerf. 

PvPIO procs have dropped from 10-12M on average to 7-9M on average. 

Do I need to go on? There is no inflation from where I sit. Things have gotten cheaper, not more expensive. But that's just the view from my perspective. If yours is different, share specifics, please. 

[Ukase]

4 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I'm not sure if it was in that thread or another, but Jimmy has also stated that marketing does not create influence, it transfers it between players and has a deflationary effect of removing 10% influence per transaction.

 

So yes, farming is faster than street sweeping or running TFs and story arcs to create influence, but marketing is still a faster way for a player to accumulate (not create) influence.

Glad you stated this - because I was going to say Jimmy was wrong - but I suppose in this context, he's not wrong. 
While marketing may not technically create influence, it certainly does seem to accumulate far faster with intelligent marketing than farming or teaming for a weekly. 
Interesting to know that I've taken over 200M out of the economy in the past couple of days. 😛 

 

[MHertz]

On 9/14/2021 at 11:23 AM, roleki said:

... yet folks continue to lay the blame for the high cost of everything at the feet of the farmers... whose only involvement in this scheme is the delivery of more product for the marketeers to fiddle with.  

 

"If we only cut off the supply, everything will be cheaper!"  

You ... actually may be on to something. I know you were being flippant, but hear me out.

 

First, here's a question for the thread. Is drop rate still based on a per-mob-defeated formula, or is it normalized to scale with the XP value of the critter? Because if it's the former, you could make the argument that certain kinds of farmers (not all) and certain players who do non-farming missions (not all) are actually increasing demand for certain things faster than they increase the supply.

 

Here's my math:

 

Suppose for argument's sake that the recipe drop rate for Group A recipes is the same as listed here, 2.6667% per minion, and that it doesn't scale with level differential. Let's also assume it takes 9,000 XP to get from level 22 to level 23. And let's say +0 minions at level 22 are worth 52 XP. You would have to defeat 173 minions to get to level 23, and you'd average 4.6 recipe drops from them. As I understand it, it wouldn't make any difference how big the mission was, or how many you fought at the same time; it's always 173 minions to bridge those levels, regardless of rate of speed.

 

Now let's say you were running missions on +4. Now you're level 22, fighting level 26 minions for 110 XP each. Now you only need 81 minions to level up, and you get only 2.2 drops from them — presuming the per-mob-defeated drop rate is still 2.6667%. That's less than half the drops.

 

I plugged in the values on that "Experience" webpage for XP needed to level up for each level through 46, and the XP value of minions at each level. (I didn't have XP values for mobs over 50, so I stopped at level 46.)

• If you could fight only +0 minions from level 1 through level 46, you'd average 1,132 recipe drops from 42,445 minions.
• If you could fight only +4 minions from level 1 through level 46, you'd average 676 recipe drops from 25,358 minions (again, assuming the drop rate doesn't scale).
• Fighting +4 minions over your career from 1-46 results in 40% fewer drops, having fought 17,086 fewer minions. That's the equivalent of playing about 14 additional levels at level 50, just to break even with the amount of recipe drops a normal 50 gets.

Ergo, it seems like the thing that affects the market most isn't farming, per se, but level difficulty. Assuming the figures from Live are still roughly in line with those on HC, when you fight tougher mobs, you increase XP gain per mob at the cost of overall drops per level. And as a farm-fresh level 50 has the same number of slots as any other kind of 50, you have a situation where you have more slots to fill, and you've reduced the supply. As I said, this is irrespective of speed, so it's not about farming or PLing. The solo player who plays on +4, one mission every weekend, will have the same overall effect (over time) as a farmer who plays on +4 and power-levels up to 50 in a few hours. You're just going to see the effects later or sooner, depending on the rate of defeats.

 

So if my assumptions are true, you could actually say that playing on an increased level difficulty is imbalanced. It's not good enough. If farmers just switched down to +0, they'd level more slowly, but they'd have more stuff to show for it. You could probably put a dent in the market prices if you farmed at -1 and really cranked up your drops-per-level rate. You'd get 1,290 drops by level 46, a 14% increase over +0 enemies and nearly double the rate of +4 enemies.

 

Of course, my math could be wrong, or the figures could have changed. Obviously this is a purely hypothetical minions-only situation, where in the real world players have the option of creating AE missions that are all bosses (tougher fights for a higher drop rate). And of course any effect on the market depends on whether the player vendors those items or tries to sell or craft them, and whether that player is trying to fill slots with other than DOs/SOs. Otherwise, I think the comparison is fair, but if my math is mistaken here, please correct me.

Edited September 15, 2021 by MHertz

[Wavicle]

6 hours ago, Neiska said:

But what does make me perplexed is how the crux of the disagreement here, is how some people are efficient with their play, and that seems to irk other players. 

 

I am happy to acknowledge that farming is Not ruining the economy, but THIS take is disingenuous.

You aren't an efficient genius. You've simply chosen a playstyle that is ARBITRARILY REWARDED MORE than other playstyles.

 

THAT is the crux of the disagreement right there.

[Bionic_Flea]

To @MHertz: I think the flaw in your argument is that you are not accounting for time and rank.  Fighting +4s generally is much slower than fighting even level especially at lower levels before you have all your powers and IOs slotted.  Fighting +4 bosses takes even longer.  Because of that, while leveling, I tend to increase team numbers over level numbers when setting difficulty.  I'd rather fight evens at x8 than say +4/x4.  But in the AE you can create dense crowds of NPCs specifically targeted to your characters strength, i.e., Fire Farms, and this is generally done at 50+.  In the AE players can clear hundreds of +4/x8 critters including bosses and EBs much faster than the time it takes a lower level character to defeat an equivalent number of critters as even level.

 

To @Wavicle: There's nothing arbitrary about it.  Killing critters generates Inf.  The faster you kill them and the higher their rank, the more you get.  That's not arbitrary, that's deterministic.  That's like saying running three Hamidon raids back to back arbitrarily rewards raiders more than others.

Edited September 15, 2021 by Bionic_Flea

[Wavicle]

What is arbitrary about it is that game balance is such that only some toons can be built to do that with, here's that word again, efficiency. So, you pick an AT or combo that is best at running on teams...you're SOL.

[arcane]

48 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

You've simply chosen a playstyle that is ARBITRARILY REWARDED MORE than other playstyles.

I’m not sure how arbitrary it is. Seems plenty logical that you would expect above average performance from a character *specifically built for one kind of mission, one kind of damage, etc.* If I pass on my character being viable in the entire rest of the game, it seems immediately reasonable - not arbitrary - that I should get better kill speeds in return.

[Wavicle]

What I'm saying is I think it would actually be better for the game if All playstyles, even such as you just described, were rewarded Roughly the same over time. That is purely an opinion based on intuition though, not something that can be datamined nor a perspective I am really trying to persuade people to share.

[Mezmera]

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

Anecdotally, the IOs I used to make 4m on, I now only make 3. This could be due to me asking for less - but I started asking for less out of competition. Others were undercutting my price by 25%. And not just one type of IO, but almost all of them. 

 

I might be a culprit here.  At times I will just go and clean out my character's pool when I see my tabs start turning red.  I'll list the good stuff for the bottom price showing last and I will list anything less than a million for 5 inf.  If I'm undercutting the vultures all the better!

 

It's my way of giving back if not directly.  If it's a marketer that gets my stuff odds are it's @Yomo Kimyata which I've just saved myself some time giving people money directly since he will do it for me.  

Edited September 15, 2021 by Mezmera

[Luminara]

6 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

What is arbitrary about it is that game balance is such that only some toons can be built to do that with, here's that word again, efficiency. So, you pick an AT or combo that is best at running on teams...you're SOL.

 

Accounts are free.  Even low end computers can run two clients simultaneously, so anyone can make their own team to farm and achieve the same results.

 

Additionally, my TA/Dark could farm at +2/x6 ten years ago, and we all know how bad TA was then.  I don't think the range of suitable "toons" is as narrow as you suggest.

[Wavicle]

3 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

Accounts are free.  Even low end computers can run two clients simultaneously, so anyone can make their own team to farm and achieve the same results.

 

This is exactly my point. ALL playstyles being rewarded roughly equally is NOT the same thing as "anybody can do it". Your suggestion is basically precisely saying "you want these particular rewards, you have to do this particular activity" which is generally not how CoH works, thankfully.

 

  

3 minutes ago, Luminara said:

I don't think the range of suitable "toons" is as narrow as you suggest.

 

That's fair, you may be right about that.

[MHertz]

40 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

To @MHertz: I think the flaw in your argument is that you are not accounting for time and rank.  Fighting +4s generally is much slower...

Yes, I know. My argument is that changing the level difficulty nerfs your drops per mission, and drops per level, irrespective of whether you are doing it fast or slow. The important figure isn't time per level, it's mobs per level, because the number of enemies your team defeats is the foundation for the drop rate. The nerfed drop total would hold steady no matter what AE mission you built for yourself, at any drop rate. Playing the mission on +0 yields more drops than playing that same mission on +4, because there's more enemies. Consequently, playing at +0 means you reach level 50 with more stuff in your pocket. This ought to have the effect of depressing market prices.

 

You may say that this is balanced, because it's a tradeoff the player chooses: higher XP, faster speed, and greater theoretical risk in exchange for a lower number of drops per mission. But I would argue that this is one potential origin for imbalances in the game economy.

[Grouchybeast]

21 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

What I'm saying is I think it would actually be better for the game if All playstyles, even such as you just described, were rewarded Roughly the same over time. That is purely an opinion based on intuition though, not something that can be datamined nor a perspective I am really trying to persuade people to share.

 

The problem with that is that it becomes fantastically complex and time consuming to balance and maintain, and even then there are more players out there willing to spend more time min-maxing than there are devs trying to balance the rewards.  That's even before you get down to questions like how would you reward roleplaying, or holding costume contests, or organizing large events like MSRs.

 

I'm just not sure how much effort it's worth from the devs, for a game that is already minimally grindy, and where the game already rewards 'normal' play at a level that allows players to equip their characters with relative ease.  I honestly don't think that CoX is difficult enough to merit it.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Grouchybeast said:

 

The problem with that is that it becomes fantastically complex and time consuming to balance and maintain, and even then there are more players out there willing to spend more time min-maxing than there are devs trying to balance the rewards.  That's even before you get down to questions like how would you reward roleplaying, or holding costume contests, or organizing large events like MSRs.

 

I'm just not sure how much effort it's worth from the devs, for a game that is already minimally grindy, and where the game already rewards 'normal' play at a level that allows players to equip their characters with relative ease.  I honestly don't think that CoX is difficult enough to merit it.

Perhaps so.

[Grouchybeast]

3 hours ago, MHertz said:

• If you could fight only +0 minions from level 1 through level 46, you'd average 1,132 recipe drops from 42,445 minions.
• If you could fight only +4 minions from level 1 through level 46, you'd average 676 recipe drops from 25,358 minions (again, assuming the drop rate doesn't scale).
• Fighting +4 minions over your career from 1-46 results in 40% fewer drops, having fought 17,086 fewer minions. That's the equivalent of playing about 14 additional levels at level 50, just to break even with the amount of recipe drops a normal 50 gets.

 

A level 50 character only has about 90 slots, so even with your most pessimistic estimate, they're still generating over six times more recipes than they can slot themselves.  Not all of those 676 recipes will be useful, of course, but with plentiful converters and level bucketing  they can all potentially become useful.   I'm not sure that the difference between a 6 times recipe excess and an 11 times recipe excess per levelled character would have all that much effect on the market.

Edited September 15, 2021 by Grouchybeast

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, Mezmera said:

If it's a marketer that gets my stuff odds are it's @Yomo Kimyata which I've just saved myself some time giving people money directly since he will do it for me.  

 

That *does* sound like something I would do.

[Luminara]

3 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

This is exactly my point. ALL playstyles being rewarded roughly equally is NOT the same thing as "anybody can do it". Your suggestion is basically precisely saying "you want these particular rewards, you have to do this particular activity" which is generally not how CoH works, thankfully.

 

No, the point is that multi-boxing is teaming.  You stated that team-oriented characters are up shit creek when it comes to farming, I'm reminding you that a team is a team is a team, and it doesn't matter, from the game's perspective, if the team is you plus you plus you, or you plus me plus whoever posts next, it's still a team.  You can team with other players, or you can team with one or more dummy accounts.  The play style is teaming in both cases.

 

Granted, one could posit that the farmer, utilizing a hyper-specialized build and pitting it against carefully selected foes in order to maximize defeat speed and minimize risk may have an advantage in speed of inf* generation.  However, even multi-boxing, very few farmers are exercising the same wide variety of power usage that ordinary players cooperating on teams do.  Said farmer doesn't have a companion character using Radiation Infection or Disruption Arrow.  That farmer doesn't have a scrapper or blaster pumping out damage by the truckload.  The farmer's team with one actively controlled character and 2-7 other characters using a single auto power apiece is not, in truth, as efficient as the team with two or more organic brains directing characters.  The advantage is not so obviously with the farmer, when we look at these factors, because no matter how well designed his/her team can be, the team with players controlling every character will always have access to more powers, more relevant and useful powers and ultimately better speed and efficiency.  The one point in the farmer's favor is that he/she is in complete and absolute control of the team, whereas a real team can have differing goals, poor communication, mistakes, et cetera.  Therefore, the most accurate conclusion we can draw, with the information we have thus far, is that a farmer's multi-box team is more efficient than a bad PUG, but less efficient than a well-coordinated team.

 

Finally, you also state that the rewards are skewed, but the only evidence given thus far, in another thread, showed that to be untrue (the opposite, in fact).  If you have more data, present it.  If not, then you have no supportable claim that farming is "arbitrarily rewarded more".  Information, not supposition, is how we address problems, whether they're perceived problems or real problems.  Guesses and assumptions creating an anti-whomever movement isn't addressing a problem, perceived or real, it's forming a lynch mob.  We're better than that.  This is Co*, not WoW.

 

[Wavicle]

2 minutes ago, Luminara said:

No, the point is that multi-boxing is teaming.  You stated that team-oriented characters are up shit creek when it comes to farming, I'm reminding you that a team is a team is a team, and it doesn't matter, from the game's perspective, if the team is you plus you plus you, or you plus me plus whoever posts next, it's still a team.  You can team with other players, or you can team with one or more dummy accounts.  The play style is teaming in both cases.

 

Yeah, ok. Personally, I don't like the idea of multiboxing, but that is another conversation.

  

2 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Finally, you also state that the rewards are skewed, but the only evidence given thus far, in another thread, showed that to be untrue (the opposite, in fact).  If you have more data, present it. 

 

I only said that after seeing the Dev post that said exactly that, farming is the most efficient way of getting rewards. I object to that.

[MHertz]

55 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

 

A level 50 character only has about 90 slots, so even with your most pessimistic estimate, they're still generating over six times more recipes than they can slot themselves.

This is true. However, there is also the effect of filling slots over time, because recipes are leveled. You have to fill slots at 30, at 35, at 40, at 45, and so on, if you intend to be effective. Not all of those recipes will be ideal for your final build. If you first started making IOs around level 30, you won't have a lot of really recent ones if you play on +4. According to my spreadsheet, you'd get about 94 recipes for levels 28-30 while playing +0, but you'd get 38 recipes for levels 28-30 while playing +4.

 

Okay, you say, not every player wants to build out IOs at that level. At this point we have to further divide our population. There are PLers who skip straight to 50 as soon as possible, filling no slots over time; there are people who play the game as they go, trying to fill slots with the best gear available; there are people who make do with SOs and DOs and never get IOs; there are people who want the IOs but feel they aren't a good use of cash until later. The PL crowd, who slot nothing from 1-49 and wait to build out once they reach the top, those guys probably lower overall demand (for lower-level stuff, at least). But even as they're playing at Level 50 on +4, their drops per mission will be lower. They'll be falling behind in production behind players who play +0.

[Grouchybeast]

4 minutes ago, MHertz said:

This is true. However, there is also the effect of filling slots over time, because recipes are leveled. You have to fill slots at 30, at 35, at 40, at 45, and so on, if you intend to be effective. Not all of those recipes will be ideal for your final build. If you first started making IOs around level 30, you won't have a lot of really recent ones if you play on +4. According to my spreadsheet, you'd get about 94 recipes for levels 28-30 while playing +0, but you'd get 38 recipes for levels 28-30 while playing +4.

 

I think the number of people who are slotting only what drops for them is probably really, really small.  Most people will be putting their recipes onto the market where, thanks to the magic of level bucketing, it doesn't matter what level they were earned at, they become supply for the full range of the set's levels.  Same is true for crafted IOs: once they go onto the market, the level they were crafted at becomes meaningless.

 

With free attuning via the market, the need to replace IOs is much less than is was on live.  Also, with all the extra trays it's possible to respec at 50 and pull out more-or-less every IO you have which can then be reused or listed on the market.  If they go back onto the market the magic of level bucketing once more makes them available to everyone, no matter what level they want to buy.  Anyway, even if players replaced the IOs in every slot at 50 and reused or sold nothing, they're still generating 5 times more recipes than they use, and that will only grow with time if they keep playing after 50. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 hours ago, Wavicle said:

I am happy to acknowledge that farming is Not ruining the economy, but THIS take is disingenuous.

You aren't an efficient genius. You've simply chosen a playstyle that is ARBITRARILY REWARDED MORE than other playstyles.

 

THAT is the crux of the disagreement right there.

 

What, exactly, is arbitrary about getting xp and inf for defeating enemies? And what, exactly, is wrong with being rewarded more for being more efficient at dispatching said enemies?

[skoryy]

Just now, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

What, exactly, is arbitrary about getting xp and inf for defeating enemies? And what, exactly, is wrong with being rewarded more for being more efficient at dispatching said enemies?

 

 

[Wavicle]

I am not telling anyone to quit having fun, that's a total strawman. All I'm saying really is that if I was designing the game from the ground up I would put rewards far less behind defeating enemies and more behind completing tasks.

[Yomo Kimyata]

56 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

What, exactly, is arbitrary about getting xp and inf for defeating enemies? And what, exactly, is wrong with being rewarded more for being more efficient at dispatching said enemies?

 

Well, although I am not opposed (in theory) to people having fun, there is always a risk that being more efficient could come with risks that may threaten you, or others, or the overall health of the society of Homecoming.

 

Let's assume you live a mile from where you work.

 

I've got no problem if you walk to work everyday, and quickly find the fastest path.  I might have a problem if you jaywalk because it's faster and you put yourself in jeopardy.

 

I've got no problem if you want to drive to work instead, but I might have a problem if you ignore traffic lights and stop signs that are designed to keep society as a whole safe and productive.

 

I've got no problem if you want to build a rocket ship to blast yourself to work every morning, but I might have a problem if your rocket sets my house on fire and kills my dog.

 

Now, I have *NO IDEA* what constitutes a risk in HC.  I don't have enough information, and I certainly don't have enough power.  Does AFK 3-box farming constitute a risk?  Dunno, but we know that the devs don't love it, and since this is their ball, I'm going to defer to them to make the rules.  And I do love me some rules.  <--- Lawful Good.

[Bill Z Bubba]

10 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

And I do love me some rules.

 

Harm no other and do as ye will.

<- Chaotic Neutral

 

Once I see tangible proof of harm being done to the community at large from farming, I might listen. But "wahh, I'm poor cuz I don't farm" ain't gonna cut it.