Require Two Level 50 Characters to Get XP in AE

[Apparition]

Suggestion: Make a requirement that an account must have two level 50 characters on it to unlock the ability to earn XP in AE missions.  You can still do AE content beforehand, you just wouldn't earn any XP while doing so.

 

I realize that this is a pie in the sky wish that will most likely never happen, but hey, doesn't hurt to suggest it.

[TheMuna]

With XP boosters and the ability to sidekick, you can still get to lvl 50 (even twice) without knowing much about the game. I understand the complaint that people ruin endgame activity by showing up without even knowing the basics of the game...bit that's a cultural shift in some of the player base more than anything. People will always find a way to get to the endgame contact without playing much, and likewise, even some people who have played for long and often don't fully understand or appreciate the game dynamics. 

 

Just gotta play how you play and try to find good teammates/friends to call on.

[EyeLuvBooks]

For what purpose? Why should they do this at all? What are you trying to improve or accomplish?

[Lazarillo]

See, the inherent problem with this idea is that it weakens AE for its intended purpose, in order to punish/limit it for people who are exploiting it for uses outside its designed scope.  As it is, we already hit that with XP being halved, so people end up ignoring story content in AE for more lucrative returns, which has only just sort of created a death spiral of farming, as it were.  Removing XP from it entirely would only hasten that spiral.

[AerialAssault]

People will just filter more into PI Council farms. Nothing effectively changes.

[Six-Six]

I'm with @EyeLuvBooks. I'm struggling to find the reason for such a request. This would put a bias against AE and part of its intended purpose/exploit. Also AE has some really good content other than farms--some are even better than the built in content.

While it would seem natural or logical to "force" a newcomer to experience the regular game, it is highly subjective. If I came to the game with the intent of solely PvP, or pure team support, I don't really need to know the lore and story of it all. I just need to build the illest toon to achieve my purpose.

Incidentally, I enjoy the original content and have been playing it over and over the long way. However, my kind of fun is not for everyone, so let them do what floats their goat as long as it has very little effect on my personal goat. 😃

[biostem]

If the OP's intent is to increase player competency, then disabling AE XP won't do that.  Short of personally guiding each and every player to 50, there is no way to ensure that they reached it by whatever means the OP deems "legitimate", so I don't even know what they hope to achieve.  Even with the later revised tutorials, CoH is still from an era where learning as you go was the norm, and sometimes that means several defeats.  Let the AE farmers/farmees or power levelers do their thing - those that get bored at 50 will cycle through, while those that enjoy the game for what it has to offer will hang around and learn...

[Greycat]

Absolutely not. I've had SGs where AE was heavily used to create and play through storylines - and that was well before the players were 50. No reason they should be punished despite fighting right alongside everyone else.

 

All this would do is encourage PLing. You've added irritation for no benefit.

[ShardWarrior]

AE can be totally removed from the game and it will not serve to improve player competence at all.  As I have said in other threads, I personally have encountered far more people leveling their low level characters who have no clue what they are doing than I do people who are playing known PLed characters.

 

Removing AE would not stop farming either.  People will just go back to farming Council radios or other maps that were used prior to AE being implemented.

 

12 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

See, the inherent problem with this idea is that it weakens AE for its intended purpose, in order to punish/limit it for people who are exploiting it for uses outside its designed scope. 

 

Farms existed long before there was an AE, so calling farming in AE and "exploit" is being melodramatic. 

[Lazarillo]

7 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Farms existed long before there was an AE, so calling farming in AE and "exploit" is being melodramatic. 

"Taking advantage"?  "Abusing"?  What term would you prefer?  The point still stands.  AE was not created with the intended purpose of giving people convenient avenues to farming.  The fact that it's primarily used for such despite that doesn't change that people who are using it for its originally intended purpose should be punished for doing so.

 

Personally, I'd rather them just turn rewards back up to normal and turn MARDY back on, but that's an entirely different thread.

[Coyotedancer]

Oh noes!

People aren't playing the game the way you want them to!

 

How terrible!

How tragic!

 

Whatever will we do?! 

[ShardWarrior]

5 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

"Taking advantage"?  "Abusing"?  What term would you prefer?  The point still stands.  AE was not created with the intended purpose of giving people convenient avenues to farming.  The fact that it's primarily used for such despite that doesn't change that people who are using it for its originally intended purpose should be punished for doing so.

 

Personally, I'd rather them just turn rewards back up to normal and turn MARDY back on, but that's an entirely different thread.

 

Maps that were (and still are) used for farming before AE even existed were not intended as farms either, but people still used them as such.  People use non-AE maps for farming all kinds of things.  You see these being advertised on a daily basis in LFG.  Really just about any mission can be farmed, so should we eliminate every single mission in the game? 

 

I do not think the developers from back in the day were so naive as to think no one would create farms in AE.  Did they do things to curtail it?  Sure, but that was when the game was a for-profit venture and they had a vested interest in player retention for financial reasons.  That no longer exists here.  I would also say again, removing AE will not eliminate farming nor will it do anything to improve player competency.

 

I completely understand some people take issue with farming in general.  There is nothing wrong with that, however I do believe people should not begrudge others who enjoy farming.  If that is what makes them happy and what keeps them playing, then more power to them.  If you do not like it or do not want to hear from people looking for farms, use the ignore feature to ignore them.  You will never have to see their chat again. 

[LightningDrone]

Architect Entertainment was never truly destined to be a full roleplaying experience. Perhaps if one wants to eliminate a vast majority of power leveling in AE amongst veterans players, perhaps a scenario involving a new incarnate recipe that is a lvl 50 boost token. It might work, It might not. There's a lot of folks in City of Heroes that aren't fresh faces. Some just want to skip the leveling from 1-50 roleplaying aspect. I don't blame them, I feel the same way most of the time. I'll say again that a incarnate recipe for a lvl 50 boost token could make that possible.

[Lazarillo]

10 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

Maps that were (and still are) used for farming before AE even existed were not intended as farms either, but people still used them as such[...]

I'm not sure why you're getting so defensive about all this?  It's kind of irrelevant to the suggestion as a whole (which you may note, we seem to be in agreement that it would be a bad idea anyway?).

Edited December 29, 2021 by Lazarillo

[ShardWarrior]

6 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

I'm not sure why you're getting so defensive about all this?  It's kind of irrelevant to the suggestion as a whole (which you may note, we seem to be in agreement that it would be a bad idea anyway?).

 

I am not defensive at all.  I am just pointing out that saying AE is being "misused" by farming is not accurate.  Nor is changing XP in or removing AE going to solve the issue many people perceive it to be causing.  There is a select group here who seem to believe AE is the big bad boogeyman ruining the game.  It is not, nor has it ever.  As I said, people farmed long before there was an AE and there is still a large amount of farming done outside of it to this day.

[Glacier Peak]

Can't say I'm for this suggestion. The Dev Choice story arcs should remain xp normalized as they are.

[PyroBeetle]

The answer to all of this would be to have Burn do overriding fear again, which made me drop from live CoH back in the day when they did it. The fact that Burn is so overpowered, and that sets basically allow you to create an unkillable, in fire farms at least, character, is the issue. However, if people want to play the game that way, let them play the game that way. It is what they enjoy.

 

 

 

[UltraAlt]

I've always been against farming and power-leveling.

However, I think it is a little late to put the genie back in the bottle.

 

Creating Farming missions wasn't going to be allowed in the AE and the DEVs caved within a week of the AE's release.

 

I don't think having 1 or more level 50's should play any part in being able to use Farming/power-leveling to get a character to level 50.

If you want to chop off AE XP somewhere, make it no XP until you reach level 50. (I will, however, add that I don't think that this is fair to new players that join now or in the future as prior players have already had the advantage of this)

If you are trying to stop some people from power-leveling/farming to 50, then it should affect everyone.

 

Like I said, I think it is bit little late to put the genie back in the bottle.

[UltraAlt]

3 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

I am just pointing out that saying AE is being "misused" by farming is not accurate.

 

It was never intended for XP farming - especially with nerfed villain groups that could not defend themselves.

The DEVs were going to ban accounts for doing this. They started banning accounts when AE was released, and there was such an uproar and so many accounts were being banned that they caved on it with a week or so.

 

It is accurate to say that the AE was NOT created for farming.

The original intent of AE was for players to create NORMAL missions like those in the GAME for other players to play and enjoy - and to give more content to the game.

 

The AE was NOT created for Farming. Farming was "misusing" the AE. It has been accepted (and most probably the majority of AE users are farmers at this point), but that doesn't mean that is still isn't misusing the AE based on the originally design plan for AE.

 

Farming ruined the original intent of the AE.

[ShardWarrior]

31 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

It was never intended for XP farming - especially with nerfed villain groups that could not defend themselves.

The DEVs were going to ban accounts for doing this. They started banning accounts when AE was released, and there was such an uproar and so many accounts were being banned that they caved on it with a week or so.

 

It is accurate to say that the AE was NOT created for farming.

The original intent of AE was for players to create NORMAL missions like those in the GAME for other players to play and enjoy - and to give more content to the game.

 

The AE was NOT created for Farming. Farming was "misusing" the AE. It has been accepted (and most probably the majority of AE users are farmers at this point), but that doesn't mean that is still isn't misusing the AE based on the originally design plan for AE.

 

Farming ruined the original intent of the AE.

 

I do remember them trying to ban accounts for power leveling, but that was done before AE as well as I recall.  I also still say that farming existed since day one of the game, so to blame AE as the root cause of farming is not accurate. 

 

At least to me, using AE for farming is no different than farming prior to the introduction of AE.  The PI portal missions that people used for farms before AE still exist in game today, so even if AE were to disappear tomorrow, players would just migrate back to those maps and farming/power leveling would go merrily on.  People are farming all kinds of non-AE maps for defeat badges to unlock accolades and such. 

Edited December 29, 2021 by ShardWarrior

[Greycat]

30 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

Creating Farming missions wasn't going to be allowed in the AE and the DEVs caved within a week of the AE's release.

 

Farming wasn't the intent of any mission, AE or normal content. yet they were used for it.  Still are. Short of having every mission unable to be repeated once someone's run it (theirs or not,) and put on a timer, if something's able to be farmed, someone will find out how and do so.

 

As far as "allowed" and the devs "caving?" I believe the phrase "pushing back the ocean with a broom" is relevant here. There's no way they could *stop* farms being created without punishing everyone or gutting the entire system, and they flat out knew it. All they could do is keep an eye out for the real outliers as far as exploits and handle those as they came up. Which they did, to greater or lesser extents (specific mob farms, like comm officer farms, and ... whatever mechanic the CEBR farms used, I think that was the "INSP up before diving in" leading to inspiration buffs getting stripped on entry, but may be remembering wrong.)

[Luminara]

2 hours ago, PyroBeetle said:

The fact that Burn is so overpowered, and that sets basically allow you to create an unkillable, in fire farms at least, character, is the issue.

 

A deliberately crafted environment intended to cater exclusively to a specific strength and sidestep all weaknesses is not the criterion by which any set or power is determined to be over-powered or an issue.

[Solarverse]

22 hours ago, Apparition said:

Suggestion: Make a requirement that an account must have two level 50 characters on it to unlock the ability to earn XP in AE missions.  You can still do AE content beforehand, you just wouldn't earn any XP while doing so.

 

I realize that this is a pie in the sky wish that will most likely never happen, but hey, doesn't hurt to suggest it.

 

I'm not even going to get in to all the reasons why this is the best idea known to mankind since the invention of the wheel.

/100%

[Solarverse]

22 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

See, the inherent problem with this idea is that it weakens AE for its intended purpose, in order to punish/limit it for people who are exploiting it for uses outside its designed scope.  As it is, we already hit that with XP being halved, so people end up ignoring story content in AE for more lucrative returns, which has only just sort of created a death spiral of farming, as it were.  Removing XP from it entirely would only hasten that spiral.

 

If memory serves me correctly, its original design was no XP. It was missions only. I could be wrong, but this is how I am remembering it. If memory serves me further, the reason for that was to prevent people from exploiting it for Power Leveling...something of which has always been looked down upon by the original Devs.

[Solarverse]

17 hours ago, Six-Six said:

Also AE has some really good content other than farms--some are even better than the built in content.

 

 

I see this used a lot in defense of AE. However, I would give my left (enter sexual organ here) to see a chart on just how many people actually use it for the content and how many people exploit the hell out of it to Power Level.

I can say this much, I have yet to see anyone in LFG chat request to build or join a team for AE story content, all I ever see is "hitters sitters blah blah blah."