issue 27 Focused Feedback: Architect Entertainment

[Lot]

13 minutes ago, Andreah said:

Yes, some do, on purpose. 

 

After V99 there are no more EMs.

 

Do you mean someone might re-roll their farming character when V99 is reached? That would be both impractical and inefficient and a small gain compared to how easy it is to get RMs from task forces, etc. I think the reason farmers "farm" is mainly for levelling up other characters and to gain inf (directly and from building enhancements from any recipe drops that are sold to the AH) and that is the true purpose of farming.

Edited July 15, 2022 by Lot

[Andreah]

4 minutes ago, Marbing said:

It was even suggested that AE tickets unlock Incarnate stuff and that was still met with  "but emp merits".

I get that we all love easy access to Incarnate powers, but it bothers me in a Game Integrity sense that we've made it so trivially easy to get shards, threads, components, astrals, and even emps. These were supposed to the key rewards from the most dififcult content anywhere in the game, that could not be gained without the greatest effort, perseverance, or group coordination. And now we award them like anything else. 

 

Honest, we ought to remove emps and threads from vet levels, and no longer drop shards and threads from content under level 45. But I know that's not happening. But we should at least not make it worse.

[Excraft]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Play how you want to play!

 

I want to play getting vet levels and EMP merits in AE.   Can I do that?

[Excraft]

4 minutes ago, Andreah said:

I get that we all love easy access to Incarnate powers, but it bothers me in a Game Integrity sense that we've made it so trivially easy to get shards, threads, components, astrals, and even emps. These were supposed to the key rewards from the most dififcult content anywhere in the game, that could not be gained without the greatest effort, perseverance, or group coordination. And now we award them like anything else. 

 

That made sense when the game was a commercial venture.  It isn't anymore.

[skoryy]

Just now, Excraft said:

 

That made sense when the game was a commercial venture.  It isn't anymore.

 

Guild Wars 2 doesn't have a subscription and basically just sells cosmetics and RMT.  It still has a leveling curve, high-end content, and an endgame even without subscriptions.

[Andreah]

2 minutes ago, Lot said:

After V99 there no more EMs.

 

I'm fully aware of that. I have about 1200 vet levels on my fifties in total.

 

3 minutes ago, Lot said:

Do you mean someone might re-roll their farming character when V99 is reached?

No, the one I am most familiar with deletes at about vet level 48, where you've been granted 280 of the 410 Emps from vet levels, because the rate of return is lower after that.  Keep in mind, in this process a player is vet-farming several characters in parallel using multiboxing. When they get to vet 50, you move everything off, liquidate/email/store, and make a fresh one to continue vet-farming.  Even the threads you gain as bonuses in the early vet levels are worth a lot. 

 

8 minutes ago, Lot said:

That would be both impractical and inefficient and a small gain compared to how easy it is to get RMs from task forces, etc.

All I can say is I disagree. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

10 minutes ago, Excraft said:

 

I want to play getting vet levels and EMP merits in AE.   Can I do that?

 

Well, if you enjoy the action of farming, the good news is that the new aggro system appears that it will make it even easier!  If you enjoy the getting of vet levels and EMP merits easily, it appears you will have to find a different way.  Again, I'm reserving judgment until I hear what the devs overall purpose is.  

[Andreah]

1 minute ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Again, I'm reserving judgment until I hear what the devs overall purpose is. 

You are the soul of patience. 

 

And I really mean that.

[Marbing]

4 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

Well, if you enjoy the action of farming, the good news is that the new aggro system appears that it will make it even easier!  If you enjoy the getting of vet levels and EMP merits easily, it appears you will have to find a different way.  Again, I'm reserving judgment until I hear what the devs overall purpose is.  

Great attitude! Very refreshing.

[Oubliette_Red]

On 7/12/2022 at 1:17 PM, The Curator said:

Architect Entertainment

 

Mission Map Additions

• These new mission map options can also currently be found under Unique > Newly Released Maps:
  • Unique > Circle of Thorns > Circle of Thorns - Flying Ziggurat

 

 

Yay!  So glad to see this map back!!

 

Feedback:
Falling off island still does massive damage.

[Ruin Mage]

lol oh no.

[El D]

1 minute ago, Oubliette_Red said:

 

Yay!  So glad to see this map back!!

 

Feedback:
Falling off island still does massive damage.

[hilarious screenshot of massive fall damage]

 

Working as intended. Why do you think all the Mu mobs fly everywhere? 😛

[ShardWarrior]

32 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Well, if you enjoy the action of farming, the good news is that the new aggro system appears that it will make it even easier!  If you enjoy the getting of vet levels and EMP merits easily, it appears you will have to find a different way.  Again, I'm reserving judgment until I hear what the devs overall purpose is.  

 

To be fair, this is not the "play how you want to play" style as you were suggesting. 

 

I am just being honest here, I really see no difference in farming PI portal maps or radio missions as any different than farming in AE.  They are both the same activity, just done in a different venue.  It seems quite ridiculous to me to have wasted the time on removing Vet Levels and EMP merits from AE farming only to encourage farming outside of AE.  I have yet to see anyone provide an acceptable answer as to what the real difference is.  New players can just as easily hop on a PI portal farm and level to 50 as they could going to AE in Atlas Park.  The end result is still the same, so in that regard, this change is a complete and utter waste of time in my opinion.

 

If they want to stop farming, then have the courage, bite the bullet and just get rid of XP and inf from non-Dev Choice arcs in AE and be done with it.  In doing so, accept the consequences of that action and accept it will drive a not insignificant amount of players away from the game.  Those left can wonder where all those players went while trying to find seven other people to team with for content.

[Andreah]

2 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

I am just being honest here, I really see no difference in farming PI portal maps or radio missions as any different than farming in AE.  They are both the same activity, just done in a different venue.

I disagree. You can pick your adversary group in, say, PI Radios, but you can't design them. I would also like to see someone run PI Radios over and over AFK with seven door sitters.

[arcane]

4 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

I am just being honest here, I really see no difference in farming PI portal maps or radio missions as any different than farming in AE.

If they were the same people wouldn’t be screaming that the sky is falling. If they were the same AE wouldn’t be jam packed and Portal Corps mostly deserted. They’re close enough to the same, sure. But I don’t believe that anyone thinks there is no difference because no one is acting as if there is no difference.

[ShardWarrior]

23 minutes ago, Andreah said:

I disagree. You can pick your adversary group in, say, PI Radios, but you can't design them. I would also like to see someone run PI Radios over and over AFK with seven door sitters.

 

Fair enough on the AFK farming.  However, builds that soft cap defense are just as effective in PI portal missions as they are in AE farms, so I am not sure there is any real difference in that regard.

 

23 minutes ago, arcane said:

If they were the same people wouldn’t be screaming that the sky is falling. If they were the same AE wouldn’t be jam packed and Portal Corps mostly deserted. They’re close enough to the same, sure. But I don’t believe that anyone thinks there is no difference because no one is acting as if there is no difference.

 

Yes, they are close enough to be the same and other than convenience, I do not see any significant difference.  That is essentially my point.  If the activity is generally the same, what difference does it make whether this is taking place in AE or in PI or wherever else?  Is going back to Council map farming going to solve the perceived problems here?  I personally do not think so. 

[Marbing]

I told myself I would stop responding but I think it is worth noting that one way to look at this is that the entire PvE experience is one giant farm. You can grind anything in the game at various rates to get various rewards. Heck even badge hunting is a grind. (EDIT: And even they have to dip into content they typically don’t like, PvP, to get everything.) AE is part of that PvE experience and it has been found that it is the single best/quickest source for most of that grind. We have to stop looking at AE as if it is an entirely separate thing. It is part of the entire experience. So, yes, you could make arguments that people will grind elsewhere. Because, EVERYTHING is a grind at various rates. The problem is that AE is by far the quickest grind for nearly everything that a player needs. If it were not, then people wouldn't be using AE (as @arcane said) they would be using those other parts of the game. Having AE be the single best source for most of the rewards causes the rest of the PvE experience to be trivialized.

AE farms are easier to abuse, because you can AFK farm/bot them much easier, because you can alter the powers of your enemies, because you can set the conditions of the map how you want them to be as efficient as possible. You can't do that with farming Council Radios (for example). Let us also keep in mind that AE farming isn't going away, they are just curbing the rewards from them. 

Edited July 15, 2022 by Marbing

[skoryy]

4 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Fair enough on the AFK farming.  However, builds that soft cap defense are just as effective in PI portal missions as they are in AE farms, so I am not sure there is any real difference in that regard.

 

Again, if they were, there'd be as many people in Portal Corp as there are in fire farms.  There's no Portal enemy that uses only one attack type, and there's no Portal map that matches the asteroid/moon for ease of accessing all the mobs.  

[Andreah]

18 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

convenience, I do not see any significant difference

Convenience means efficiency, and that's entirely the point of farming. It's not only significant, it's critical.

[Lot]

1 hour ago, Andreah said:

No, the one I am most familiar with deletes at about vet level 48, where you've been granted 280 of the 410 Emps from vet levels, because the rate of return is lower after that.  Keep in mind, in this process a player is vet-farming several characters in parallel using multiboxing. When they get to vet 50, you move everything off, liquidate/email/store, and make a fresh one to continue vet-farming.  Even the threads you gain as bonuses in the early vet levels are worth a lot. 

 

Tut. Mulltiboxing more than three accounts is an easy way (or should be) to receive a permanent ban. Hope you reported them, someone should. Even if someone re-rolled on two or three accounts to accumulate more EMs I still think it is impractical, not the most efficient way to make inf and not normally exploited.

[ShardWarrior]

16 minutes ago, skoryy said:

Again, if they were, there'd be as many people in Portal Corp as there are in fire farms.  There's no Portal enemy that uses only one attack type, and there's no Portal map that matches the asteroid/moon for ease of accessing all the mobs.  

 

I understand that much and I understand one cannot AFK farm effectively in PI radios or portal missions as they can in AE.  My question is more general than those couple of points. 

 

To hopefully clarify, my fire farmers are going to be able to mow through enemies with no risk in maps like Infernal's lair and such as they can in AE fire farms.  My defense capped characters will mow through Council radios or Council portal missions just as easily as they would in S/L farms in AE with no risk.  In that regard, there is no difference to me if I am farming in AE or PI or whether I fighting designed enemies or not.  All this change is doing is making the old farming maps more desirable than AE, and those maps are going to be superior to anything else, just as AE was.  It is replacing one map with another.  The end result is the same. 

 

Personally, I alternated every so often between PI missions and AE farms for variety.  Sure, AE was more convenient being all under one roof, but that is easily replaced by just keeping select portal missions and logging out in Portal corp instead of AE or Pocket D. 

 

Ultimately, I do not think this change is not going to drive people toward running a lot of other content, if that was one of the goals.  Those who were interested in getting Vet levels and EMP merits and such from farming are just going to switch to another farming maps outside of AE.  As I said, the net result is the same, they will still be segregated from everyone else, so I do not see any major difference here.

Edited July 15, 2022 by ShardWarrior

[Andreah]

Just now, Lot said:

Hope you reported them,

I would if I had evidence it was more than three. But even then, it's not going to be easy case to make if they say it wasn't; we've been down this road before, it's basically an honor system.

[ShardWarrior]

1 minute ago, Andreah said:

Convenience means efficiency, and that's entirely the point of farming. It's not only significant, it's critical.

 

Not everyone farms purely for convenience though.  I think this is a point that is lost among a lot of people.

[Andreah]

If they're not farming for convenience or efficiency, then they won't mind farming at -1 level, x1 group size, and at reduced rewards, right? It's convenient for the mobs to be higher levels and still be easy to defeat; it's convenient for them to come in large groups. It's so convenient to get more rewards per hour than any other game activity. It's convenient to even be doing that while away from the keyboard.

 

They want to farm for the disproportionately high rewards it grants per unit time.  

 

Yes, many of them will move to other, activities, and I suspect, that is partly why this is being done.

[ShardWarrior]

1 minute ago, Andreah said:

If they're not farming for convenience or efficiency, then they won't mind farming at -1 level, x1 group size, and at reduced rewards, right? It's convenient for the mobs to be higher levels and still be easy to defeat; it's convenient for them to come in large groups. It's so convenient to get more rewards per hour than any other game activity. It's convenient to even be doing that while away from the keyboard.

 

They want to farm for the disproportionately high rewards it grants per unit time.  

 

Yes, many of them will move to other, activities, and I suspect, that is partly why this is being done.

 

I believe you are missing the point of what I am trying to say.  Not everyone farms for convenience sake.  And yes, many will move on to the old farming maps which as I pointed out above will result in the same thing as just keeping this in AE.