Focused Feedback: Reward Merits

[Ukase]

30 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

I don't think he would have said something like that, since it makes zero sense.  THERE IS NO RISK.

He probably would have said something about EFFORT or TIME SPENT vs reward.  After all, that's the metric that was used to determine the reward merits for each task force - average time to completion.  And AFK farming yields rewards for little or no effort, which upsets that paradigm.

You're probably right. And, just the way you've phrased that helps me wrap my head around everything a bit better. (I am subject to being obtuse, in case you were unaware)
 

[Bionic_Flea]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

I wish I could find the post where  Jimmy the GM stated something positive about farmers, but concern about the AFK farmer, but I can't find it to determine what the concern was. I want to say it's about risk vs. reward. Fair enough, I guess. 

 

Obligatory, But Jimmy . . .

From Jimmy here:

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Next I’d like to talk about progression, XP boosters and the AE nerfs. To catch everyone up:

• In i25, Incarnate components can be acquired by earning ‘Veteran Levels’ (levels beyond 50 which do not actually increase the strength of your character, they just provide badges and Incarnate components) and Incarnate XP can be earned from any content - however, normal Incarnate content will also provide the standard Incarnate rewards
• On the Homecoming servers you are able to select an XP rate between 100% and 200% - however, increasing it above 100% will reduce your influence gain to the same degree (200% XP = 0% inf)
• On the Homecoming servers XP rewards for non-Dev Choice Architect missions is reduced by 50% (for further context: This is similar to the reduction that was present on live, but by making use of the XP boosters mentioned above you can in fact get a higher XP rate than was present on live)

 

(Another aside before I continue: The AE nerf was originally to reduce the strain on the server as many AE farm maps used mechanics which were incredibly server-intensive, but we have decided to keep the nerf after we saw the other positive effects it produced)

 

The concerns we’ve seen about progression seem to be focused in two key areas:

• Progression is too easy, nobody will run Incarnate content
• Stop nerfing AE, let us play the way we want to play

I’ll cover both of these concerns together with a simple answer: The above changes are actually intended to allow everyone to play the content they enjoy and still progress at the rate of their choosing.

 

Take AE farms for example: Our goal was to ensure AE farms were roughly as valuable as they were on live as well as ensuring that those who simply wanted to level quickly were not forced to rely on them. Using the boosters you can now participate in a wide variety of content and still level up quickly.

 

We think this has actually been very successful - we still see a small subset of players engaging in AE farms, and those players still enjoy it and find it rewarding, but it is nowhere near as dominant as it was before the adjustment.

 

The way the Incarnate system works follows the same thinking. We don’t want people to be forced to grind through only Incarnate content to unlock those specific rewards, we want players to be able to play the game in the way they choose.

 

Overall the feedback we’ve received regarding these changes has been overwhelmingly positive, and we intend to continue making adjustments to support this philosophy as the player base and economy matures."

________________________________________________________________________________

AND

 On 3/31/2020 at 9:27 AM, Jimmy said:

It's been requested to split this into a separate topic as it was drowning out all other discussion in the other thread.

 

Please use this thread to discuss the change described below rather than the patch notes thread.

 

---

 

The following change was omitted from the beta patch notes due to a related exploit:

• Influence gain can no longer be increased by disabling XP

We’ve made this change to reduce the influence income gap between players who farm and those that do not. The amount of additional influence gained by abusing level 49 missions simply wasn’t healthy for the overall economy of the game, and generally unfair towards those who play standard level 50 content instead of farming.

 

Additionally, there were various exploits that could be abused in order to further increase influence gain through this option.

 

Overall, we concluded it was best to remove the mechanic. Even with this change farming is still far more efficient than every other method of influence gain.

 

On 3/31/2020 at 2:44 PM, Jimmy said:

That's fair. Perhaps "pretty close" was a bit of an overstatement, but I think it's fair to say we're a lot closer to that goal than the economy on live was 🙂

 

Something else your post highlights is that the reward balance between farming and literally everything else still has some ways to go - you should never feel like you have to farm.

 

There are no solid plans right now, but we've had some discussions about improving the way that rewards are distributed for "normal" content to make it more worthwhile. It's not on the immediate horizon, but it is definitely something I want to spend time on at some point.

 

On 5/5/2019 at 4:38 PM, Jimmy said:

Architect Entertainment

As mentioned above, the AE XP reduction will be remaining in place for the foreseeable future. Soon, however, we will be making a change to allow any arcs flagged as ‘Dev Choice’ to give full XP like any other non-AE mission.

 

To reiterate, the primary reason for the XP reduction is that the traditional farm maps used by many players put an incredibly high strain on the server’s CPU (this isn’t related to any memory leaks as some have suggested). It was causing everyone to have a degraded experience, which just isn’t fair.

 

In addition, some of you may have experienced issues editing and updating AE arcs you uploaded in the first week or so of the servers being online. This was caused by the AE databases not being shared by the different shards when we first brought Excelsior online. We’ve since rectified this issue and all new AE arcs are now fully accessible across all shards, but there are some older arcs that have been stuck in limbo.

 

We’re looking at various options for fixing this and aren’t completely certain on which route we’ll take first, but we would like to request that everyone make frequent offline backups of their AE content for the time being, as we may need to wipe some or all of the AE database in order to fully resolve this issue. If a wipe is required, we will give you a minimum of 3 days notice.

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

It might go something like this:

 

 

I was thinking more like:

 

 

[Grouchybeast]

4 hours ago, Ukase said:

I wish I could find the post where  Jimmy the GM stated something positive about farmers, but concern about the AFK farmer, but I can't find it to determine what the concern was. I want to say it's about risk vs. reward. Fair enough, I guess. 

 

In the Great AE Patrol XP Nerf of Doom Thread, Jimmy said that the devs would like to get rid of AFK farming, but only when they figured out how to do that without hurting other playstyles.  I could probably find the posts, but that thread scares me.

[Darmian]

23 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

 

In the Great AE Patrol XP Nerf of Doom Thread, Jimmy said that the devs would like to get rid of AFK farming, but only when they figured out how to do that without hurting other playstyles.  I could probably find the posts, but that thread scares me.

Go look, I'll hold your coat.

[Dazl]

There does seem to be something fundamentally wrong with “AFK Farming”. Being rewarded for doing nothing should be an issue.

[Ukase]

11 minutes ago, Dazl said:

There does seem to be something fundamentally wrong with “AFK Farming”. Being rewarded for doing nothing should be an issue.

Discounting the new Aeon SF and some of the other level 50 TFs, just about every story arc in the game, radios....they are all mindless button mashing. 

Before I learned to get a couple of the accolades on redside, I used to clobber the freak bosses on Unai Kemen's Dreck map. I did that afk, too. 

Just about everything can be done afk in this game. (with the proper build)
The difference is I have to manually move my character to the next group. What's the difference? We get punished because the AE mission creators were clever? 

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter that much to me. It just tears me up that you see it as "fundamentally wrong" when there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it. It hurts nobody. (as far as I can tell) 

It's like working a commission only sales job. I sell more, I make more. I sell less, I make less. If I make more, it doesn't impact how much you make. If I make less, it doesn't impact how much you make. So why is everyone so concerned with how much I make and how fast I make it? It has no impact on your life at all. 

Am I supposed to slow down for everyone? Am I supposed to stop afk farming and do what? I'm already playing my primary character. There's no harm in it. I have big stacks of inf. So? Doesn't hurt you. Could even help you if you ask nicely. I just don't see how it's so "wrong".  If it's a crime, it's victimless. The main reason I have so much influence is because I don't have to buy anything. I slave away over the crafting table, crafting and converting every recipe that's uncommon, rare or very rare. Just like everyone else, salvage drops in my missions. Like everyone else, recipes drop. I use my converters, I don't sell them. So I have a lot of inf. I market well. I buy pvp recipes at 1.5 to 2.2M and craft, convert and sell for 8M. I buy hero and winter packs. I take the enhancements, catalyze 'em and sell 'em. Nothing that everyone else can't do. There is no advantage that I have. I just do the work. That's fundamentally wrong? I don't think so. I add value. 
 

I do understand that the original devs datamined the average time it took to complete various TFs and awarded reward merits based on those metrics. And there is room to argue about an afk farmer getting emp merits, which convert to reward merits at a decent clip. 

Thing is - unless you afk farm, you have no idea how slow it is! 
I get maybe a vet level and a half per night, and that's if the rng has the patrols seeing my character as they wonder about that dreaded cave map. Sometimes I might only get two bars. (A lot depends on the map you use) 

So how is it wrong? Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Maybe there are some maps there where you can go afk and get three vet levels in an hour. I'd like to think I'd have heard about them, but I haven't. 

I promise you, if you're actively teaming, you're getting more xp than my afk-farmer. I know this because I let a couple of beggars in my farm and they quit after a couple of minutes, lol. I tried to tell 'em.  So, if you're getting more xp than I am - what's so awful about it?

[Dazl]

30 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Discounting the new Aeon SF and some of the other level 50 TFs, just about every story arc in the game, radios....they are all mindless button mashing. 

Before I learned to get a couple of the accolades on redside, I used to clobber the freak bosses on Unai Kemen's Dreck map. I did that afk, too. 

Just about everything can be done afk in this game. (with the proper build)
The difference is I have to manually move my character to the next group. What's the difference? We get punished because the AE mission creators were clever? 

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter that much to me. It just tears me up that you see it as "fundamentally wrong" when there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it. It hurts nobody. (as far as I can tell) 

It's like working a commission only sales job. I sell more, I make more. I sell less, I make less. If I make more, it doesn't impact how much you make. If I make less, it doesn't impact how much you make. So why is everyone so concerned with how much I make and how fast I make it? It has no impact on your life at all. 

Am I supposed to slow down for everyone? Am I supposed to stop afk farming and do what? I'm already playing my primary character. There's no harm in it. I have big stacks of inf. So? Doesn't hurt you. Could even help you if you ask nicely. I just don't see how it's so "wrong".  If it's a crime, it's victimless. The main reason I have so much influence is because I don't have to buy anything. I slave away over the crafting table, crafting and converting every recipe that's uncommon, rare or very rare. Just like everyone else, salvage drops in my missions. Like everyone else, recipes drop. I use my converters, I don't sell them. So I have a lot of inf. I market well. I buy pvp recipes at 1.5 to 2.2M and craft, convert and sell for 8M. I buy hero and winter packs. I take the enhancements, catalyze 'em and sell 'em. Nothing that everyone else can't do. There is no advantage that I have. I just do the work. That's fundamentally wrong? I don't think so. I add value. 
 

I do understand that the original devs datamined the average time it took to complete various TFs and awarded reward merits based on those metrics. And there is room to argue about an afk farmer getting emp merits, which convert to reward merits at a decent clip. 

Thing is - unless you afk farm, you have no idea how slow it is! 
I get maybe a vet level and a half per night, and that's if the rng has the patrols seeing my character as they wonder about that dreaded cave map. Sometimes I might only get two bars. (A lot depends on the map you use) 

So how is it wrong? Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Maybe there are some maps there where you can go afk and get three vet levels in an hour. I'd like to think I'd have heard about them, but I haven't. 

I promise you, if you're actively teaming, you're getting more xp than my afk-farmer. I know this because I let a couple of beggars in my farm and they quit after a couple of minutes, lol. I tried to tell 'em.  So, if you're getting more xp than I am - what's so awful about it?

If you are building a farmer to earn emps to convert to merits, you are right that would be tedious and slow. I’m not even sure how efficient it is compared to other ways to farm merits like hami raids.

I have no doubts about your good intentions and you're a probably a rare exception.

I have a few farmers I use mainly to level up new toons. Sure, I guess if I have to go to the bathroom, they would still be alive when I got back but I wouldn’t “AFK farm”  them intentionally. Maybe it does or doesn't hurt anyone else. I guess I’m an old fuddy-duddy that thinks you should put the effort into it and not just put it on cruise control.

[BrandX]

2 hours ago, Dazl said:

If you are building a farmer to earn emps to convert to merits, you are right that would be tedious and slow. I’m not even sure how efficient it is compared to other ways to farm merits like hami raids.

I have no doubts about your good intentions and you're a probably a rare exception.

I have a few farmers I use mainly to level up new toons. Sure, I guess if I have to go to the bathroom, they would still be alive when I got back but I wouldn’t “AFK farm”  them intentionally. Maybe it does or doesn't hurt anyone else. I guess I’m an old fuddy-duddy that thinks you should put the effort into it and not just put it on cruise control.

 

Well the down side will be, that I personally used Apex and Tin Mage TFs to get those 100 merits for an IO I wanted that is in the 20 million range on the Auction House.  Still, get 80, but won't get to convert the 2 EMP Merits it gives to get the additional 20 Merits.  😞

 

Never relied on the EMP merits from vet levels tho.  Or at least, I didn't go about gaining vet levels just for those.

[Logansan]

If a small group of AFK farmers are the root cause of these changes (which quite a lot of people are suggesting here), why not just just add controls that limit their XP and drops while they are doing so.

 

I realise that the initial idea of removing Vet levels in the AE was one control designed to do this. But while that particular change would had impact all AE players, can't we just tweak that suggestion to just put a limit on the maximum xp/drop gains per day for each character but make it a extremely high barrier so it only impacts those that are "abusing" the games mechanics?  How this could be done I have no straight answer, but at least it will directly be targeting the right players and no one else.

 

30 - 40 years ago I use to include a diminishing returns system on experiences gain in most of the games I designed (I use to run a games company). Most players never noticed as it would only impact a small number of players who either played 24/7, were using a "undocumented feature", or where just better at understanding the game mechanics then we ever expected. Personally I believe all online games should include such a control.

[Grouchybeast]

2 hours ago, Logansan said:

If a small group of AFK farmers are the root cause of these changes (which quite a lot of people are suggesting here), why not just just add controls that limit their XP and drops while they are doing so.

 

The devs have already said that they'd like to ban AFK farming, but the answer to 'why not just...' is that they can't come up with a workable system that will only ban AFK farming, and not erroneously punish other players.  If you know a foolproof metric they could apply using the CoX engine, then I'm sure the devs would love to hear about it.

Edited July 27, 2022 by Grouchybeast

[Logansan]

2 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

 

The devs have already said that they'd like to ban AFK farming, but the answer to 'why not just...' is that they can't come up with a workable system that will only ban AFK farming, and not erroneously punish other players.  If you know a foolproof metric they could apply using the CoX engine, then I'm sure the devs would love to hear about it.

Yes, that's obvious, which is why I included the other paragraphs. 

[sbloyd]

Wouldn't reinstating the AFK timeout during AE fix that?

[skoryy]

17 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

I was thinking more like:

 

 

 

I've got Starwave right here to provide the music!

[Myrmidon]

21 hours ago, Ukase said:

I'm just asking, not trying to be rude, nor discount your view - better for who? and how would it be better?

Though it may not win him a peace prize, @UltraAlt covers it accurately in this thread:

 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

19 minutes ago, sbloyd said:

Wouldn't reinstating the AFK timeout during AE fix that?

 

That would, but there's the argument that it would hurt a lot of casual players as well.  For example, I don't team that much because due to various complications, when I'm playing I will frequently and suddenly need to AFK.  Many times a session.  I don't do it in AE missions, but I could see how some might.  Also, I would have zero problems if they did reinstate it.

[arthurh35353]

47 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

That would, but there's the argument that it would hurt a lot of casual players as well.  For example, I don't team that much because due to various complications, when I'm playing I will frequently and suddenly need to AFK.  Many times a session.  I don't do it in AE missions, but I could see how some might.  Also, I would have zero problems if they did reinstate it.

Would it really hurt you to be AFK kicked at 30 minutes? At most, it would be an annoyance and you'd probably want to plan your time on more consistently.

[Ironblade]

1 hour ago, sbloyd said:

Wouldn't reinstating the AFK timeout during AE fix that?

In theory, yes.

In practice, I would think anyone engaging in heavy AFK farming is savvy enough to find a way to negate that solution.  I don't AFK farm and I can think of two methods offhand.

[Coyotedancer]

2 hours ago, sbloyd said:

Wouldn't reinstating the AFK timeout during AE fix that?

 

It would be a pain in the bum for those of us who like to dual-box our active farmers with our own leveling lowbies or incarnates-in-progress.

 

 

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by Coyotedancer

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, arthurh35353 said:

Would it really hurt you to be AFK kicked at 30 minutes? At most, it would be an annoyance and you'd probably want to plan your time on more consistently.

 

Me personally?  If it was in regular missions, yes absolutely.  I appreciate your concern that I should plan my leisure time more consistently, but my ability to plan even a ten minute session without interruptions which, frankly are much more important than this game, is impossible.  Appreciate your privilege, my friend!

[Moka]

I think this change is needed. People should actually play endgame content to make endgame builds. What a concept!

[ShardWarrior]

On 7/26/2022 at 12:23 PM, Myrmidon said:

2. People playing the rest of the game content.

 

You can get rid of AE entirely and farmers will just move to the old farm maps, if they do not leave the game all together.  It is not going to magically increase the number of people playing story content by suddenly forcing farmers into it.

[The_Warpact]

What is this thing with forcing people to play how someone else dictates it? Seriously fvck off, people need to stay in their own lane.

 

You cannot guess how anyone will react because you'll get a multitude of different responses ie: people will quit, people will play old farm maps, people will do something else, and I can guarantee you're not going to force people to play how you want them to play.

 

If they specifically farm, then that's what they want to do. I don't team with anyone outside of my VG, and I farm. If farming is removed, I either go old school farm or not which reduces the amount of time I play and I will still team with my VG. Once again still not teaming with anyone else.

 

The question you have to ask yourself is why would anyone want to team with people that want to take away what they want to do?

 

 

 

 

This is not pointed at anyone specifically, its just a general response to stuff that I see people post on various sections of the forums and frankly some of you are some arrogant SOBs with your BS.

[Ukase]

4 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

Though it may not win him a peace prize, @UltraAlt covers it accurately in this thread:

Sorry, he's posted multiple times in there, and I've already read his opinions. I disagree with them. I do not see how these changes make things better for everyone. I don't see how these changes make the game better. 

It's clear that we're not all going to agree on how things should be done. If a thread goes 16 pages, yeah, it's clear there's some debating going on. And healthy debate is good, but Dale Carnegie taught me, "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion, still." 

So, I will not try any further to convince anyone of anything. I'm just expressing my views which are - before I can get behind any change, I want to know why the change is proposed. Barring that, I can't get behind it. 

[Ukase]

12 hours ago, Logansan said:

If a small group of AFK farmers are the root cause of these changes (which quite a lot of people are suggesting here), why not just just add controls that limit their XP and drops while they are doing so.

 

I realise that the initial idea of removing Vet levels in the AE was one control designed to do this. But while that particular change would had impact all AE players, can't we just tweak that suggestion to just put a limit on the maximum xp/drop gains per day for each character but make it a extremely high barrier so it only impacts those that are "abusing" the games mechanics?  How this could be done I have no straight answer, but at least it will directly be targeting the right players and no one else.

 

30 - 40 years ago I use to include a diminishing returns system on experiences gain in most of the games I designed (I use to run a games company). Most players never noticed as it would only impact a small number of players who either played 24/7, were using a "undocumented feature", or where just better at understanding the game mechanics then we ever expected. Personally I believe all online games should include such a control.

I think this is pretty much genius.