The Pretty Good AE Debate

[Darmian]

2 minutes ago, Hendle said:

but even joining taskforces and giving them a heads up of -I've never done this even on live- has gotten me kicked from 2 of them

THAT, my friend, is on them being grade A dipshits and no reflection on you.  Yeah, I know you know that but I'm just verifying it for you.

[ivanhedgehog]

4 hours ago, Parabola said:

My thoughts are really along the lines that the exact details matter less than the idea that no one way of playing the game should result in disproportionate rewards compared to other ways. If people want to ae farm all day every day then all power to them but the rewards for doing so shouldn't be completely out of line with the rewards for playing the more traditional game all day every day (chance would be a fine thing, bloody real life...).

 

I never farm anymore. I built a fire farmer to check it out and pl'ed a few alts but I quickly found that what I enjoy is the levelling process the traditional way. I make enough inf by a bit of very light marketeering as I go along to meet my needs and that's good enough for me.

 

In general I am happy with how I play and happy for others to do their thing too. But, what I don't like is any nagging feeling that my time could be more profitably spent farming than what I'm doing. Of course traditional play is going to be a bit less rewarding, that's fine, but when it feels it's an order of magnitude less rewarding then that's not so good.

 

More importantly if it feels that way to me then any new players are likely to feel the same thing too. As much as I can see the appeal of farming, and I wish its proponents well, I think a farm is a terrible introduction to the game for a new player. There is so much to this game that gets skipped over in the confines of the ae building. The majority of content is sub 50 and while it's fair enough that a jaded veteran might want to avoid it (I love all the old low level stuff but to each their own), I don't think it's a good thing for new player to be given the idea that 'the game' is blasting to 50, racing to incarnate, purpling out and then wondering where the content is.

 

I think this is more or less the angle the devs are coming from too. They have stated several times that they don't have a problem with farming itself, but they are acting to reign in its more disproportionate rewards.

the rewards for rp'ing are nerfed by pretty much everything. Farming has good rewards because you are defeating a lot of enemies. Run a ITF and you can do the same. you are rewarded x inf and y xp for each minion, Lt and boss. Do you suggest that they should intentionally under reward one playstyle so that you dont feel bad? It boils down to the fact that farmers kill 500 enemies in the time you kill 100, and you think that this is unfair. Farmers are actually getting less already, but they are so much more productive that it appears they are making more. Adding a timer on enemy defeats wouldnt go over very well, there is no real way to normalize kill rates.

[ivanhedgehog]

5 hours ago, Astralock said:

 

That would work... for about a week.  Then everyone would be right back to AE farming.  Why?  Because even if you give everything a fresh coat of paint, and up the rewards a bit, AE farming would still give exponentially higher rewards with far less risk compared to everything else, and that's all many people seem to care about.  And no, buffing everything else up to the level of AE farming is not an answer.  You can never buff everything else up to match an outlier, because the outlier is... well... an outlier.  In the end, you have to nerf the outlier.

how do you balance risk? strip all IO's off at the door to make everyones defenses equal? Is a farmer at less risk than a capped brute doing a +4 MLTF? do they just nerf all content you dont like?

[arcane]

Just put together an AFK build for my Spines/Fire with 381% regen, 2,080 hp, and 3 Power Transfers 🙂 excited to see how it does with the changes.

[arcane]

7 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

the rewards for rp'ing are nerfed by pretty much everything.

Why would there be ANY rewards for RP… you’re not doing anything….

[mrstyle3]

To support the encouragement of getting folks to play more regular content - make being able to obtain AE rewards a reward itself for completing non AE content.  i.e you unlock getting AE rewards after obtaining VET level XX from non AE

 

OR 

 

AE Vet rewards are unlocked after obtaining a combination of XX badges i.e. a total of so many defeat, accomplishment and achievement  badges - the idea is to  exclude exploration and history badges which do not mission experience. 

 

Basically, a carrot vs stick approach - and we all know the COH community is really good at going after the next shiny carrot.

[ivanhedgehog]

4 minutes ago, arcane said:

Why would there be ANY rewards for RP… you’re not doing anything….

its an activity in the game. We keep seeing people tell us that farming has disproportionate rewards and that all playstyles should reward equally. Farmers get rewarded for defeating enemies, nothing else.

[Bionic_Flea]

25 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

It boils down to the fact that farmers kill 500 enemies in the time you kill 100, and you think that this is unfair. Farmers are actually getting less already, but they are so much more productive that it appears they are making more.

Don't you think that being able to custom design enemies that only do damage you are essentially immune to and play on maps that you chose to barely have to move to have hundreds of enemies on you might have something to do with it?  Come on now.  Let's be honest.

[MoonSheep]

8 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Don't you think that being able to custom design enemies that only do damage you are essentially immune to and play on maps that you chose to barely have to move to have hundreds of enemies on you might have something to do with it?  Come on now.  Let's be honest.

 

i think you've touched on a good point here ol flea, in my view reward should be balanced against difficulty

[arcane]

14 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Don't you think that being able to custom design enemies that only do damage you are essentially immune to and play on maps that you chose to barely have to move to have hundreds of enemies on you might have something to do with it?  Come on now.  Let's be honest.

You don’t say 🙂

[Darmian]

58 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

its an activity in the game. We keep seeing people tell us that farming has disproportionate rewards and that all playstyles should reward equally. Farmers get rewarded for defeating enemies, nothing else.

RP is not a thing run by the Devs or built into the game itself.  You can do it, and GMs even help out and participate sometimes with RP events, but there's never been rewards for it because the game was never set up to do it.  The rewards for RP are dictated by either a predetermined set of rules that the RPers agree to adhere to and/or the fun of actually RPing in the first place.

 

Even if you were to have rewards how would you distribute them?  Here's X amount of XP/Reward Merits/etc, because that was a particularly sharp comment in response to Night Lepus's attempt to ruin the party?  

 

If any of the dedicated RP groups/players want to correct me on the above, please do.  That said, it's still impossible for the game code to award things for RP.*

 

*Allowing for any XP/drops etc earned in an AE arc written specifically to further an RP storyline.

Edited July 21, 2022 by Darmian

[ForeverLaxx]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Why would there be ANY rewards for RP… you’re not doing anything….

The amount of reward you get out of RP is directly proportional to the amount of catgirls you have with you at the time.

 

Or inversely proportional. Depends on who you are.

[ivanhedgehog]

58 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Don't you think that being able to custom design enemies that only do damage you are essentially immune to and play on maps that you chose to barely have to move to have hundreds of enemies on you might have something to do with it?  Come on now.  Let's be honest.

You can design characters resistant to just about anything in the game(other than hami) If I build a character and stick to the opponents I am specialized to defeat, is it cheating? or is it playing smart? Is a kill all ITF exploiting anything? we are talking rewards. Kill x and get y. Do we penalize smart players now?

[cranebump]

I write only SFMA arcs. I don’t recruit anyone to run through them (which is probably a marketing mistake on my part, but foolish pride spurs me to let them stand on their own in all their obscure non-glory). I like exploring the gaps in content, and exploring characters. 
 

it doesn’t bother me that people use AE to farm. I’ll just say that they’re missing some great (and not-so-great) content. Ease of travel is a great thing. But all that teleporting leaves narrow maps with dark, unexplored corners, begging for player footsteps. 
 

Something’s lost. Something’s gained. I prefer the gains of grabbing faster movement from the get go, of converting enhancers into seed money, then nabbing some temps for my squishy fresh toon (you know…for emergencies):-) 

 

Other people don’t dig that? No skin off my back. I’ll still do what I do, provided things don’t change to where I can’t. I don’t know how/if the abundance of farming (Excel’s stock in trade these days) will affect what I do when it comes to AE, or how I play. If it does, well…c’est la vie. Will say there’s great content there. Too bad more folks don’t take advantage of it.

Edited July 21, 2022 by cranebump

[Bionic_Flea]

23 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

You can design characters resistant to just about anything in the game(other than hami) If I build a character and stick to the opponents I am specialized to defeat, is it cheating? or is it playing smart? Is a kill all ITF exploiting anything? we are talking rewards. Kill x and get y. Do we penalize smart players now?

It doesn't take much smarts to copy a fire farmer build and run any of the dozens of fire farms.  I'm not saying you did that.  I have no idea.  Maybe you invented fire farming!  I'm just saying that it doesn't require much smarts or skill to be a fire farmer and get better rewards, faster, than anything else in the game.

 

You like farming?  Cool!  Me too.  Should that fire farm have a better return per minute (or per hour) than any other activity in the game, including that kill all +4 ITF?  Should it be as rewarding, twice as rewarding, ten times as rewarding, 100 times, is there a limit?

 

More edits!  And isn't this a bit like Lebron James, who no doubt is talented and trains hard, beating school kids in basketball?  The kids have no chance; Lebron is in no danger of possibly losing.

Edited July 21, 2022 by Bionic_Flea

[ivanhedgehog]

20 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

It doesn't take much smarts to copy a fire farmer build and run any of the dozens of fire farms.  I'm not saying you did that.  I have no idea.  Maybe you invented fire farming!  I'm just saying that it doesn't require much smarts or skill to be a fire farmer and get better rewards, faster, than anything else in the game.

 

You like farming?  Cool!  Me too.  Should that fire farm have a better return per minute (or per hour) than any other activity in the game, including that kill all +4 ITF?  Should it be as rewarding, twice as rewarding, ten times as rewarding, 100 times, is there a limit?

 

More edits!  And isn't this a bit like Lebron James, who no doubt is talented and trains hard, beating school kids in basketball?  The kids have no chance; Lebron is in no danger of possibly losing.

I dont really care about reward per hour. they can put time gates that stop you after you have earned x amount but that wouldnt be much fun. Should everyone stop and wait for the guy street sweeping or maybe the guy that is switching back and forth to netfix to catch up? If I kill 2 minions and an LT and you do the same we should get the same reward. If I go afk to chat with my wife, should you have to stop playing too? the only real fair way is to just reward us when we defeat enemies, not run a time clock operation.

[arcane]

1 minute ago, ivanhedgehog said:

I dont really care about reward per hour. they can put time gates that stop you after you have earned x amount but that wouldnt be much fun. Should everyone stop and wait for the guy street sweeping or maybe the guy that is switching back and forth to netfix to catch up? If I kill 2 minions and an LT and you do the same we should get the same reward. If I go afk to chat with my wife, should you have to stop playing too? the only real fair way is to just reward us when we defeat enemies, not run a time clock operation.

Point missed. Repeatedly. By miles. We get it.

[roleki]

25 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

You like farming?  Cool!  Me too.  Should that fire farm have a better return per minute (or per hour) than any other activity in the game, including that kill all +4 ITF?  Should it be as rewarding, twice as rewarding, ten times as rewarding, 100 times, is there a limit?

When the reward system is tied to enemy defeats, those who defeat more in less time... get more rewards than those that don't.  To be quite honest, thanks to the incessant complaining from a certain vocal fraction of the playerbase, AE farmers are getting LESS rewards per mob than they would in content, but, they're encountering more mobs per square inch than they might in your typical PI radio mission or even a +4 ITF.  

Instead of disdain, you should feel a sort of pity for the poor farmers.  For a few more magic beans per minute, they are trading not only the opportunity to carouse through rich, delightful content like 'Find Wyatt a Clockwork Power Source To Study' but they are also robbing themselves of the opportunity to team up with the sort of people who would log into the forums and call them -specifically - all sorts of names just because they were feeling pouty.

[ShardWarrior]

44 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

You like farming?  Cool!  Me too.  Should that fire farm have a better return per minute (or per hour) than any other activity in the game, including that kill all +4 ITF?  Should it be as rewarding, twice as rewarding, ten times as rewarding, 100 times, is there a limit?

 

Depends on what rewards are important to the individual.  Fire farming may have better XP/inf/salvage etc returns than running a +4 ITF.  However, if the reward you are looking for is playing with a group of people and running content together, then the ITF is more rewarding.  The inverse of that is also true.  I think it a mistake to be so laser focused on one kind of reward in these discussions.  Just my 2 inf.

[Bionic_Flea]

I notice that no one like to answer my questions.  Ask me anything, I'll give you an honest answer.

 

Reward per critter is a meaningless measurement, IMO.  An Uber-duber fire farmer is earning more per minute than any other AT doing any other content; many times more even though they get half as much per critter. 

 

I ask again, how many times more per minute should a fire farm be worth?

[ivanhedgehog]

39 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I notice that no one like to answer my questions.  Ask me anything, I'll give you an honest answer.

 

Reward per critter is a meaningless measurement, IMO.  An Uber-duber fire farmer is earning more per minute than any other AT doing any other content; many times more even though they get half as much per critter. 

 

I ask again, how many times more per minute should a fire farm be worth?

So if I sit in a glowie mission and take 4 hours to find it, should that effect other peoples rewards? When I solo a Dr Q tf should I get a 40 million inf bonus because it takes a while? xp/inf per kill is basically the only metric they can go by. That Uber-doober fire farmer is putting a lot of bad guys in prison, thats why he gets what he does. Just what rewards should they give the guy soloing radio missions? what numbers can they apply to a chart to give them a fair reward structure? Other than "he got a bigger piece of cake than I did"

 

ps: Try the all illusion ITF, its a blast.

Edited July 21, 2022 by ivanhedgehog

[Bionic_Flea]

1 hour ago, ivanhedgehog said:

So if I sit in a glowie mission and take 4 hours to find it, should that effect other peoples rewards?

NOPE

 

When I solo a Dr Q tf should I get a 40 million inf bonus because it takes a while? xp/inf per kill is basically the only metric they can go by.

NOPE, BUT YOU DO GET A BIG BUCKET OF MERITS, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT'S THE WSF

 

That Uber-doober fire farmer is putting a lot of bad guys in prison, thats why he gets what he does.

STATEMENT, NOT A QUESTION

 

Just what rewards should they give the guy soloing radio missions? what numbers can they apply to a chart to give them a fair reward structure? Other than "he got a bigger piece of cake than I did"

EXACTLY.  THAT'S WHAT I'M ASKING: "WHAT'S A FAIR AMOUNT?"

 

ps: Try the all illusion ITF, its a blast.

I DID AND IT WASN'T AS GOOD AS I ANTICIPATED.  PA ARE GREAT, BUT THEY HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO FOCUS FIRE.

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

Hey, yall! What's goin on in this thre...

 

[lemming]

I have few issues with farmers just generating xp, inf, drops, power levels.   I don't like the multi-box, PL a few chars up to whatever, strip them for parts, and delete them.  I'm not even sure Crosscut  would think that's ethical.

[Andreah]

56 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Hey, yall! What's goin on in this thre...

 

Personally, Id like to see more focused debate. I don't want to get drawn into more of this "It should/shouldn't exist" level stuff. There are some points to be made, discussions to be had, and fundamentals to be worked out, but so long as everyone sees each other as threats to their playstyle or to the fundamentals of the game to others, we're just talking past each other.