The Pretty Good AE Debate

[ShardWarrior]

3 hours ago, Excraft said:

Can't the AFK timer be turned on inside instanced maps?  That would solve your AFK farming problem. 

 

Excellent question.

[SwitchFade]

23 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

Twisting my words to fit your incorrect narrative does not bolster your statement.  There is a lot of non-AE content that can offer outsized returns for the effort put into it.  See the various speed TF runs.  Those upset the whole time/effort versus reward ratio, perhaps even more so than AE farming. 

 

You keep asking everyone for data, yet I have yet to see any from you.  Do you have any that shows AE content is that much superior to non-AE content?  What reward goals are we talking about?  XP?  Inf?  Reward merits?  IO recipes?  Special enhancements like Hami Os?  Incarnate materials?

I did not twist your words, you said that there is AE content that offers outsized rewards and should be addressed. Those were literally your words from the quotes post.

 

And we agree, outsized AE rewards SHOULD be addressed.

[Bionic_Flea]

23 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Do you have any that shows AE content is that much superior to non-AE content?

Although you weren't directly responding to me, I posted this set of older @Jimmy quotes in the Reward Merits thread, where he made reference to outsized AE rewards.

 

 

[ivanhedgehog]

4 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

A discussion about what? About AE? What's the proposed topic therein? Are you advocating for something? Do you have a position or argument?

 

Do you want AE to retain the current reward structure? Because if you do, you should just state that, at which point an actual discussion could commence. If you agree that AE and all other content should be reward equal, we agree and there's no further debate.

 

Be honest, what EXACTLY do you desire?

you are starting with opinions you treat as facts. that is a dishonest approach to any discussion. every kill should reward the same amount in relation to level/tier equally. they should not be lower just because they are in any particular place in the game. AE is as much part of the game as the hollows is.

[ivanhedgehog]

4 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

You can attempt to dismiss the question with invalid facts, which doesn't answer it. In this scenario here, offering data that a kill by kill basis ratio is lower vs other content does not negate the fact that AE can be manipulated to earn rewards MAGNITUDES larger than all other content.

 

And for the record, I do not agree that the return per arrest should be lower in AE, it should be the same as all other content.

 

I recommend, instead of continuing to cherry pick sentences and attempt to refute them with logic that is immaterial, please remember,

 

I early said AE should be EQUAL, no reduction per arrest, no removed vets, no removed emps.... EQUAL.

 

So that all content, within a a standard variance about the median, rewards the same.

 

Disagreeing with that means you want AE to have greater rewards.

so you are just upset that farmers put in more effort and are rewarded for it. I would love to see the afk timer be put into AE.

[Coyotedancer]

The real advantage that AE farms have over "regular" content maps run at x8  (Including our Old School farming favorites like Harvey's demons and Council Earth-) is mob density. Each individual target is typically worth less than its "outside world" counterparts, because non-Dev Choice XP in Ae missions was halved early on... But by adding patrols and ambushes and hostage groups, farm designers manage to stuff more of them on the map. (You can see that for yourself if you run, say, a round of Briggs' cave farm and then that Warriors mission using Atta's cave map in the 'Wheel of Destruction' arc-)

 

Call it quantity over quality, Or making up for slim margins with volume. 

 

Honestly, the "OMG but there's no RISK!!" issue doesn't even come into it as far as I can see, on either side of the debate. I mean, let's be realistic for a second here. Are you honestly going to try to tell me that something like Council Earth or Wolf World or a smash-it-all ITF *really* poses one iota more real "risk" to a well-built character than those angry cosplayers do to a farmer's brute? We all know the situation in the game. With even a half-way descent build there's very. very little in the normal game that's dangerous. Saying AE fire farms are uniquely cakewalks ignores what a lot of us to darn near everything else in the CIty on a regular basis.  

 

 

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by Coyotedancer

[arcane]

2 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

what other source for xp is there in an AE mission? please let us know. if you are talking about inf, AE has the same drop rate as any other content. If you know otherwise, please show us proof.

Using XP per kill is a dishonest way to measure AE rewards since they are custom designed by players to maximize kill rate. 
 

Rewards = Rewards per kill times kill rate. If you aren’t factoring in the kill rate you aren’t actually talking about the activity’s overall rewards.

[ivanhedgehog]

3 hours ago, arcane said:

So many people literally refusing to engage with my opinions because they can’t bear any slight reduction in their AE rewards. A little sad 😐

 

Make an argument that they get outsized rewards, sure. But maybe engage with the actual arguments on the table because the red herrings stink.

fixed that for you

Edited July 27, 2022 by ivanhedgehog

[arcane]

2 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

farmers put in more effort 

Haha that’s too much. If you don’t understand that farming is the path of *least* effort in this game, I don’t expect to be capable of agreeing with you on what color the sky is.

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, SwitchFade said:

I did not twist your words, you said that there is AE content that offers outsized rewards and should be addressed.

 

Well no, nice try but that is not what I was referring to and I believe you know that.  I made specific mention of edge cases.  Just like any other content in the game, there are edge cases where rewards are greatly outsized to the time, effort and risk involved.  See the speed TF runs I mentioned.  Following your logic, all of that content should be nerfed too because there are players who can game the system and earn full rewards within a handful of minutes.   Even iTrials are being sped through with less than a full league. 

 

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Although you weren't directly responding to me, I posted this set of older @Jimmy quotes in the Reward Merits thread, where he made reference to outsized AE rewards.

 

Thank you for posting.  I find it interesting there are not any hard numbers posted there as they used to share back in the day.  I also note that he refers to the "small subset of players" engaging in farming.  It would be interesting to see stats on how many DFB runs are being done as well since you can bypass most all of the early game by running through it a few times.  This bit is interesting too -

• Progression is too easy, nobody will run Incarnate content

I cannot speak to all servers, however iTrials are run quite frequently on Excelsior and Torchbearer, at least during the times that I am online.   The problem with iTrials here is that most require a full league. 

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by ShardWarrior

[ShardWarrior]

5 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

The real advantage that AE farms have over "regular" content maps run at x8  (Including our Old School farming favorites like Harvey's demons and Council Earth-) is mob density. Each individual target is typically worth less than its "outside world" counterparts, because non-Dev Choice XP in Ae missions was halved early on... But by adding patrols and ambushes and hostage groups, farm designers manage to stuff more of them on the map. (You can see that for yourself if you run, say, a round of Briggs' cave farm and then that Warrior's mission using Atta's cave map in the 'Wheel of Destruction' arc-)

 

I would also add the ability to add in Elite Bosses into each mob.

[Coyotedancer]

1 minute ago, arcane said:

Haha that’s too much. If you don’t understand that farming is the path of *least* effort in this game, I don’t expect to be capable of agreeing with you on what color the sky is.

 

That depends on the farmer and why they're doing what they're doing. Running a zen-mode fire brute is a whole different world than farming with, say, a Blaster. (FCM does that. I think he's nuts but... yeah. What he does with that rabbit is anything BUT zen-mode easy.)

[Coyotedancer]

5 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

I would also add the ability to add in Elite Bosses into each mob.

 

It's a little debatable if adding EBs to a map is really "best practice" for farm designs. Sure, they're valuable... But they also take longer to kill than regular bosses. It's a bit of a trade-off. That's why you'll see them included in some farms but not others.  

[Sabrehawk]

Plus if you are blaster farming EBs can be lethal.

[Ukase]

14 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I can't argue with people wanting to do it. It's obvious that people want to to do it to get to 50 without effort.

Wanting to so something because it is the easy path is different than it being "fun".

 

Either way, doorsitting bypasses the risk versus reward and goes directly to reward for doing nothing at all. 

With names getting opened up, this takes this to a whole new level. No effort other than logging in and entering a mission to level up to 50 to lock your name in so that you can never lose it while other people's names require logins in order to keep them.

 

 

Well. You make my point.

Are you running the farming while your other account doorsits for influence, or are you running other content while your 2nd account earns influence on completely different content?

It's just a question.

 

How are you having fun on the 2nd account that you aren't actually playing?

I can see how it could augment the fun that you are on the account that you are actually playing if that 2nd character was doing something to help the character that you are playing.

I can't see the "fun" gained by the 2nd account if it is sitting in another mission gaining influence by doing nothing. There is a difference between "fun" and generating rewards at no risk to the character while you playing fun/enjoyable content on another account.

With my multiple accounts, there was a period where I would farm with three while I played typical content - DFB, Posi, the Faultline, Striga and Croatoa arcs, an MSR or two, Tina Mac and Maria Jenkins. 

For the past year, I'd pretty much stopped farming, just playing one of the accounts with normal content. No other players were harmed in the farming. No small children were neglected or abused. The only result was I was able to give away more influence to folks I deemed worthy.  Some I just gave away the 3 standard PvP IOs to - glad armor 3%, Shield Wall 5%, Panacea +HP/End. Some I gave away hero packs to, some winter packs. Several folks got an entire builds worth of IOs because having done it so many times before, it's faster and easier for me to come up with the IOs needed, and cheaper too, because of my experience in changing trash into gold. 

Some of you seem to take exception to this idea of "no risk" in a fire farm. 
There is risk. Some of us have just learned to mitigate risk better than others. I don't see the harm. You could do it if you wanted to, but you don't, and for some inexplicable reason, because you don't want to, nobody else should do it either? 

Someone shovel that in a garden. 

[Spaghetti Betty]

8 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

It's a rather simple solution:  Either remove the meteor map or greatly curb the number of mobs AE allows in it.

Well I'd be a little sour about that. I use that map for a particularly challenging encounter in one of my arcs.

[roleki]

 

16 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

And, not a single person who is advocating for AE to retain it's ridiculous reward structure has given any reason when asked, "why should AE he have dramatically outsized rewards vs all other content?"

 

What DOES occur, however, is the usual straw men, ad hominem, hyperbole, etc...

 

"You just want me to play your way!" ... No, no one said you should play their way

 

"You think farming is wrong!".... No, no one thinks that, farming is fine

 

"You want to force me to play story content!" ... No, no one said that, you can play any content

 

"My fun is farming in AE, you want to take that away!" ... No, no one wants to take away AE

 

Every argument defending the fact that AE returns are MAGNITUDES greater than all other content is ad hominem, hyperbole, strawman or deflection.

 

Few actually come out and say, "I want that ridiculous rate of return for less effort." Being honest is, at least, respectable.

 

Read closely.

 

No one wants to stop farming. No one thinks farming is bad. No one wants to stop AE farming. No one wants you to play their way.

 

Focus on the issue that keeps coming up,

 

AE should not have any different rate of return than any other content, ever. All content should be equal returns. AE should never have been allowed to have any different rate of return than all other content, neither lower or higher.

 

Play anything you like, any way you like, secure in the knowledge that you're not being discriminated against. AE should be EQUAL to all other content.

 

 

Very well then, I farm because it is the most efficient means of amassing the resources that I find important.  With that out of the way, I would love to hear someone offer concrete proof that AE farming has harmed them, the game, or the universe in general, or if it turns out this all boils down to "They have more than me!" 

 

8 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I think I know one way that would reduce the ridiculousness somewhat, but lot's of people would hate it. 

 

It's a rather simple solution:  Either remove the meteor map or greatly curb the number of mobs AE allows in it.

 

That's the kind of idea that would make my head explode, but not for the reason you're thinking. 

 

I don't like telling people how to spend their time.  It's none of my business, as mine is none of theirs.  An AFK farmer having trillions of inf doesn't affect me in the least, and so far, nobody has proven its affected them either.  I don't even mind people whose pastime seems to be bitching about AE farming, provided they're just farting into space instead of directly into the dev's ambrosia, which is too often the case for my tastes.

 

That said, I don't like anything that lends inertia to the anti-AE contingent, and AFK farming does that in spades.  It's both the least-defensible form of farming and the number one example the hooting masses point to when they demand AE get nerfed.  Since there's 'nothing' to differentiate between cave mapping and AFK farming, any swing of the blade aimed at AFK farmers is going to hit me square in the crotch, and I'm in a completely different car with both hands on the wheel, so to speak.  For some reason, I dislike it.  In that light, nerfing one particular map seems like a perfectly reasonable, measured solution but.....

 

Here we are, discussing a game that's old enough to be served curiously strong beer in Quebec. Maybe if farming were outlawed, it would increase server pop.  Or maybe it would kill the game.  We honestly don't know.  What we DO know is there are nearly 1400 players logged in at 4PM EST on a Wednesday.  How many games from 2004 can say that? 

 

We should be doing cartwheels that we are here at all, not finding ways to chase people off in the hope that maybe, if all the stars align, somebody else will replace them and that person will be absolutely enchanted by playing the game The Right Way instead of yet another dirty farmer.  While it would be phenomenal to have all the servers at double dots during peak hours, this aged game has to compete with literally billions of other entertainment options, and more are added every day.  We *might* have to accept that this group here is who we have, and for better or for worse, it includes AFK farmers and roleplayers and Wentworth drop-shippers, people who hate all of that, and people who are oblivious to everything, like me.

[Puma]

3 hours ago, arcane said:

Using XP per kill is a dishonest way to measure AE rewards since they are custom designed by players to maximize kill rate. 
 

Rewards = Rewards per kill times kill rate. If you aren’t factoring in the kill rate you aren’t actually talking about the activity’s overall rewards.

Then you'd have to deal with kill all ITFs too, because they are exactly the same. 


And lets talk about  just how unfair it is that people run the newer DFB and DIB Sewer trials on their newbies and get levels so much faster than I do running  missions in hollows. It's just SO UNFAIR that they get oversized returns for that! 

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by Puma

[Bionic_Flea]

I don't want to eliminate AE, or eliminate farming in general.  I am not a fan of long term AFK farming, especially auto-bot AFK farming, but I have no problem if someone who is farming needs to step away.  So I understand the difficulty in enforcing a rule.  Even so, I wish there was a stated rule against it.

 

What I would like is for active farming to have the best rewards per unit of time, but not many multiples better than say a +4 kill most ITF.  To accomplish that, I would like to reduce AE fire farming rewards a bit and increase non-AE playing two bits.  What I would need data for is to figure out how much those bits should be.

Edited July 27, 2022 by Bionic_Flea

[UltraAlt]

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

No other players were harmed in the farming. No small children were neglected or abused.

 

No comment on the sensationalism of this comment.

Oh, wait ...

 

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

The only result was I was able to give away more influence to folks I deemed worthy.

 

Well, if you deemed them worthy, then of course!

How silly of me.

 

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

Some I just gave away the 3 standard PvP IOs to - glad armor 3%, Shield Wall 5%, Panacea +HP/End. Some I gave away hero packs to, some winter packs. Several folks got an entire builds worth of IOs because having done it so many times before, it's faster and easier for me to come up with the IOs needed, and cheaper too, because of my experience in changing trash into gold. 

 

I guess they were worthy to get very thing that they needed without playing the game to earn them.
It taught them to have no idea about the worth of influence once the started gaining it.

Apparently, you profited off their ignorance as well ... I know that I do ...

 

But that makes increased influence prices for those that are new playing the game.

 

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

Some of you seem to take exception to this idea of "no risk" in a fire farm. 

 

yes.

Because there is supposed to be Risk versus Reward balance in the game.

 

Some can say that we should feel good about ourselves by not abusing the system and that should be our reward.

 

I watch things go on. I know that the behavior of cheating the system is increasingly accepted when systems that can abuse the system are allowed to continue when players knows that they are used to abuse the system.

 

I guess I'm back to the part where if players can just powerlevel in the AE, then we might as well give them a button that takes 2-3 hours of in-game to activate but it makes you 50 once the timer expires. 

I mean basically there is no difference... oh, wait ... you would timeout if you weren't in a mission.

Either way, it's cheap path to locking a character name with no effort.

 

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

I don't see the harm.

 

You have made it obvious that you don't see the harm.

I have pointed out repeatedly why I see harm in it.

 

I would suggest the two of us don't need to discuss this point any more with each other on this thread.

We have both made our points to each other.

We both know where we each are coming from and neither of us are likely to change our views.

 

Thanks for the discussion on this topic.

[Coyotedancer]

1 hour ago, Krimson said:

I have doubts about this, but I'm not going to dismiss the possibility that farmers will eventually be considered the wrong people. 

 

If these threads are to be believed, to a certain portion of the forum population we already are. I'm sure Moon and UA and others like them would just be *HEARTBROKEN* if all of us pulled up proverbial stakes and moved elsewhere. 😝

 

[ivanhedgehog]

2 hours ago, Krimson said:

We could always keep this as a backup plan just in case. 😄 

 

The thing is, I don't ever recall seeing anything from HC Staff anywhere to suggest that player retention is any kind of priority whatsoever. We could lose half the player population overnight and we would still have more players than all the other CoH pirate servers combined. So if the HC team decided to go nuclear, there are enough players to keep the experiment going. I have doubts about this, but I'm not going to dismiss the possibility that farmers will eventually be considered the wrong people. 

I dont know about other servers, but on mine those farmers are the people organizing things. funding costume contests, hami raids,MS raids and Itrials. losing them would hurt the server severely.

[Coyotedancer]

I'm too old to have any patience left for high school mean-kid shenanigans.... If someone has a beef with the way I play the game, better they just say it outright, I think.

 

At least they should be honest about wanting to drive out the believers in BadWrongFun, right?

[Troo]

5 hours ago, roleki said:

What we DO know is there are nearly 1400 players logged in at 4PM EST on a Wednesday.

 

Players... or accounts?

[SwitchFade]

8 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

so you are just upset that farmers put in more effort and are rewarded for it. I would love to see the afk timer be put into AE.

Straw man argument, we both know I didn't make this claim.