The Pretty Good AE Debate

[arcane]

4 minutes ago, Astralock said:

Also, you can't buff things to match extreme outliers. 

Been trying to explain this for like years, thanks 🙂 

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, Astralock said:

I think sometimes people need to be reminded that City of Heroes is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. 

 

Methinks "massive" is quite overstated with 1255 people online.

 

3 minutes ago, Astralock said:

Also, you can't buff things to match extreme outliers.  You need to reign in the extreme outlier.

 

100% agreed when it comes to powerset and archetype balance.

 

3 minutes ago, Astralock said:

You can (and probably should), still buff rewards outside of Mission Architect a bit, but in the end, the rewards from AE need to be nerfed as they are an extreme outlier.

 

AE's not really an outlier if the vast majority of leveling happens there.

 

But I'm game. Let's see what happens to the player population if the devs manage to nerf AE enough so that an ss/fire/mu brute can only get the same rewards per minute in AE that an emp/nrg defender can get outside of it.

[Troo]

7 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

Where's @Troo?

 

Are you referring to this dumpster fire or the thumbdowns? "do not cross the streams!"

 

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by Troo

[arcane]

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Let's see what happens to the player population if the devs manage to nerf AE enough so that an ss/fire/mu brute can only get the same rewards per minute in AE that an emp/nrg defender can get outside of it.

Nobody is suggesting that. Zero reason to entangle your own private soloist AT balance agenda with an unrelated issue. 🙂 

[Bill Z Bubba]

Just now, arcane said:

Nobody is suggesting that. Zero reason to entangle your own private soloist AT balance agenda with an unrelated issue. 🙂 

 

Bullshit, no one is suggesting it. Farming in AE needs one well built farmer *soloing* and that's precisely what has the anti-ae crowd all in a tizzy. ""Those" people aren't being forced to team! "Those" people are earning inf/xp/emps/etc far faster than I can outside of AE! "Those" people are letting folks doorsit and level/earn rewards faster than actually "playing the game!"

 

It's quite related.

[ShardWarrior]

12 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Methinks "massive" is quite overstated with 1255 people online.

 

Not to mention not all content in the game requires or is intended for a full team to play. 

[Troo]

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Bullshit, no one is suggesting it. Farming in AE needs one well built farmer *soloing* and that's precisely what has the anti-ae crowd all in a tizzy. ""Those" people aren't being forced to team! "Those" people are earning inf/xp/emps/etc far faster than I can outside of AE! "Those" people are letting folks doorsit and level/earn rewards faster than actually "playing the game!"

 

It's quite related.

 

Do you really think it's this bad? I don't.

 

Sure there's a lot of huffing and puffing. But as Flea pointed out look at the new stuff coming as well. New content, powerset, costume stuff, advance mobs, lots of good stuff.

Forced to team, nah.

Concern about some outliers, yes. But overall AE was already addressed and we'll see where it is after this patch. Further adjustments will likely be made.

Door sitting, nah. A minor annoyance for pugs having folks 'learning' how to play when already at high levels.

 

It's summer time. Nothing to get all fired up about except my brand new bbq in 100 degree weather.

[Bill Z Bubba]

6 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

Do you really think it's this bad? I don't.

 

Sure there's a lot of huffing and puffing. But as Flea pointed out look at the new stuff coming as well. New content, powerset, costume stuff, advance mobs, lots of good stuff.

Forced to team, nah.

Concern about some outliers, yes. But overall AE was already addressed and we'll see where it is after this patch. Further adjustments will likely be made.

Door sitting, nah. A minor annoyance for pugs having folks 'learning' how to play when already at high levels.

 

It's summer time. Nothing to get all fired up about except my brand new bbq in 100 degree weather.

 

Do I really think some people on this forum have actually stated just those opinions on AE? Yes, because they have. Do I think the devs are silly enough to go along with those opinions? Course not.

[arcane]

19 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Bullshit, no one is suggesting it. Farming in AE needs one well built farmer *soloing* and that's precisely what has the anti-ae crowd all in a tizzy. ""Those" people aren't being forced to team! "Those" people are earning inf/xp/emps/etc far faster than I can outside of AE! "Those" people are letting folks doorsit and level/earn rewards faster than actually "playing the game!"

 

It's quite related.

I can see how you extrapolated that far but I disagree that solo-ness is the reason AE is being referred to an outlier in the context of this thread. Look at that, you and I are at another agree to disagree spot. Cheers 🙂 

[arcane]

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Do I think the devs are silly enough to go along with those opinions? Course not.

I too generally have faith in the devs to filter out the crazies without our help

[Coyotedancer]

10 hours ago, blue4333 said:

is it just me or I'm getting the feeling that the ex-Score players are shook by the difference of opinions on certain matters? I think years of being an yes-man must have not made them ready for this.

 

i mean even making a thread crying about downvotes?

 

Okay, I'll bite this bait and out myself. Again.

 

I'm one of those former score players. And if you think that we never had any disagreements amongst ourselves or never dared to question what our own Powers That Be wanted to do... I have a nice beach house in Arizona to sell you. There were some epic arguments on a whole host of subjects. No one from that bunch is a stranger to disagreement, I promise you. 

 

Leo himself once called me "delusional" for disagreeing with him. Which didn't stop me from arguing my point. "Yes (wo)men", indeed. 😝  

 

 

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by Coyotedancer
I spel gud.

[Marbing]

33 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

AE's not really an outlier if the vast majority of leveling happens there.

I think the fact that the vast majority of leveling (as well as the vast majority of inf gain) happens there is what makes in an outlier. It is human nature to pile on the quick/fast/easy/repeatable nature of AE. If it were not an outlier, people wouldn't be doing it so much, and thus we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. 

[Akisan]

20 hours ago, Neiska said:

The fact that people push for AE/Incarnate changes "of old," and not other things such as, oh, I dunno, Removal of the Gull, paying upkeep on bases, locking some clothing behind achievements or badges, or removal of power updates/changes/new sets, tells me that it isn't about balance at all, but more about people just wanting to be Elitist Karen Gatekeepers and feel they have the right to dictate to others on how to play. Especially if they claim "for the good of the community" while ignoring the loss in players such proposed changes might have on that community. 

 

Some of that is also about picking your battles.  I'd be totally for re-locking some of the costume bits (as it encourages seeking out and running specific content), as well as removing some of Null's options.  But those are likely neither feasible, nor popular, so it's not even worth debating.

 

1 hour ago, Astralock said:

Also, you can't buff things to match extreme outliers.

 

You can too!  That's pretty much what Diablo 3 did for a while...  and virtually all of the game is a complete and utter cakewalk now once you're geared up.

 

22 hours ago, Neiska said:

But the big one is C.) The removal of things and tools we once had, such as the teleport command. Now instead of being able to move zones, one must collect badges to unlock them.

 

Probably too late to be of help on this one, but they *barely* nerfed that command - you can still use that command, from *anywhere*, for 10s after casting LRTP, or after using the dayjob "summon base portal" power (from logging out next to a base portal).

 

14 hours ago, Neiska said:

If you want to put a dent in the amount of currency, it would be far better to have money sinks. I don't mean the Auction House either, because as you said that only moves money around, it doesn't "remove" it. And short of buying things on AH, there is very little else to do with money. Even the costume fees and things of that nature is a drop in the ocean. Live was before my time, but I do seem to remember reading somewhere, that base "upkeep" was a thing at one time. Now I doubt such a system would be embraced any more than any other suggestion. To be fair, that might make things worse and create new problems - such as people suddenly "having" to farm in order to pay for their giant sprawling bases, which could widen the gap between those with wealth and those without. And I can't claim the economic experience to offer any alternatives.

 

The AH removes quite a bit of Inf - 10% of the sell value of everything sold.  But that's still only a drop in the bucket, compared to how much Inf. is floating around.

 

And I remember Upkeep as well, and was super happy when it was removed on Live (some time after base raids went away), as it meant that I could save Prestige to have a nice solo base, instead of needing to join a larger SG just to have basic amenities like storage or teleporters.  Re-instating Upkeep & Prestige would likely cripple the base building community, which is a total no-go (it'd be like making AE enemies drop nothing, then putting an entrance fee on the maps).  I want the AE nerfed, yes, but not nearly that far.

[arcane]

16 minutes ago, Marbing said:

I think the fact that the vast majority of leveling (as well as the vast majority of inf gain) happens there is what makes in an outlier. It is human nature to pile on the quick/fast/easy/repeatable nature of AE. If it were not an outlier, people wouldn't be doing it so much, and thus we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. 

Yes, the vast majority of leveling wouldn’t be happening in AE if it wasn’t an extreme outlier in terms of rewards output per unit of input. Not sure which part of that is debatable..

 

You can acknowledge this as truth without wanting to nerf the whole thing into the ground. So people don’t need to lose their shit over mere statements of fact.

Edited August 6, 2022 by arcane

[Coyotedancer]

Something else to keep in mind re: the current AE rewards... They've already been nerfed a couple of times since Homecoming went live. What we get in our farms these days is considerably diminished from where we started.

 

I keep seeing claims that we're getting orders of magnitude better returns from farming than is even possible in regular content, but I'm not sure non-farmers really have a solid idea what our numbers actually look like. I suspect, when it comes to active farmers at least, we may be pulling in somewhat less than you guys expect.

 

Just to give you some "real world" numbers to play with... When I jump into an Atta's Cave style farming map with Ossuni and a level 50 sidekick like Cantus (that Sonic Defender whose iToys I've been working on lately-), it takes me a little under an hour to clear the place if I'm taking my time, Zen style. I vendor common recipes and enhancements, sell off the yellow and orange recipes and the salvage on the auction house, keeping any purples and a few favorite PvP recipes for my own use. I also keep catalysts, since I like attuning sets on the support types I build to run at mid-level.

 

When all is said and done? Those two characters will end up with around 25m INF each, sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less depending on drop luck. So, call it somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 million for the hour.

 

It's a nice chunk of change, but not quite in OMGOUTRAGEOUS territory. (Ask Yomo or Ukase how much a marketeer can make in that same hour for comparison-) It takes three or four runs in total to make enough to fully equip a character like Cantus. (That is to say, a solid but not min/maxed bleeding-edge build, using attuned sets... and minus any ATOs, PvP specials, Hamis or Purples that I might want to give him. I don't ever buy those. I pull them from my stash. If I *did* have to buy them? Double the number of farm runs it would take to finance the build, at a rough guess.)

 

How does that compare to an "old school" farm run on Council Earth, Wolf World or Harvey's demon map? Now THAT is the interesting question! It's something I'd love to know, honestly, and have a plan to find out... I have a character who can S/L farm (*pats Ironhorse on the head*) and I recently rebuilt the DB/WP "Fireproof Scrap" that I had back on Live, who was originally built to handle Harvey's demons at +4/x8 on their own. My plan is to run them through an hour's worth of demons and werewolves a few times with the same level 50 sidekick like Suni would have in AE, and then compare the results. 

 

My expectation is that the Old School results will be a little below AE's, but not for the reason you might expect.... that is to say, the AE mobs giving too much. No, I suspect it'll come down to the two "outside farmers" being slower to clear the mobs. They're a DB/WP scrap and a DB/Rad Brute. Neither has the one big speed advantage my Claws/Fire Brute has... Her Burn patch.

 

The solution? See how those two characters fare on an AE Fire and S/L run!

 

I... just have to actually find the time to do it. Which hasn't been easy lately. 

Real Life is getting in the way of my game time, dammit. *shakes tiny, experimental farming fist* 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by Coyotedancer

[ShardWarrior]

15 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

I tolerate farming now. It doesn't stab me in the soul he way that it used to, but I really don't think it should be allowed in the AE. That's my opinion.

 

Tolerance is a wonderful thing and the best that anyone can ask for.  Sadly, tolerance seems to be in very short supply here.  I wish more people were more tolerant of how others choose to spend their free time.

Edited August 6, 2022 by ShardWarrior

[Troo]

5 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Why did the Devs decide to launch Homecoming with AE fully intact?

 

Fully intact?!

It is AE Plus.

[Troo]

Just now, Krimson said:

This sure looks like a case of trying to put the Genie back in the Bottle, after opening the bottle with a hammer. 

 

No.

 

I think a number of people are conflating several topics. There is some tuning being done and addressing an outlier, pretty simple.

[Ukase]

2 hours ago, Astralock said:

 

Again, as has been stated earlier in this thread and has been stated a few times by other people in other threads over the years... Homecoming didn't add veteran levels.  The SCoRE "secret" server did, for a population a fraction of Homecoming's.  I'm talking about a fraction of even the Reunion shard's population.  Homecoming's population is hundreds of times larger.  Homecoming took what SCoRE had and rushed it into production after the Bree server went offline.

 

Oh no, you have to wait ten to twenty minutes for a trial or raid to form.  The horror!  I think sometimes people need to be reminded that City of Heroes is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game.  Massively multiplayer.

 

Also, you can't buff things to match extreme outliers.  You need to reign in the extreme outlier.  You can (and probably should), still buff rewards outside of Mission Architect a bit, but in the end, the rewards from AE need to be nerfed as they are an extreme outlier.

Is English not your first language? 
It doesn't matter about Score. They are irrelevant to this discussion. The HC devs brought Vet levels to HC:CoH. Doesn't matter who came up with it - they implemented it. And it was a great move. 

And YES! Why the blue fuck would anyone want to wait 20 minutes of doing absolutely nothing to form an iTrial? That's insane. And that's the single biggest reason why I only do iTrials by appointment. It minimizes the waiting around. Log in at 7:55, and queued in by 8:00. You may have nothing better to do, but I do. I ain't waiting that long, period. 

And there's no reason why we can't buff things to match "extreme outliers", although nobody can prove that AE is an extreme outlier. Compared to what? A TF/SF train? An iTrial train? 
It's apples and oranges. For each farmer that out-earns a task force team, there's likely another task force team that will out-earn a different farmer. All farmers are not the same, nor are all TF teams the same. Only the devs have the data, if anyone, to verify there are any outliers. And, even if they have that data, there's no way to really know how each person spends their merits to determine who's really earning more, because it's not the merits you earn, it's what you do with them that matters more. 

You keep saying "you can't" when there's no evidence to suggest we "can't" do this or that. 

Where is it written that you "can't buff things to match extreme outliers"?  We do not need to reign in extreme outliers. Clearly, the game is being played just fine with things the way they are now. There's no evidence to suggest anything needs to be reigned in, except perhaps to quiet this vocal minority that is upset about something that they could do themselves every bit as easily as the rest of us do. 

[Grouchybeast]

11 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

My expectation is that the Old School results will be a little below AE's, but not for the reason you might expect.... that is to say, the AE mobs giving too much. No, I suspect it'll come down to the two "outside farmers" being slower to clear the mobs. They're a DB/WP scrap and a DB/Rad Brute. Neither has the one big speed advantage my Claws/Fire Brute has... Her Burn patch.

For a full and fair comparison, don't forget to run the AE farmer through the outside content.

[Ukase]

4 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

Oh yes they most certainly are, and there is only one CoH server this is happening on.  Other servers offer tools that render the need for gold farmers pointless. 

Really? What's the exchange rate? I could liquidate 500 billion today, if the price is right! 

As far as I know, there's no cash money trading hands for something as easy to get as influence. There's no evidence of it. There was evidence of it in 2019
https://massivelyop.com/2019/09/19/city-of-heroes-homecoming-is-now-banning-accounts-for-real-money-trading/

But, I've not seen any since then. Granted, that doesn't mean it isn't happening, but if it is, HC will detect it and act accordingly. It's not a prevalent issue in the least. 

[Coyotedancer]

1 minute ago, Grouchybeast said:

For a full and fair comparison, don't forget to run the AE farmer through the outside content.

 

That would be tough to do with Ossuni... She's a very, very specialized build. 

 

That's why I want to try out Ironhorse and Fireproof!Kes in both AE and the Old School farms. That's a farer comparison I think than putting their times against Suni's.

[Ukase]

1 minute ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

That would be tough to do with Ossuni... She's a very, very specialized build. 

 

That's why I want to try out Ironhorse and Fireproof!Kes in both AE and the Old School farms. That's a farer comparison I think than putting their times against Suni's.

I think it was about 18 months ago, when I was helping a lowbie alt clobber freak tanks for Tankbuster badge, en route to the FPR accolade, when it finally sunk in that AE XP is lower than it is in the wild. Granted, there aren't a dozen patrols running right into a burn patch, but you can out-earn AE pretty easily once you determine how often you have to tab in, to move to the next mob. The only reason I stopped doing it was I would get a call and forget all about it, and "waste" time for the afk-er. 

But if I were an active farmer, I'd never touch AE unless I needed tickets, and I don't often have that need. 

[lemming]

24 minutes ago, Krimson said:

 

There seems to be quite a bit of testimony about what AE was like during Live, and it sure sounds like this information was well known.

 

So with the fact that everyone already seemed to know what AE was like on Live, my question is now:

 

Why did the Devs decide to launch Homecoming with AE fully intact?

My theory: Would have taken some resources they didn't want to spend at the time.   Balance is also going to be a subjective thing, and if you have a limited amount of Development/QA, you need to prioritize.  And AE is a fun tool outside of the whole farming bit, just under utilized there.

[Grouchybeast]

9 minutes ago, lemming said:

My theory: Would have taken some resources they didn't want to spend at the time.   Balance is also going to be a subjective thing, and if you have a limited amount of Development/QA, you need to prioritize.  And AE is a fun tool outside of the whole farming bit, just under utilized there.

To be fair, they actually changed AE very significantly right away (normal rewards instead of tickets is a huge change) and then did a couple of tunings over time (halving XP fairly quickly, and then later removing the patrol XP exploit) which in combination with other changes have kept inflation largely under control.  It's going an awful lot better than it did on Live, anyway.