The Pretty Good AE Debate

[SwitchFade]

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.

 

[RCU7115]

On 7/19/2022 at 8:26 AM, UltraAlt said:

 

Great.

They only excel by abusing the system that wasn't created to be used for farming.

 

The AE changes are anti-farming. The AE was not built for farming.

 

I make  A LOT of influence off of farmers and those that they power level.

They don't have respect for the currency. They think they are swimming it it when they are actually in the kiddie pool.

 

Removing the AE from Atlas is great, but more needs to be done to stop the power-leveling.

It might be time to start rethinking about locking the AE to level 50's only.

Taking AE out of the game wouldn't stop power leveling. It would only make everyone go to PI and do Harvey's story arc til they got to the Fire Demon map, which actually earns more than AE. 

I would hate to see it happen but I think the only way to stop power leveling is by putting back the original sidekick system. I  forget if there is something we would possibly lose., game feature wise like the flashback system, to go back to the original sidekick system.

[UltraAlt]

23 hours ago, nightroarer said:

I'm not talking about door sitters. I'm talking about the rest of us. The problem with your "solution" is that it hurts everyone, not just door sitters.

 

And I never disagreed with that.

I think doorsitting and farming is the problem and that it has been all along.

 

DEVs could simply move good non-farming (aka DEVs Choice) missing into the game itself and then people could play them at any level.

You could still make those missions, play them, and put them up to to be selected asa DEVs Choice award at level 50.

Everyone could play them if they were added to normal content.

 

And, yet, still it can't be explained why door sitting is fun.

It is simply seen as a easy way to get levels without playing the game and/or even not even being at the keyboard.

Rewards for no risk.

Where is the risk versus reward ratio on that?

 

And again. I'm not against good non-farming AE missions.  I'm against abuse of the system.

 

What my post does is bring out the people that defend the use of AE missions for lower level use.

There are only 3-4 people that want to defend that use in a honest manner, and, if you read all the replies, I'm one of them.

The others only want to make sure they can use it at lower levels for door sitting and that is why I keep bringing that up .... and why I haven't been bringing up "locking the AE to level 50's only" again. 

I made my point by bringing it up a single time. And I didn't even say do it. I said consider it ... which is to think about it ... and bring up debate about it. The post did exactly what I wanted it to do.

 

The AE is used far more for abusing the system than it is for creative content, but I think we have all known that for a very long time.

 

 

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by UltraAlt
correcting the wording on "and why I haven't been bringing up "locking the AE to level 50's only" again. "

[UltraAlt]

22 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

YOU declared that something wasnt fun.

 

Go back and look.

Again, my post says "how is that "fun"?"

You even quote it, but, apparently, you can't understand what it says.

 

22 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Now prove that that thing is not fun for anyone. I will wait.

 

You can't even answer my question, misread what it says, attack me, and expect me to answer your question?

 

Maybe you might understand "What makes it "fun"?", but I'm over it.

Goodbye.

 

 

 

[UltraAlt]

15 hours ago, Ukase said:

It doesn't matter if you can see why it's fun, or if we all agree that it's not fun. It's what some folks want to do! That is all you need to know. 

 

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.

 

15 hours ago, Ukase said:

The reason I do it (Farm afk-style) is because I can earn influence easily and quickly while I enjoy the game with my other account. 

 

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.

 

15 hours ago, Ukase said:

The better question is why aren't you doing it?

 

I guess I didn't make that clear.

 

The AE wasn't designed to be abused for easy influence gain nor powerleveling.

Before that AE was released, the DEVs made that very clear and said that they would perma-ban the accounts of anyone that abused the system ... because they knew people were going to abuse the system. The DEVs caved within a week or 2 of the AE release and went back and deleted all the posts about banning accounts for abusing the system.

 

They created a great tool. It was a superpower that they gave to everyone. 

Unfortunately, we know how that goes. Most people will abuse a superpower if they get it.

And that is exactly what happened.

 

And it was too big to police.

They had to try to do what they could to mitigate the situation by changing the AE system, but it is very hard to put safeguards into place when 100s of people are trying to break the system and take advantage of any loophole in the system.

 

Why am I not doing it?

Apparently, I'm a superhero with the power to avoid the temptation to abuse the AE.

[UltraAlt]

On 7/25/2022 at 11:11 PM, UltraAlt said:

That is no accomplishment.

The stuffing those 50's are filled with is doorsitting.

Nothing was earned. Nothing was fought for. ... but, yeah, you don't have to log in ever in order to keep your character name.

 

Yep. The thumbs down is just a /jranger with no post.

But I understand it was put into the forums to be used.

[UltraAlt]

44 minutes ago, RCU7115 said:

It would only make everyone go to PI and do Harvey's story arc til they got to the Fire Demon map, which actually earns more than AE. 

 

Is that a map that the DEVs forgot to to put a timer on?

Thanks for pointing it out.

 

 

45 minutes ago, RCU7115 said:

Taking AE out of the game wouldn't stop power leveling.

 

And I fully understand that it wouldn't stop all power-leveling, but the DEVs have already made changes to the Mentoring system to cutdown on some the more egregious power-leveling.

Perhaps XP gain caps could be set-up based on character level so that the gain would have a corresponding progress toward leveling.

Somehow I don't think that will happen because of XP boosters.

 

All of this is directly related to the "Name Release Policy" as level 50's never have to login to keep their names, but everyone still on the path to 50 has to do so in order ot keep their name.

Doorsitting will be an exploit to lock character names and, at least one player, admits that they doorsit afk while playing another character (possibly not even doing the same mission) 

 

 

 

[ivanhedgehog]

2 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.

 

Reading this tells me that having a discussion with you is impossible, you are living in a fantasy land of your own making.

[ForeverLaxx]

2 hours ago, RCU7115 said:

I would hate to see it happen but I think the only way to stop power leveling is by putting back the original sidekick system

Which wouldn't do that anyway. It would just bring back the old "bridging" system players used to maximize XP for whoever was getting PL'd.

 

Powerleveling has always been in the game. I don't do it, at least not yet, but I don't care if other people are. Some people can't enjoy a character until it's capped, others can't enjoy a character until it's fully kitted, and people like me consider a character "complete" when it leaves the character creator because my concept is all that matters to me and I basically only solo. Trying to remove powerleveling is a fool's errand because no matter what you do, a dedicated player is going to find the most time efficient way to gather XP in any system that allows players to decide what they're doing and for how long they're doing it. Any measure to curb this beyond the point of reason directly harms the rest of the playerbase and is not a wise move.

 

A certain someone with a vendetta against PLing will never learn this simple lesson because he demands everyone enjoy the game in a manner he deems acceptable. He'll pretend you can do anything you want as long as it's not PLing, until he decides it's negatively impacting his play experience and the game. Gets killed in a PvP zone too many times? Suddenly he'll think PvP is a blight. He hates PLing because he believes it's impossible to be entertaining or that the end goal can't possibly be worth "skipping" content. Being in another's shoes is beyond him. That's just how his brain works.

Edited July 27, 2022 by ForeverLaxx

[ShardWarrior]

7 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?"

 

The question proceeds from a false assumption.  AE does not always have dramatically outsized rewards.  That might be true for a few edge cases, but it is not true under normal circumstances.  Depending on what your reward goal is, there are many ways to get certain rewards faster than AE farming. 

 

It is the extreme edge cases that should be addressed.  Surely there is a way to track accounts earning billions upon billions of influence across multiple characters in one day.  Supposedly there are ways to detect gold farmers.  Can the same type of code and tools not be used here?

 

[Bionic_Flea]

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.

[Darmian]

3 minutes 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.

Nah, make it mobile!  Give it a ten minute timer before it starts to break up and hits Galaxy City.  So kill as fast as you can before newbies in the tutorial are scraping you off their boots.

[Bionic_Flea]

30 minutes ago, Darmian said:

Nah, make it mobile!  Give it a ten minute timer before it starts to break up and hits Galaxy City.  So kill as fast as you can before newbies in the tutorial are scraping you off their boots.

Oooooh!  Crashing meteor!  I like it.  At the expiration time give it the Steel Canyon Fire explosion across the whole map.  Spoiler:

Spoiler

Everyone dies!

 

[Excraft]

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

[Darmian]

9 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

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.

The only issue with that is outside of Dev Choice arcs it was never meant to be equal to in game content.  And no, that's not discrimination. 

[SwitchFade]

7 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Reading this tells me that having a discussion with you is impossible, you are living in a fantasy land of your own making.

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?

[Puma]

9 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?"

 

They have explained to you multiple times that the AE actually has LOWER rewards vs other content on a kill by kill basis. The difference is simply that the rewards coming faster because you aren't waiting to form teams, running to missions, and can simply do the killing in fast mobs and reset.  

 

You just refuse to acknowledge that your question is faulty and keep asking it. 

[SwitchFade]

4 minutes ago, Puma said:

They have explained to you multiple times that the AE actually has LOWER rewards vs other content on a kill by kill basis. The difference is simply that the rewards coming faster because you aren't waiting to form teams, running to missions, and can simply do the killing in fast mobs and reset.  

 

You just refuse to acknowledge that your question is faulty and keep asking it. 

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.

[SwitchFade]

2 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

The question proceeds from a false assumption.  AE does not always have dramatically outsized rewards.  That might be true for a few edge cases, but it is not true under normal circumstances.  Depending on what your reward goal is, there are many ways to get certain rewards faster than AE farming. 

 

It is the extreme edge cases that should be addressed.  Surely there is a way to track accounts earning billions upon billions of influence across multiple characters in one day.  Supposedly there are ways to detect gold farmers.  Can the same type of code and tools not be used here?

 

I'm glad we agree that AE should not offer those dramatically outsized returns.

[arcane]

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

 

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

Edited July 27, 2022 by arcane

[arcane]

1 hour ago, Puma said:

They have explained to you multiple times that the AE actually has LOWER rewards vs other content on a kill by kill basis. The difference is simply that the rewards coming faster because you aren't waiting to form teams, running to missions, and can simply do the killing in fast mobs and reset.  

 

You just refuse to acknowledge that your question is faulty and keep asking it. 

Because kill by kill xp determines the total rate of return… (fact: it doesn’t) 

[arcane]

9 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Reading this tells me that having a discussion with you is impossible, you are living in a fantasy land of your own making.

Reading this tells me that having a discussion with you is impossible, you are living in a fantasy land of your own making.
 

😉 

[ivanhedgehog]

37 minutes ago, arcane said:

Because kill by kill xp determines the total rate of return… (fact: it doesn’t) 

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.

[PLVRIZR]

3 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.

 

Great idea!

 

P.S.  The Big Mobs Tunnel farm is better 😁

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, SwitchFade said:

I'm glad we agree that AE should not offer those dramatically outsized returns.

 

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?