The Pretty Good AE Debate

[ZacKing]

9 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

But does this knowledge change anyone's view about farming? It's going to happen whether AE gets nerfed or not. And the harder the lockdowns get, the more money folks like that will make.

 

Well the goal seems to be to push everyone into more grinding for stuff so an increased market for RMT should be expected.  Nothing they can do to stop it either.

[Neiska]

Asking earnestly here. But has anyone ever actually sat down and done an actual comparison as to what different activities give for rewards? I know that is a pretty big thing to try and compare, given the sheer number of variables. Time, activity, so on. Like, what 1 "average" farmer might make in an hour of "active" farming, what they might make "afk" farming, and what 1 person might make running ITFS or what have you in the same amount of time, or even what a full team might get? I mean, have people actually done such a thing, or is this all just people assuming here? I hasten to add that I am not suggesting that farming DOESNT make money, but my point is that I don't think it is as much as some people might think, or that "outside activities" are as far behind either. I also wonder if the time involved/required doing each activity is more of a hidden factor as well. If you spent an hour farming, what could you accomplish elsewhere in the same amount of time, and so on.

 

And I don't mean just raw inf gained either. Take things like merits into account as well. The drops might have to be omitted because, well, they are random after all. So unless someone has a formula for that it might be better to ignore unless someone has a better idea. So a comparison such as -

 

The average "active" farmer can make between X and Y in an hour.

The average "afk" farmer can make between X and Y

The average "solo" player can make X and Y

The average "teamer" can make X and Y

The merit "speed runner" could make X and Y

etc...

 

Just asking for an honest and unbiased comparison is all. If the big brains here can manage that, it might move the needle to a place where we can all agree is a good spot and be a good compromise for everyone? 

 

And to be honest, I am not sure if a comparison would be possible. That would take smarter heads than mine to really dive into. I am not even sure how much you might earn if you run nonstop trials/incarnate content/endgame stuff. I know some have rewards as well, such as an automatic purple the first time you do it or have your choice of rewards. But even those picks of rewards might be the faster option, as I have gone 5-6 days without seeing a purple recipe drop when "hardcore farming." When farming you really are at the mercy of RNG, and she might love you one day and hate you the next morning.

[Grouchybeast]

2 minutes ago, Neiska said:

And to be honest, I am not sure if a comparison would be possible. That would take smarter heads than mine to really dive into. 

 

The devs can do it.  They have plenty of tools and information available to look at and make decisions about game balance.

[Neiska]

Just now, Grouchybeast said:

The devs can do it.  They have plenty of tools and information available to look at and make decisions about game balance.

 

Right, but I meant if we in the community have done such a thing, to the best of our ability with the knowledge and information we have available, and so on.

[Starforge]

8 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

 

There is your citation.  The Homecoming folk already know about these sites and are doing what they can.  It is not a good idea to post links to the various gold farming sites in this thread for all the world to see and advertise for them.  Anyone requiring proof of their own can spend the literal ten seconds using Google to do the research on their own.

For the record, I wasn’t asking for a link to the gold farming site. I was assuming via your post that you knew actual individuals utilizing it and could provide proof of that.

Edited August 7, 2022 by Starforge

[ShardWarrior]

20 minutes ago, Starforge said:

For the record, I wasn’t asking for a link to the gold farming site. I was assuming via your post that you knew actual individuals utilizing it and could provide proof of that.

 

I personally do not know anyone who is using RMT.  It is fairly evident they are around and have been for a while. 

[Ruin Mage]

8 hours ago, ZacKing said:

Do you need more evidence or is what a GM posting about it happening sufficient for you?

Yes, obviously.

(No, not really. I just missed the GM post.)
 

[UltraAlt]

On 8/5/2022 at 9:10 PM, UltraAlt said:

You are making a blanket statement that is incorrect.

 

All missions in the AE are not farms.

 

There are story missions in the AE.

There are good story missions in the AE.

 

Missions in the AE don't have to be built to exploit the weaknesses of the foes for XP and influence increases.

Farming exploits the system to gain increased XP and influence by purposefully creating enemies that are easily defeated.

 

Some people like challenging content. I wonder if they take time to make difficult missions in the AE in order to hone their skills?

[Neiska]

15 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

All missions in the AE are not farms.

 

There are story missions in the AE.

There are good story missions in the AE.

 

Missions in the AE don't have to be built to exploit the weaknesses of the foes for XP and influence increases.

Farming exploits the system to gain increased XP and influence by purposefully creating enemies that are easily defeated.

 

Some people like challenging content. I wonder if they take time to make difficult missions in the AE in order to hone their skills?

 

 

Finding and using the most efficient method to level or get money is not an "exploit," it's smart use of your playtime. It is not against any game rule to farm.

That is like offering a multipurpose tool and then getting upset when people use it in a way you don't like. And you could apply that logic to multiple other activities.

 

"Running only trials? That's exploiting them for incarnate materials."

"Buying and flipping on the auction house for a profit? That's cheating! Someone has to actually use what they buy; they aren't allowed to profit!"

"Repeating the same activates to get merits? It wasn't designed for that! Thats exploitation!"

 

AE gives the map creator's control over what spawns - their attacks, their features, so forth. Using it, is not an "exploit," it's quite literally using it for what it was made to do. 

 

Now, if they made level 54 elite bosses with 1 hitpoint, then yes, that would be total exploiting. But making creating a map for whatever reason, and then running said map, is not "exploiting," it's playing the game. And, for the record, many of us DO use the AE to challenge ourselves. We experiment with builds. We go outside of assumed wisdom and experiment. Come up with brand new things or builds in a game over decades old. And there are some AE maps that are just as hard if not harder than open world content.

 

I am genuinely curious as to what "built in exploits" in maps you are referring to. 

 

You don't want to farm, then fine. Go do story arcs to level. But you are deciding not to use a tool available to everyone, getting butthurt and crying about it, and calling everyone who uses it in a way you don't personally prescribe to as cheaters or exploiters, like you were the sole arbitrary authority on the matter, without even firsthand knowledge of what people actually are DOING in their missions in AE. 

[Bionic_Flea]

On 8/7/2022 at 6:05 AM, Neiska said:

Asking earnestly here. But has anyone ever actually sat down and done an actual comparison as to what different activities give for rewards?

 

I emptied my pockets and timed myself in a meteor fire farm and got about 1 million Inf per minute.  I have been told that better farmers than I can get between 2 and 2.5 million per minute and that good AFK farmers get between 500 - 750k per minute.

 

I just ran a Council radio and made about 250k inf per minute - but that will vary by map.  Then I made about 435k inf per minute in the first mission of Market Crash (long tunnel with Freaks).  That took too long because I had AV setting on.   Maybe between 500-600k without the AV? 

 

And I could get better doing these too.  I forgot to use my inspiration binds until halfway through the Market Crash Tunnel.  And I should have pulled mobs more in both Market Crash and radio mission.  But no matter how much better I get, it's hard to get the density of critters that one gets in the meteor map, which is also wide open so one barely has to move.

 

EDIT: I ran Market Crash again and stopped the clock when I only had the AV left and came out with 610k/min

 

EDIT2:  I ran a +4 kill most ITF with a decent team.  34 minutes start to finish (not counting Rommy who rezzed again after mission complete or the towers) for 337k inf per minute.

 

This was all run by the same player (me) on the same character (a rad/fire brute made for farming) and all at level 54.  Lets review:

 

Solo AE Meteor Map - 1 million/min

Solo Market Crash 1st - 610k/min

Kill Most ITF (team of 8 ) - 337k/min

Solo Council Radio - 250k/min

 

So based on my runs, AE Meteor farm is 4x as good as a Council Radio, 3x as good as a kill most ITF, and a little over 1.5x as good as Market Crashes first mission.  I always started the clock once I was in the map and clicked build up to begin attacking.  Clock was stopped on mission complete, except for Market Crash due to AV at the end.  I am only counting influence earned by killing critters and completing mission.  Other drops are extremely variable and one lucky purple can totally skew results.  I also did not count merits, though they are deterministic based on the TF/Trial/Story Arc, their value can vary based on what you do with them and of the content I ran, only the ITF awarded merits.

 

I tried to add a run of Heather Townsend, but I forgot to empty my pockets first (or note how much I had) so I'll have to try again another time.

Edited August 8, 2022 by Bionic_Flea

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

Missions in the AE don't have to be built to exploit the weaknesses of the foes for XP and influence increases.

Farming exploits the system to gain increased XP and influence by purposefully creating enemies that are easily defeated.

 

Crafting a build to take advantage of the weaknesses of various NPC enemy groups is not an exploit, it is crafting a good build for a specific purpose.  Many people I know, myself included, have alts with builds crafted for specific content at specific levels.  There are plenty of builds that are excellent at being all purpose builds that are at little to no risk running non-AE content. 

[Akisan]

That's a pretty misleading definition of exploit there.  While exploit can be used in a positive term (like in the example quotes), it's often given a negative connotation - that something or someone is being unfairly taken advantage of:

    "By exploiting local labor laws, companies with overseas factories can produce goods for a fraction of the cost".

Also, missing a definition in there:

   4: (noun) A flaw in a system (computer or otherwise) that can be utilized to cause unintented behavior. (Both the tool exploiting the flaw, and the flaw are called exploits)

 

Using the original intent of AE, yes, the AE farms were 100% exploits.  Design philosophy and player expectations have changed since, so AE farms are no longer considered exploits (by most of the playerbase, anyways).  They're just another part of the game now, and will likely stick around for a good long while.

 

 

From what I can tell, the devs' intent is that farms will still have one of the best rates of return for generated xp/inf per hour, but neither disproportionatly so, nor for other returns (like Reward Merits).  If they wanted AE farming to stop completely, AE could have been cratered long ago, and if they were ok with the current reward rates, they probably wouldn't be nerfing them.

[Coyotedancer]

7 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

But no matter how much better I get, it's hard to get the density of critters that one gets in the meteor map, which is also wide open so one barely has to move.

 

Like I said earlier, that's the one huge advantage of farm maps... The density of the mobs.

 

The guys were more into Deep Rock Galactic yesterday than the City, so I actually got to play around a little with the fireproof version of my DB Scrapper on Harvey's demon map and my S/L farm-capable DB/Rad Brute on Wolf World. They're leveling what will be a rebuild of the Fireproof Scrap design on my secondary account. 

 

In spite of the "outside" mobs giving more XP than the farm critters do on an individual basis, running through those Old School maps is a slower way to go. I knew those two wouldn't plow through the goons quite as quickly as my dedicated fire farmer goes through hers... neither of them have Burn, and that does make a significant difference in kill speed... but the space between groups also put them at a disadvantage. It was hard to engage multiple groups at once, especially on that huge ruins map, and with nothing patrolling you have to go searching for targets. 

 

As for INF-per-minute.... I could believe 2-2,5m per minute on the space map for a pair. I'm pretty sure FCM and I could do that taking Ossuni in duo with his fire-farming Blaster. Those two together can clear that map in a pretty brutally effective way... But if someone is managing it solo, I really want to see their build. It has to be a thing of truly ludicrous, overengineered beauty.   

[Ukase]

12 hours ago, lemming said:

Hmm. I might be wrong.  May have been DevChoice only ones that gave the choice of XP.  There's a note in the Score Doc about that.

 

And this may be of interest.  I had read it when I first came to HC, but forgot about it

 

 

Sorry, @lemming. My ability to quote portions of a post and such is limited. In this post I'm quoting, you have a quote, some comment that you cut and pasted from somewhere, and I'd like to see it in context, but have no idea where it came from. Could you point me in the right direction? 

 

[Grouchybeast]

1 hour ago, Neiska said:

AE gives the map creator's control over what spawns - their attacks, their features, so forth. Using it, is not an "exploit," it's quite literally using it for what it was made to do. 

 

Now, if they made level 54 elite bosses with 1 hitpoint, then yes, that would be total exploiting. But making creating a map for whatever reason, and then running said map, is not "exploiting," it's playing the game.

 

A lot of game exploits are just ways of using the existing game code to do what it was meant to do.  What makes then exploits is that the devs have deemed them to be exploits.

 

E.g. Creating mobs in AE that only do fire damage isn't an exploit, because the devs have deemed it to be not an exploit.  Running AE farms with XP disabled and Patrol XP active to get significantly higher inf drops was an exploit, because the devs deemed it to be an exploit.  Both of those are just using the game as written, but one is still here and one was patched out.

[Ukase]

4 hours ago, Neiska said:

And I don't mean just raw inf gained either. Take things like merits into account as well. The drops might have to be omitted because, well, they are random after all. So unless someone has a formula for that it might be better to ignore unless someone has a better idea. So a comparison such as -

 

The average "active" farmer can make between X and Y in an hour.

The average "afk" farmer can make between X and Y

The average "solo" player can make X and Y

The average "teamer" can make X and Y

The merit "speed runner" could make X and Y

etc...

 

Just asking for an honest and unbiased comparison is all. If the big brains here can manage that, it might move the needle to a place where we can all agree is a good spot and be a good compromise for everyone? 

First, I think this is a great question (well, set of questions) for us to ponder. My gut tells me that we would need a lot of participation to get a more precise picture to account for outliers. About 3 years ago, I think. Maybe 2.5, I counseled a new player on the basics of farming, gave her the IOs needed and my build. (and much to my surprise, 4 months later emailed me 500M inf as a repayment, even though it was a gift) Since then, she tweaked the build a bit to suit her own playstyle, and would run 3 farmers on the same map routinely. 

She tracked her earnings, and was puzzled to learn that despite her actively farming, (the two other accounts would also be brutes with burn on auto, set to follow her primary), my afk farming gave me more influence because I actually crafted/converted/sold the uncommon and rare recipes. The reason was scale. I could conceivably have 3 farmers on each shard. She could only control one farmer at a time. And, even if the rng is stingy, because of converters, the hills and valleys of the rng were smoothed out. 

Simply because the afk farmer can scale the running of maps, I don't know how we can reach a true apples to apples comparison. 
Add to that, the speed runner can certainly acquire merits very quickly. On Excelsior, someone like Stitch or Confusion? (aka Bright Phoenix), or Marsh - those guys seem to run TFs or iTrials in succession on a routine basis, and do so in a speedy fashion. But, it's not so much the merits they earn - but what they'd do with them. Converters? Boosters? Or just buy ATOs, purples, or Winters? Or some other recipe? 

For something like this, I would call on a more scientific mind like @Bopper. Never met the man, but in my mind he's to CoH like Brad Schoenfeld is to the science of resistance training. But, with the latest call for testing hard mode ITF, he's probably too busy right now. Not to do the testing, mind you, but lay out the framework for the tests. Metrics to measure and what content should be run to measure them, etc. 

[UltraAlt]

32 minutes ago, Akisan said:

that something or someone is being unfairly taken advantage of:

    "By exploiting local labor laws, companies with overseas factories can produce goods for a fraction of the cost".

Also, missing a definition in there:

   4: (noun) A flaw in a system (computer or otherwise) that can be utilized to cause unintented behavior. (Both the tool exploiting the flaw, and the flaw are called exploits)

 

Using the original intent of AE, yes, the AE farms were 100% exploits.

 

Thumbs up on this part.

 

33 minutes ago, Akisan said:

Design philosophy and player expectations have changed

 

How has the "design philosophy" changed to support farming?

"Player expectations" haven't changed. They are still exploiting the AE for gains greater than outside of the AE for both influence and power-leveling. That is why the did it to begin with, and that's why they are still doing it.

 

36 minutes ago, Akisan said:

From what I can tell, the devs' intent is that farms will still have one of the best rates of return for generated xp/inf per hour, but neither disproportionatly so, nor for other returns (like Reward Merits)

 

People won't farm if they weren't getting disproportionately greater returns. That's the whole reason they started doing and the whole reason they continue to do it.

Cut the rewards to 1/4 of what they are now, and you will see far less farmers.

 

38 minutes ago, Akisan said:

If they wanted AE farming to stop completely, AE could have been cratered long ago

 

The DEVs said the would ban people that exploited the AE before it came out. Then almost immediately caved when it came out because they would have lots of accounts that were exploiting the system and many of them had not bothered to read the warning in the forums.

 

But yes, I agree, it should have been nipped in the bud instead of allowed to fester.

But I think at the time, it turned into a cash cow for NCSoft Corporate (It was luring in F2P players that became microtransaction P2P players) so they told NCSoft Austin to let it happen. I have a feeling that NCSoft was behind some of the gold farming as well, and gold farmer definitely profited off of AE farming.

[UltraAlt]

11 minutes ago, Grouchybeast said:

A lot of game exploits are just ways of using the existing game code to do what it was meant to do.

 

An exploit is never using the existing game code to do what it was meant to do.

That is why it is called an exploit.

[Akisan]

25 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

The DEVs said the would ban people that exploited the AE before it came out. Then almost immediately caved when it came out because they would have lots of accounts that were exploiting the system and many of them had not bothered to read the warning in the forums.

 

This is pretty much exactly what I'm referring to as to the change in "design philosophy", though it's more of a change in "enforcement philosophy".  As far as player expectations (and, to a more limited extent, dev expectations) goes - my memories of live were that AE farmers were grudgingly tolerated, if not frowned upon.  Compare that with HC, where nearly everyone has at least 1 farmer toon, and builds are actively discussed/improved upon/what have you.  Farming isn't an unfortunate side effect of AE anymore, it's a tool to progress faster (like the 2x XP boosters).

 

31 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

People won't farm if they weren't getting disproportionately greater returns. That's the whole reason they started doing and the whole reason they continue to do it.

Cut the rewards to 1/4 of what they are now, and you will see far less farmers.

 

They will.  Farmers will farm whatever gives them the highest return per <time/effort>.  If rewards were quartered, they would go find the next best thing (or leave, depending their tolerance for grinding).  They may stop farming AE, but that won't stop them from endlessly farming the Portal Corp missions, Task Forces, DA content...

 

 

For what it's worth, I agree with you on the farming issue - AE farming (especially AFK farming) is an exploit in my eyes.  Were it up to me, AE would be nerfed to the ground, XP boosters, DFB, DiB, and the radio missions would quietly disappear, and the common Portal Corp. farms would all get timers.  But I'm not the Fun Police, and it's not my place to dictate what others can, or should, do.  Farms are popular, for various reasons, so they (grudgingly) get a pass - though I still hold the opinion that AE farms are disproportionally overtuned for reward/time vs. risk, and should be nerfed accordingly. 

That said, I'd rather leave the AE farms (and other levelling tools) mostly intact, though somewhat less rewarding, since crippling them would alienate a good chunk of the playerbase, and tolerating farming (and PLing) *definitely* beats playing in a ghost town (if I wanted that, I'd go hop on another server).

[lemming]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

Sorry, @lemming. My ability to quote portions of a post and such is limited. In this post I'm quoting, you have a quote, some comment that you cut and pasted from somewhere, and I'd like to see it in context, but have no idea where it came from. Could you point me in the right direction? 

 

Woo. Yes, I should have listed the links:

I got there by looking at the Issue 25 patch notes: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Issue_25

That included a link to the google doc from the Score server which included the quote

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11cLJiSYlfueJheOumRywG8Evip2Mjmu_30Y6ePaetqY/edit#heading=h.gjdgxs

[Grouchybeast]

1 hour ago, Akisan said:

my memories of live were that AE farmers were grudgingly tolerated, if not frowned upon.  Compare that with HC, where nearly everyone has at least 1 farmer toon, and builds are actively discussed/improved upon/what have you.  Farming isn't an unfortunate side effect of AE anymore, it's a tool to progress faster (like the 2x XP boosters).

AE farming on live was in a completely different league to HC, especially in the early buggier days when some people were indeed banned for absolutely hammering obvious AE bug exploits.  It was nuts.  AE was shut down completely a couple of times at least, and other times it was obvious from the effect on the market that there was another exploit in play, but the devs would manage to quietly patch it out before things got out of control again.  Over time the more egregious bugs and exploits were hammered out, but for whatever reason they never fixed some of the basic issues like having different drops inside and outside AE, which is why the market on live was a flaming trash fire.

[ivanhedgehog]

7 hours ago, Neiska said:

Asking earnestly here. But has anyone ever actually sat down and done an actual comparison as to what different activities give for rewards? I know that is a pretty big thing to try and compare, given the sheer number of variables. Time, activity, so on. Like, what 1 "average" farmer might make in an hour of "active" farming, what they might make "afk" farming, and what 1 person might make running ITFS or what have you in the same amount of time, or even what a full team might get? I mean, have people actually done such a thing, or is this all just people assuming here? I hasten to add that I am not suggesting that farming DOESNT make money, but my point is that I don't think it is as much as some people might think, or that "outside activities" are as far behind either. I also wonder if the time involved/required doing each activity is more of a hidden factor as well. If you spent an hour farming, what could you accomplish elsewhere in the same amount of time, and so on.

 

And I don't mean just raw inf gained either. Take things like merits into account as well. The drops might have to be omitted because, well, they are random after all. So unless someone has a formula for that it might be better to ignore unless someone has a better idea. So a comparison such as -

 

The average "active" farmer can make between X and Y in an hour.

The average "afk" farmer can make between X and Y

The average "solo" player can make X and Y

The average "teamer" can make X and Y

The merit "speed runner" could make X and Y

etc...

 

Just asking for an honest and unbiased comparison is all. If the big brains here can manage that, it might move the needle to a place where we can all agree is a good spot and be a good compromise for everyone? 

 

And to be honest, I am not sure if a comparison would be possible. That would take smarter heads than mine to really dive into. I am not even sure how much you might earn if you run nonstop trials/incarnate content/endgame stuff. I know some have rewards as well, such as an automatic purple the first time you do it or have your choice of rewards. But even those picks of rewards might be the faster option, as I have gone 5-6 days without seeing a purple recipe drop when "hardcore farming." When farming you really are at the mercy of RNG, and she might love you one day and hate you the next morning.

should street sweeping in perez reward the same as running back to back itrials? Farming?Doing a hami raid? why would you expect this in the first place?

[ivanhedgehog]

2 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

An exploit is never using the existing game code to do what it was meant to do.

That is why it is called an exploit.

[Neiska]

23 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

why would you expect this in the first place?

 

So its too much to ask for people to actually know something before having an opinion on it, or before discussing removing something? 😆 

[MoonSheep]

40 minutes ago, Neiska said:

 

So its too much to ask for people to actually know something before having an opinion on it, or before discussing removing something? 😆 

 

good idea

 

 

Edited August 7, 2022 by MoonSheep