The Pretty Good AE Debate

[Coyotedancer]

2 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

 

 

are we able to all agree that MMs are gods cruel mistake?

 

I've had good fun with Amtes (Demons/Thermal) and Hanano (giant monster hunting Ninja/FF from the Live days-), so... Nah. Unless we limit it to Mercs. Those guys are just goofy.

[Bionic_Flea]

22 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

A little "data" for you guys, for whatever it's worth.

 

Ironhorse (DB/Rad Brute) + door sitter side-kick Skyrunner (DB/WP Scrap), who had a 2xXP buff running

Both maps were run at +4/x8 with bosses

 

One hour on Wolf World Old School PI farm map (One full clear plus about 60% of a second run)...

16.1m INF after drops were sold. 1 Grav Anchor kept. 1 Catalyst kept.

Sky got from lvl 35.7 to lvl 38.1

 

One hour in Humble's S/L Space farm map (Two full rounds and about half of a third before my hour was up-)

19.6m INF after drops were sold. 1 Hecca kept, 1 Panacea kept.

Sky went from lvl 38.1 to lvl 40,2

 

So, yes. That farm was a little more efficient for the hour spent than Wolf World was, which has pretty much everything to do with the groups being closer together and more numerous in the farm than on the large, open mission map. (I was able to Taunt them in from the center of the map, and that saved quite a bit of time spent finding wolves rather than dicing them into kibble.) 

 

"Risk"-wise? Honestly, the farm critters were more of a hazard for Horse than the wolves were. I used his heal a lot more often in there, due pretty much entirely to the density of the goons, It wasn't unusual to look at what was in melee with him and find multiple EBs who had survived longer than the rest of the group they had come in with. That "flock of tough guys" situation never happened with the wolves.

Breaking down CoyoteDancer's two runs into inf per minute, she got:

 

~327k inf/min on the meteor and

~268k/min on Old School Wolf farm (including most drops for both). 

 

A large part of the discrepancy between her numbers and mine I expect are because she had another player splitting the rewards.

[Coyotedancer]

3 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I have 44 level 50s, all built to my specifications, including all ATOs/WinterOs catalyzed and at least +1 via incarnates, most +3, but only a few favorites are T4 to all.  I tend to make one character and play it to 50+ before starting on a new experiment.

 

 I do that, too... I tend to finish one alt before I start up another one.

 

That means that pretty much everyone in my current crew of 74 are fully set-equipped level 50s with a collection of at least T3 iToys. The favorites get all T4s and builds that are, in some cases, pretty ludicrous by Old School standards. If I hadn't already had all of the purples and WinterOs and other pricey bits in my stash, my zen-mode fire farmer's build for example probably *would* have hit a billion INF. Suni's speed-farming counterpart wouldn't have been much less.  Everyone else? Not nearly so pricey. Depending on the AT and how silly I want to be with them, I usually spend somewhere between 100m and 300m when all is said and done.  

 

For what it's worth, I had just under 50 characters back in the Live days and had done the same with them. They were all level 50. All but a few favorites had builds that were less impressive than what my Homecoming characters have, sure... But giving everyone at least a reasonable IO set build was important to me, so I'd done it with all of them. I made my money by selling "blue things" mostly... common End Reduction and End Mod IOS on the auction house. It was slow going. It took me close to four years to finish the original Grey Kestrel's build. She was, by far, the priciest thing in my collection. All to perma-summon her Adept companion.

 

When Incarnates came along, I systematically cycled through every single one of those characters and did the iTrial grind with them. Sets of T3 powers for most of them. T4s for the favorites.  Nemissary, my much-beloved Death Mage Dark Defender, got his last VR bit to build his final T4 iPower at the end of the last Underground run we did on Liberty.  Finishing him before the game disappeared was my very last City "bucket list" goal at the time.

 

So, yeah. I've "been there, done that" with the grind and the lack of resources and the overpriced market.... I spent literal YEARS finishing a Main that mattered to me more than anyone else I'd ever built.

 

I wouldn't, for one second, trade what we have now and what I can do here for those days. I rebuilt the current Scrapper version of Kestrel in a week with the resources I've built up here. I grin when I play her every bit as much as I did the original Stalker. I didn't miss the grind.

 

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by Coyotedancer

[Coyotedancer]

2 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Breaking down CoyoteDancer's two runs into inf per minute, she got:

 

~327k inf/min on the meteor and

~268k/min on Old School Wolf farm (including most drops for both). 

 

A large part of the discrepancy between her numbers and mine I expect are because she had another player splitting the rewards.

 

Exactly that. And since I'm leveling him, Sky was using a 2xXP. He didn't earn a single INF from killing goons, though he did get a few million from sold drops. (Nothing fancy for him, so nothing kept-)

 

Not having Burn also slows Ironhorse down compared to a dedicated farm build. An optimized build would just plow through the mobs faster than he can, meaning more wolves murderized per minute spent.

 

ETA: Like I said in my first numbers post about an average fire farm run on the Atta's Cave map, when I take in a level 50 sidekick like Cantus who earns regular INF, the combined total between the two is around 50m (give or take a few million depending on drop luck-). It takes about 45 minutes to completely clear that map on a casual run with a dedicated farmer like Suni, so putting aside the small bonus you get for a team of 2, the 1m/minute mark is probably right in line with yours if I were to run it solo. 

 

 

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by Coyotedancer

[Bionic_Flea]

On 8/7/2022 at 9:49 AM, Bionic_Flea said:

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.

Updated my old post.

[Coyotedancer]

I'll do a solo hour with Ossuni on the space map at some point, just to see how it works out. I suspect her numbers will be close to yours. There's no way she'll see anything like 2-2.5m, though. That would take adding FCM and his Blaster to even get close. 

[ForeverLaxx]

10 hours ago, ZacKing said:

It's a perfect way to skew the results like @ForeverLaxx mentioned earlier

Kinda weird you'd agree with me, but "thumbsdown" every post I made saying this. Not that I care about that; I just find it strange. I know why I got some other downvotes, but this one confused me.

 

Ah well.

[ForeverLaxx]

34 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Votes mean nothing. Forums aren't about who's popular. 

Yes, that's why I said "not that I care about it." I was just curious for the reason why you'd downvote someone you actually agree with.

 

But thanks for being the adult in the room.

 

EDIT: non-specific you. English is fun.

Edited August 9, 2022 by ForeverLaxx
clarification

[Frostbiter]

35 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

Yes, that's why I said "not that I care about it." I was just curious for the reason why you'd downvote someone you actually agree with.

 

But thanks for being the adult in the room.

 

EDIT: non-specific you. English is fun.

 

Instead of saying "you" in that context I like to say "one". English is weird sometimes.

[Ukase]

4 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Breaking down CoyoteDancer's two runs into inf per minute, she got:

 

~327k inf/min on the meteor and

~268k/min on Old School Wolf farm (including most drops for both). 

 

A large part of the discrepancy between her numbers and mine I expect are because she had another player splitting the rewards.

If it's useful, I just did one meteor run of Brigg's 125. 
Took my afk farmer just a smidge less than 6 minutes to clear the map ...a lot slower than I expected. I made 5,523,525 in that time, not counting drops. 
So, 920,588 per minute. 

My next afk farmer with a slightly different build, as I got a little smarter with the incarnate stuff (musculature over agility) and different slotting in a few powers fared a bit better. 
It finished in a smidge over 5 minutes. (same meteor, same map, same influence earned) 
1,104,705 per minute. 

A 3rd farmer got the same inf in about 5 and a half minutes, so my average for actively farming is about 1M per minute, give or take a bit. 

It may be worth noting that all three of these farmers leveled up outside of AE and have solo'd all the tfs for TFC, but probably used a summons from p2w for help with dps in some cases. So, I don't consider them actual farmers, but characters that can farm. 

[Bionic_Flea]

Ukase, would you say that your AFK farmers average about 500-750k inf per min?  Someone else gave me that number.  I'm just trying to get a confirmation.

[UltraAlt]

10 hours ago, Astralock said:

The Sentinel AT was a mistake. Honestly, it should be deleted from the game and give all Sentinels a token to choose Blaster, Scrapper, or Stalker instead.

 

Sentinels are great.

I have several of them and enjoy playing them.

 

... but I'm unsure what the hate or love of Sentinels have to do with the AE.

[ShardWarrior]

Ran a fire farm and a series of Council PI Radios on two separate characters this morning for an hour each.  I have earning XP disabled on both and sold all salvage and recipe drops after finishing. 

 

Skimpy Impy - Spines/Fire Brute (T3 in all Incarnates)

OSHA Academy Fire Farm - Arc ID 4880 set to +4 x 8

Earned a total of 35,955,232 influence = 599,254 influence per minute

 

The Incredible Mulk - SS/WP Brute (T3 in all Incarnates)

PI Radio Missions (3 in total, Council only) set to +4 x 8

Earned a total of 35,687,448 influence = 594,791 influence per minute

 

I did get better drops on the PI radio missions - a LoTG Def/End recipe drop and a rare salvage.

 

I have not had a chance to run a series of back to back SBB runs yet.  I will post the results when I am able to. 

 

 

[Ukase]

11 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Ukase, would you say that your AFK farmers average about 500-750k inf per min?  Someone else gave me that number.  I'm just trying to get a confirmation.

@Bionic_FleaI don't have the remotest idea. Those aforementioned characters were afk farmers, but running actively. 

AFK farm characters, at least the way I run them, sit in the center of the map anywhere from 10-15 minutes to an entire day, depending on what's going on in-game and in real life. I don't know how to assess their average, because the time factor is almost certainly always varied. 

Now, I can set each of them up in the same map with burn on auto and just check back in every minute or two to see when the map clears, but anecdotally, even leaving them overnight would generally show 1-4 mobs just standing in a group on the perimeter of the asteroid. 

How would you like me to proceed? Do I count drops? I got a purple on one of those three runs, lol. 

[Stoked]

12 minutes ago, Ukase said:

How would you like me to proceed? Do I count drops? I got a purple on one of those three runs, lol. 

Absolutely you would count drops that could be sold. Thank you for your effort to reveal the truth about "grinding" vs farming.

[Bionic_Flea]

21 minutes ago, Ukase said:

How would you like me to proceed? Do I count drops? I got a purple on one of those three runs, lol. 

 

You can count whatever you like, but recipe drops are extremely random.  I have had three purples drop in one farm and then not get another one for weeks.

 

How long does it take, on average, to clear most of the map when AFK?  Otherwise you can just choose 5 or 10 minutes to leave it running and take stock at that point.  There are some timed farms that kick you out after 5-10 minutes.  But yeah, leaving it running overnight will probably give terrible inf/min results.  So unless you are running multiples or automating, or both, AFK farming is going to produce a low number for inf/minute.

[Bionic_Flea]

38 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Ran a fire farm and a series of Council PI Radios on two separate characters this morning for an hour each.  I have earning XP disabled on both and sold all salvage and recipe drops after finishing. 

 

Skimpy Impy - Spines/Fire Brute (T3 in all Incarnates)

OSHA Academy Fire Farm - Arc ID 4880 set to +4 x 8

Earned a total of 35,955,232 influence = 599,254 influence per minute

 

The Incredible Mulk - SS/WP Brute (T3 in all Incarnates)

PI Radio Missions (3 in total, Council only) set to +4 x 8

Earned a total of 35,687,448 influence = 594,791 influence per minute

 

I did get better drops on the PI radio missions - a LoTG Def/End recipe drop and a rare salvage.

 

I have not had a chance to run a series of back to back SBB runs yet.  I will post the results when I am able to. 

 

 

Nice.

 

Did you manage to note just influence without accounting for drops?  As noted, drops can be very random.  Except for SBB, ASF, RSF, and MLTF where you can get a guaranteed Overwhelming Force or HO/D-Sync.  But even those vary greatly among them depending on the specific drop.

[Ukase]

21 minutes ago, Stoked said:

Absolutely you would count drops that could be sold. Thank you for your effort to reveal the truth about "grinding" vs farming.

See...counting drops - the drops are where the inf is. 

I conducted a similar experiment with a player I'd mentioned in one of these posts some time after the no xp/2xinf change. 
Here are the notes: 

 

//EDIT: Maryjane no longer plays, I don't think. If she does, she stays hidden and is farming in some lower populated zone. I met her through the help channel when she was asking intelligent questions about getting the most bang for her buck. So, I supplied her, as a gift, with no strings every winter-O and ATO she could need for the build, and even gave her my build, which she eventually tweaked to suit her purposes. 4 months later, she gifted me with 500M as a thank you. Like any of us, she had her issues, but to me, that was pretty classy. 

//End Edit

 

As you can see in the notes, and I think it's at the core of the HC Dev's issue is that AFK farming is scalable. Now, the crafting, converting, selling of drops, that scales too, but only to a point, because I promise you, with 4 accounts going afk, you won't be playing the game very much at all, other than to craft/convert/sell, reset. Even when I craft/convert in the missions with burn on auto, I run out of time and need to reset with one, while another farmer is idle waiting on me to finish that. And, when I change things up to try and constantly keep the farmers busy, I end up with trays full of IOs that need to be converted, and things just get congested. I'm often tempted to just sell them for 1 inf to get rid of them - but that defeats the whole purpose of farming in the first place. The purpose is to get those drops, which is where the real influence is. 2-3M per IO for the rares, usually. When you have several hundred drops over the course of a day, it adds up quite quickly. 

Still, the counterpoint is that these IOs posted sell! And they sell fast. Not because I'm listing them at 1 inf, I'm listing them at a price I know they'll sell at, but above my costs. Generally 2.6-2.8, depending. (I will burn a few converters to get something like a Mako into something that will sell for 1M more) 
If I'm not doing this crafting and converting, the supply of those IOs will drop, the prices will go up. Nobody wants that, except me, and everyone else that crafts/converts and sells. 

It's no skin off my teeth, but the uproar is going to be louder when that happens. 

Edited August 9, 2022 by Ukase

[ZemX]

6 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Did you manage to note just influence without accounting for drops?  As noted, drops can be very random. 

 

They can, so why not just use inf drops as a proxy for "reward rate"? 

 

This thread isn't a referendum on farming, though some have tried to make it so.  It's specifically about AE farming, so it seems to me the comparison should simply be what reward rate you can achieve inside AE vs. outside AE.  And that obviously means farming both ways.  So @ShardWarrior's numbers seem like a good start. 

 

Unless there's some reason to believe the item drops inside vs. outside won't follow the same proportion as inf dropped.  Do they?  I don't know because I don't farm inside or outside the AE.  But I am curious because I do buy stuff on the market.  So my skin in this game is how the product gets to the shelf, so to speak.

 

I don't necessarily WANT higher prices, but it also doesn't appeal to my sense of fairness if the reward rates are so much higher inside AE vs. outside AE (even farm vs. farm), so if that's not the case... good.  But I suspect it is and @Ukase seemed to imply as much as well with his comment about the doom that would befall the market if people had to do their farming outside AE.

 

If, on the other hand, AE farming is not significantly better than outside AE farming and the community has just decided it's a good place to gather, then I'm cool with that too.  Keeps the farmers and their "sitters" out of the mission teams and TFs and that suits me fine.

[Bionic_Flea]

Over a much larger data set, many many hours of farming or running whatever, the RNG of drops would include all the good luck and bad luck and even out.  But just counting an hour or less from one or a handful of players is subject to too much randomness to include drops, IMO.

[ShardWarrior]

16 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Did you manage to note just influence without accounting for drops?  As noted, drops can be very random.  Except for SBB, ASF, RSF, and MLTF where you can get a guaranteed Overwhelming Force or HO/D-Sync.  But even those vary greatly among them depending on the specific drop.

 

Nope.  Influence gained is influence gained whether it is from defeating NPCs or from selling drops.  Unless you want to start making certain exceptions and conditions now?  That is fine if you want to do that, it just seems like trying to skew results one way or the other in order to be more in line with the "AE is the best source of everything!" claim.

[ZacKing]

14 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

Kinda weird you'd agree with me, but "thumbsdown" every post I made saying this. Not that I care about that; I just find it strange. I know why I got some other downvotes, but this one confused me.

 

Ah well.

 

There's other stuff I disagreed with in your posts overall, but the general sentiment you were making on that point I can get behind.  Don't take votes from random people on the internet personally.  They mean absolutely nothing. 

[ZacKing]

21 hours ago, arcane said:

A farm build kinda sorta tends to pay for itself after hundreds or thousands of veteran levels. 1B builds are a dime a dozen.

 

Yeah because everyone has billions of spare inf lying around... 🙄

[arcane]

3 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

 

Yeah because everyone has billions of spare inf lying around... 🙄

For one singular character that has the ability to farm the inf/drops itself, how bad can it possibly be? Weeks maybe if you’re a super casual player?

[ZacKing]

18 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Over a much larger data set, many many hours of farming or running whatever, the RNG of drops would include all the good luck and bad luck and even out.  But just counting an hour or less from one or a handful of players is subject to too much randomness to include drops, IMO.

 

This is totally hilarious.  Other players say "one person's results aren't enough" and they get jumped all over by the anti AE crowd.  Then when others start posting data that doesn't line up with what the anti AE crowd found, now all of a sudden it's "not enough people testing".  Christ you people don't even try to hide your hypocrisy anymore.  Unreal.