The Pretty Good AE Debate

[Grouchybeast]

I don't care what AE farmers are doing with their time so long as it isn't screwing up the Market prices for everyone else.  AE on Live was an inflationary nightmare.  As long as the devs have that under control, it's fine.

[Bionic_Flea]

2 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

With all due respect to Flea, I wish people would stop dragging risk into the discussion because it isn't really relevant.  Risk in this game is, by any rational measurement, all but completely non existent.  You don't lose skills and you don't lose items - at the very worst you lose a little bit of time.

 

I agree with you that risk is minimal.  But even within that minimal amount their is some degree of granularity.  Do you fight fire-farm critters that cannot hurt a /fiery aura brute, or Council, Family, Malta, Carnies, DE, Arachnos, Incarnate BP, or the abominations Linea creates in his 801 series?  There are certain ATs and power-sets that are going to do better against some of those than others.  If you fight all of them you encounter some that are easier and some that are harder or perhaps slightly more dangerous to your character than another.

 

But if all you (generic you, not you, Doc) fight are custom made critters that effectively can't hurt you . . . well, let's just say that I agree there is minimal risk and fire-farmers shrunk that minimal risk into non-existence.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Bionic_Flea

[Without_Pause]

1 hour ago, Akisan said:

 

the enemies are so precisely weakened, that you don't have to invest in balanced defenses, resistances or even have much HP recovery, just damage and more damage.

There's so much wrong in this. Like, they aren't weakened. Capped resist and Def while not required is vastly sought after. As is enough end recovery. Attempting a farm based on sheer damage alone will leave one faceplanting. A lot.

[biostem]

14 minutes ago, Krimson said:

I make a point of revisiting unsatisfying builds. I made them to play them, so if I'm not having fun then the build is at fault which means that I am at fault. So I work to correct it. 

This is a noble sentiment, but I've found that some powersets just aren't my cup of tea... no matter how many times I try and retry them.

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I agree with you that risk is minimal.  But even within that minimal amount their is some degree of granularity.  Do you fight fire-farm critters that cannot hurt a /fiery aura brute, or Council, Family, Malta, Carnies, DE, Arachnos, Incarnate BP, or the abominations Linea creates in his 801 series?  There are certain ATs and power-sets that are going to do better against some of those than others.  If you fight all of them you encounter some that are easier and some that are harder or perhaps slightly more dangerous to your character than another.

True.  But we're not discussing changing ATs or powersets.  They're an invariant background to the changes this discussion is spun off from.  And arguably, that's as it should be - changing ATs or powersets has enormous ramifications to all forms of gameplay.  I don't think anyone (least of all the Dev team) wants to open that can of game balance worms.

That's why I say risk, as it's being defined in this discussion, is something of a red herring.

[Bionic_Flea]

You don't think there's a difference in being able to custom design your opponents?  I do.

 

But that's OK.  We can disagree and still be friends.  😁

[ivanhedgehog]

5 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I don't think we disagree on risk.  As I stated in the post you quoted "The only risk in the game is the risk of being defeated, which is only momentary and nowhere near as punishing as something like Dark Souls.  I suppose there's a secondary risk of failing the mission, trial, TF, or whatever. "

 

Let's agree that fire-farming should give the best rewards in the game.  How much better should it be?  Ten percent better?  100% better? Ten times better?  Is there a limit?

Fire farming doesnt give the best rewards. I I kill a boss at lvl 54 in a maria jenkins arc, it gives x rewards. if I kill a lvl 54 boss in a fire farm it gives the same. or is it .5? Yes, the farmer will kill 40 of those bosses in a run, but the reward per boss is the same. Now a marketeer makes 1000x that reward in 10 min. with zero risk. fire farming does NOT give the best rewards in the game.

[SwitchFade]

Hi.

 

AE. What a great concept and what an amazing function of gameplay. How poorly it was managed on live. What a beautiful concept, user created content!

 

Let's dispense with the obvious:

 

"farming," which is nothing more than a specific action (or set of actions) repeated, ad nauseam, for a specific outcome, in this case to gather resources by repeating a mission.

 

Human nature: to increase personal benefit while reducing personal cost related to said benefit.

 

Now that we have that out of the way...

 

Playing a video game, where one earns varying in game resources or rewards is a function of the game. Playing in a way that maximizes rewards is normal.

 

*Drumroll* farming is an inherently normal form of playing in the most efficient way possible. There's nothing wrong with farming, so let's never look back or bring that up again. If someone believes that farming is wrong, well... We are all entitled to our own opinions and rightly so; however, we don't have to broadcast them. For example, I don't think anyone really needs to know I detest blue cheese dressing. But now you do 😅

 

Now. The next part is fun. Here's where anyone who objects to the next block of word vomit needs to unplug their emotion chip and be a little less biased. Align your inner Feng Shoes, and make sure your Yin is Yanged...

 

 

If there exists an aspect of a system that has an obscenely skewed rate of return for effort invested, it will eventually and invariable distort the system in a predictably unhealthy and system terminating fashion. If I work 8 hours cleaning toilets with a toothbrush for minimum wage or sell contraband for 1000 times the rate of return, neither having any risk or consequences and both being systemically acceptable, I'll sell the contraband every day and thrice on Sunday.

 

That's the crux. In this game, which is a system, if there exists a method of resource/reward attainment that is so dramatically greater than all other activity and is not addressed, it will always, eventually, cause distortion that grows. The nearest analogy is gravity, as the field increases it draws in more which in turn magnifies the field.

 

Let's be more specific. This system is designed with certain core concepts. Among them are the gameplay, progression of character, advancement of abilities, resource attainment, social interaction.

 

If participating in AE grants resource attainment or rewards that are orders of magnitude greater than other content, it will become the defacto mode of gameplay for a disproportionately large subset of game participants. Statistical fact.

 

Core concepts which are the foundation of the system, upon which all others are built, are distorted, causing said superstructures to warp, eventually leading to.... Well let's review....

 

On live, inflation was catastrophic, causing each unit of in game currency to have infinitesimal value. Further, normal and inferior goods were so overvalued, only the bourgeoisie could afford them. New players were immediately exposed to AE, altering their interaction and perception about what the game fundamentally WAS. The projected average line of character progression over time was shortened to hours, from weeks. Social interaction outside of AE shrank, as more were exposed.

 

These are not opinion, they are observations and facts. Now, we can debate if it does drive away new players, or old; we can debate about how everyone should play their way, and that's great; we should all have fun interacting with the game in a fun way... So long as that individual choice doesn't have negative consequences for the collective. That's right, you're a Borg drone.

 

The activity of participating in AE should never have been allowed to have any different rate of resource or reward attainment than any other interaction, if the system is to remain healthy. In this measure, AE was not the issue, because if running GMs or Maria Jenkins gave not just outsized rewards, but dwarfed all other rewards, it TOO would be unhealthy.

 

All content should have equal resource/reward attainment (within an acceptable range of deviation, standardized around the median). There is absolutely NO justifiable reason that AE, or any other aspect of play, should have the current reward structure AE has. AE isn't the issue, humans are.

[biostem]

1 minute ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Now a marketeer makes 1000x that reward in 10 min. with zero risk.

Does this marketeer get XP from that exchange?  For me, at least, after you've bought or upgraded all the enh's you want, the leftover inf is superfluous.  If I'm trying to upgrade some incarnate abilities, working toward those vet levels are more important than almost any amount of inf, (unless you are trying to buy those few rare/very rare components, which IMHO aren't worth the inf required).  Either way, it all boils down to what your goals or priorities are...

[SwitchFade]

1 minute ago, ivanhedgehog said:

Fire farming doesnt give the best rewards. I I kill a boss at lvl 54 in a maria jenkins arc, it gives x rewards. if I kill a lvl 54 boss in a fire farm it gives the same. or is it .5? Yes, the farmer will kill 40 of those bosses in a run, but the reward per boss is the same. Now a marketeer makes 1000x that reward in 10 min. with zero risk. fire farming does NOT give the best rewards in the game.

Yes... But something to keep in mind...

 

Yes in that "marketing" does have a higher rate of individual resource attainment vs time invested....

 

Keep in mind that marketing does not generate NEW currency, it merely redistributes existing currency.

 

The rapid and unchecked generation of new currency to the economy causes unhealthy inflation, which is detrimental. Marketing would not generate as large a return if inflation we're not rampant, they are inherently connected by the value of a single unit of currency. Marketing, or the conversion of inferior goods to normal goods, also serves to make desired goods more available and less expensive for all participants; in a system where all goods are normal and substitutable (which this one is, via converters).

 

(This was not necessarily arguing with you)

[ivanhedgehog]

3 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

 

I agree with you that risk is minimal.  But even within that minimal amount their is some degree of granularity.  Do you fight fire-farm critters that cannot hurt a /fiery aura brute, or Council, Family, Malta, Carnies, DE, Arachnos, Incarnate BP, or the abominations Linea creates in his 801 series?  There are certain ATs and power-sets that are going to do better against some of those than others.  If you fight all of them you encounter some that are easier and some that are harder or perhaps slightly more dangerous to your character than another.

 

But if all you (generic you, not you, Doc) fight are custom made critters that effectively can't hurt you . . . well, let's just say that I agree there is minimal risk and fire-farmers shrunk that minimal risk into non-existence.

That comes back to pre alpha when the devs made typed damage to make set choice matter. If thats a problem, you are probably in the wrong game

[Troo]

well, this thread kinda took off.

[Glacier Peak]

49 minutes ago, ivanhedgehog said:

That comes back to pre alpha when the devs made typed damage to make set choice matter. If thats a problem, you are probably in the wrong game

Is there anything from pre-alpha that has remained constant and unchanged over the past 18 years? The game is malleable and changes based on intended and unintended changes. 

[roleki]

6 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I don't think we disagree on risk.  As I stated in the post you quoted "The only risk in the game is the risk of being defeated, which is only momentary and nowhere near as punishing as something like Dark Souls.  I suppose there's a secondary risk of failing the mission, trial, TF, or whatever. "

 

Let's agree that fire-farming should give the best rewards in the game.  How much better should it be?  Ten percent better?  100% better? Ten times better?  Is there a limit?

 

Oh I wasn't trying to be contrarian, I had just been scrolling through the thread, noticing 'risk' pop up in a lot of comments and trying to formulate how to express why I feel 'risk' is a bad metric in this discussion, when I ran into your comment on the subject and quoted it for emphasis.

 

Now, it's the end of a long work week and, having celebrated properly, probably not the best time for me to attempt an answer to the question you keep asking but nobody has addressed.  I'm not much on restraint even in my right mind, so best I save it for tomorrow.

[Akisan]

4 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

There's so much wrong in this. Like, they aren't weakened. Capped resist and Def while not required is vastly sought after. As is enough end recovery. Attempting a farm based on sheer damage alone will leave one faceplanting. A lot

 

Yes, they are.  Each individual enemy may be "full" strength, but an enemy group that only ever dishes out a single damage type is almost always *much* weaker than the normal enemy groups in the game - because the player doesn't need to have capped resistance and defences for most or all types, just that one damage type, which frees up quite a bit of space for whatever else you want to do on that build.

[battlewraith]

2 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

If there exists an aspect of a system that has an obscenely skewed rate of return for effort invested, it will eventually and invariable distort the system in a predictably unhealthy and system terminating fashion. If I work 8 hours cleaning toilets with a toothbrush for minimum wage or sell contraband for 1000 times the rate of return, neither having any risk or consequences and both being systemically acceptable, I'll sell the contraband every day and thrice on Sunday.

 

 

Even if the rate or return were the same, I'm guessing most people would prefer to sell the contraband. Or simply move on to another activity. In game terms, the toilet cleaning would be being forced to endlessly repeat the same content you prefer to avoid by farming.

 

This game came out in 2004, was shut down, pirated, and is now being run by a volunteer development team. What does "healthy" look like for this game? Particularly for this playerbase, who are predominantly middle-aged veterans. I think an insanely skewed rate of return for effort invested is a selling point for a lot of people who no longer can afford to spend a lot of time grinding for the things they want. There are people that constantly complain on the forums about the game being too easy or some aspect of it being broken and they push the devs to enact changes to "fix" these things. This fix will somehow recalibrate things so that the game will be.....fun again? Challenging? More engaging for the flood of new players who come in and love this new balance?

 

That is a pipe dream. If the majority of people are farming and outfitting new characters, that means that those activities are the ones that have the most appeal for the current playerbase. Tampering with that dynamic in order to funnel players back into the other content is insane. It's literally inviting players, who are probably doing a lot of game things as part of a routine, to rethink how they are spending their time.

[Bionic_Flea]

3 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

In game terms, the toilet cleaning would be being forced to endlessly repeat the same content you prefer to avoid by farming.

 

But isn't farming endlessly repeating the same content?

[battlewraith]

57 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

 

But isn't farming endlessly repeating the same content?

Yes, but I think the general idea is that it's more efficient so that you spend less time and effort doing it. Apart from something like AFK farming.

[ivanhedgehog]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

Is there anything from pre-alpha that has remained constant and unchanged over the past 18 years? The game is malleable and changes based on intended and unintended changes. 

The original devs made a system with different enemy groups having different strengths and weaknesses and damage types. it is pretty much a staple of this game. To get rid of that would make it a completely different game really. Yes, some enemy groups will be weak against some armors, but that is just the way it is. I just wish they would unnerf regen and make it useful again.

[ivanhedgehog]

16 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

 

But isn't farming endlessly repeating the same content?

Some people farm. some people repeat tfs. some people repeat itrials. Its not a new game. there are 3 people actually working on new stuff. If we dont find what WE find enjoyable to repeat, we will be moving on.

[biostem]

16 minutes ago, battlewraith said:

There are people that constantly complain on the forums about the game being too easy or some aspect of it being broken and they push the devs to enact changes to "fix" these things. This fix will somehow recalibrate things so that the game will be.....fun again? Challenging? More engaging for the flood of new players who come in and love this new balance?

Obviously I can't speak for everybody, but for me, there needs to be a balance between the rewards gained and how long or what amount of effort was required to attain them.  It's neat to enter a couple of cheat codes in a game and run around in god mode, but that gets old quickly.  The same game, when played "as intended", can be that much more enjoyable, and when you finally do get that end game item, there comes with it a sense of accomplishment.  Having both gotten characters to 50 the "legit" way, and others via PL-ing or farms, I can tell you that the former retain more "value" for me.  A good balance of reward and time investment is what's needed, and skewing too far in either direction makes the game less fun.  Ideally, the devs would strike the kind of balance that brings in new players and keeps existing ones around.  Too much of a grind - people leave in frustration.  Rewards gained too easily - those rewards have little to no value, and people get bored and leave. as well..

[SwitchFade]

1 hour ago, battlewraith said:

I think an insanely skewed rate of return for effort invested is a selling point for a lot of people who no longer can afford to spend a lot of time grinding for the things they want.

 

Everything else around this was immaterial to this sentence.

 

This sentence materially states that current AE rewards should be the Norm, regarding return on investment, and that all other content is underperforming for "a lot" of people.

 

Understanding that this is an opinion, not observational fact, that's great.

 

Now, being that you may just be proposing a  conversational preponderance, I'll go along...

 

Hypothetically, are you among the group that feels AE rate of return should be the Norm for all content? 

 

Entertainment of said hypothetical speculation, If you're not one of the group who desires AE rewards be the Norm, we should get more data from them. If you are, we should get more data from them. Regardless, because if that group is now the majority,there exists an argument to alter the entire game (not just AE).

 

For the sake of argument, do you feel that a healthy system should have one dramatically skewed aspect, naturally?

 

If you do, you are advocating a naturally imbalanced system that will always skew, the outliers will eventually purge and the system will alter so significantly that the original system is no longer cogent, thus non-existent.

 

In either case, the original premise stands: a healthy balanced system cannot have such a dramatically imbalanced aspect at its core and survive.

 

Any argument that purports to desire such an imbalance, while concurrently maintaining that a healthy balanced system is ALSO desired, is as a point of fact, contradictory and suspect.

Edited July 23, 2022 by SwitchFade

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, SwitchFade said:

For the sake of argument, do you feel that a healthy system should have one dramatically skewed aspect, naturally?

 

If you do, you are advocating a naturally imbalanced system that will always skew, the outliers will eventually purge and the system will alter so significantly that the original system is no longer cogent, thus non-existent.

 

In either case, the original premise stands: a healthy balanced system cannot have such a dramatically imbalanced aspect at its core and survive.

 

Any argument that purports to desire such an imbalance, while concurrently maintaining that a healthy balanced system is ALSO desired, is as a point of fact, contradictory and suspect.

 

This is nonsensical. Do I feel that a healthy system should have one dramatically skewed aspect, naturally?

You're asking inherently subjective questions while issuing weird, ill-defined platitudes about the survival of systems.

It's not that complicated.

 

The game is not a biological organism. It will survive as long as people keep the servers running and people keep playing it. There is no reason to believe that significant balance changes are necessary to keep people on board for these things. Likewise there's no reason to believe that significant balance changes, if that is even possible given the circumstances, will bring in a swath of new players to a 2 decade old MMO. There is reason to suspect that certain changes will prompt people to stop playing--mainly because people are signaling strong dissatisfaction with those changes in their feedback.

 

I think an obsession with abstract ideas of balance and game health is a great way to kill this patient on the operating table.

[SwitchFade]

1 minute ago, battlewraith said:

 

This is nonsensical. Do I feel that a healthy system should have one dramatically skewed aspect, naturally?

You're asking inherently subjective questions while issuing weird, ill-defined platitudes about the survival of systems.

It's not that complicated.

 

The game is not a biological organism. It will survive as long as people keep the servers running and people keep playing it. There is no reason to believe that significant balance changes are necessary to keep people on board for these things. Likewise there's no reason to believe that significant balance changes, if that is even possible given the circumstances, will bring in a swath of new players to a 2 decade old MMO. There is reason to suspect that certain changes will prompt people to stop playing--mainly because people are signaling strong dissatisfaction with those changes in their feedback.

 

I think an obsession with abstract ideas of balance and game health is a great way to kill this patient on the operating table.

And there's the proof you weren't just debating, but have ulterior motives. I will thank you not to be demeaning and use terms like nonsensical; it is quite alright that you don't follow; the counterpoints we're debate to your now clear position.

 

Nothing you have said negates the fact that AE should never have been allowed to have such a dramatically outsized rate of reward return, and that allowing it is destabilizing. Your PERSONAL preference that it remains is immaterial to the fact that it is inherently untenable and jeopardizes the sustainability of the system (game).

 

Now, should you deign to reply, I hope it is with a more even keel, else you'll find yourself in a hot debate of one...

 

😁🥧😱 

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, SwitchFade said:

And there's the proof you weren't just debating, but have ulterior motives. I will thank you not to be demeaning and use terms like nonsensical; it is quite alright that you don't follow; the counterpoints we're debate to your now clear position.

 

Honestly not trying to be insulting, but your use of English here is so tortured that I wonder if you just don't understand the gist of what I've been saying. My motive is

to comment on this discussion. I just think the proposed changes won't bring any real benefit and will piss people off. My farmers are built and I spend more time running Itrials than farms anyway.

 

1 hour ago, SwitchFade said:

Nothing you have said negates the fact that AE should never have been allowed to have such a dramatically outsized rate of reward return, and that allowing it is destabilizing. Your PERSONAL preference that it remains is immaterial to the fact that it is inherently untenable and jeopardizes the sustainability of the system (game).

 

It doesn't matter whether you think it should have been allowed or not. It WAS allowed. And changing things now, if that actually happens, will have consequences for this gradually dwindling population. Your personal GAME BALANCE PHILOSOPHY disagrees with what I said. Fine, whatever. You think my opinion is immaterial and I think you're analysis is irrelevant to the actual situation at hand.

 

1 hour ago, SwitchFade said:

Now, should you deign to reply, I hope it is with a more even keel, else you'll find yourself in a hot debate of one...

 

*shudders*