AE rewards

[Display Name]

Can the exp/inf earned in the AE be returned to normal levels?  Crippling them only increased the demand.  Now, the LFG channel is flooded with "sitter looking for farm" messages.

Edited August 17 by Display Name

[mistagoat]

I suspect that no amount of rewards would stem the "sitter looking for farm" refrain.

 

That being said, I'm not opposed but I don't expect this will ever happen.

[SeraphimKensai]

Not going to happen.

If you want more xp, farm on a low pop servers with ruined city map like in the old days.

 

I personally am not a fan of reducing xp/influence in AE myself, or getting rid of the option to get double influence for shutting xp off (that happened many years ago), but we live with it. One of the benefits to it taking longer to farm a 50, is that more often than not you get more very rare and PvP enhancement recipes to drop which actually can be a net increase of influence over what it used to be.

 

As far as leeches in LFG or other channels, add them to your ignore list.

Edited August 17 by SeraphimKensai

[Display Name]

It's obvious that crippling the rewards has failed.  I'm only suggesting a more productive approach.  No need to dismiss my suggestion.

[Rudra]

28 minutes ago, Display Name said:

It's obvious that crippling the rewards has failed.  I'm only suggesting a more productive approach.  No need to dismiss my suggestion.

Considering that farming AE is still vastly simpler and more reliable than cycling missions or repeating Ouroboros, as long as AE gives xp and inf', it will likely always be the preferred means of farming unless AE goes back to only giving tickets. And I'm against AE going back to just tickets as reward, because back when it did, you couldn't get players to even try any player made stories/arcs in AE. However, pumping up xp and/or inf' awards from AE isn't going to help matters any either.

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

Considering that farming AE is still vastly simpler and more reliable than cycling missions or repeating Ouroboros, as long as AE gives xp and inf', it will likely always be the preferred means of farming unless AE goes back to only giving tickets.

Well, it's not a popular opinion, given that inf has come to be regarded as just a currency, but in lore terms, inf (influence/infamy/information) represented how willing other people were willing to provide you with support -- enhancements, whatever -- based on your reputation from your actions in the game world, so I don't see how crawling into an electronic simulation does anything for your reputation in the game world. The AE simulations exercise your skill using your abilities, so them giving XP is justifiable, but someone who crawls into AE at level 1 and sits in farms until they're level 50 would come out with no one in Paragon City, or the Rogue Isles, having any idea who they are, and no reason to help them at all -- nothing that they did inside an AE mission should award them any inf at all, or any tangible rewards except, perhaps, inspirations, which are defined vaguely enough to skate around the edge. Aeon Entertainment is free to hand out tickets redeemable for randomized rewards based on performance in their simulations, which could then be vended for a supply of inf, but I don't see how the simulations themselves should award inf directly. That ship has, unfortunately, sailed while the game was still live; it's way too late to make that kind of a sweeping change, which should have been done shortly after AE was introduced to the game. The only thing that the AE simulations should give directly is practice using your abilities (i.e., XP); anything else depends on Aeon Entertainment providing additional rewards (i.e., tickets) to encourage people to use their services.

[kelika2]

14 hours ago, Display Name said:

normal levels

It is as normal as it can be for something you can do alone, at max level+4, no travel time and easy to setup.  But still faster leveling than normal maps

 

If anything the Devs want you to keep firefarming after the shit they did with the Council and the Warriors

[Psyonico]

I'm not sure how lowering XP would increase demand... That just doesn't make sense.

[kelika2]

1 minute ago, Psyonico said:

I'm not sure how lowering XP would increase demand... That just doesn't make sense.

Maybe the way it was worded and/or perceived?

I am guessing the point he was trying to make that even after the balance of AE exp there are people who still want firefarming

[Rudra]

27 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Well, it's not a popular opinion, given that inf has come to be regarded as just a currency, but in lore terms, inf (influence/infamy/information) represented how willing other people were willing to provide you with support -- enhancements, whatever -- based on your reputation from your actions in the game world, so I don't see how crawling into an electronic simulation does anything for your reputation in the game world. The AE simulations exercise your skill using your abilities, so them giving XP is justifiable, but someone who crawls into AE at level 1 and sits in farms until they're level 50 would come out with no one in Paragon City, or the Rogue Isles, having any idea who they are, and no reason to help them at all -- nothing that they did inside an AE mission should award them any inf at all, or any tangible rewards except, perhaps, inspirations, which are defined vaguely enough to skate around the edge. Aeon Entertainment is free to hand out tickets redeemable for randomized rewards based on performance in their simulations, which could then be vended for a supply of inf, but I don't see how the simulations themselves should award inf directly. That ship has, unfortunately, sailed while the game was still live; it's way too late to make that kind of a sweeping change, which should have been done shortly after AE was introduced to the game. The only thing that the AE simulations should give directly is practice using your abilities (i.e., XP); anything else depends on Aeon Entertainment providing additional rewards (i.e., tickets) to encourage people to use their services.

That was the problem with AE when it was first added though. Because you couldn't earn any xp or inf', just tickets, and those tickets had a cap that was quickly reached depending on what you did for your story, no one was doing any of the AE content. So you had players making the best stories they could, but they couldn't beg, plead, or otherwise tempt others into doing their stories unless they were close friends who had an interest in it. And even then, it was a difficult at best to get even those friends to try what you made because they weren't getting any immediate rewards.

 

It was after the Live devs allowed AE to award xp and inf' that AE arcs finally started getting attention, but it also pretty much immediately saw farms being made. And the farms garnered way more attention than the stories, because most players seem to prefer fast gains over storytelling. The easy fix would have been to do what you are saying, revert AE back to just tickets, but then AE would have been a dead idea from lack of interest.

 

The problem with the OP isn't xp or inf' being gained from AE. The problem is that it will do nothing for what the author is complaining about.

[Sakura Tenshi]

Dunno about necessarily it being the normal levels, but I would like some of the EXP given per-power and level scale is in need of fixing. I'd like to make some low level mobs that would be only slightly above Skulls and Hellions in terms of power, but I have to give their lieutenants half the AR powerset along with a bunch of stuff from a secondary set to give decent rewards at around level 20.

[Greycat]

3 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Well, it's not a popular opinion, given that inf has come to be regarded as just a currency, but in lore terms, inf (influence/infamy/information) represented how willing other people were willing to provide you with support -- enhancements, whatever -- based on your reputation from your actions in the game world,

 

Just as an aside... this was always just *weird* to me. The only place it really seemed to work was in the (tiny) amount someone gave you on the street for rescuing them.

 

One of the "If I could..." things I'd do is just call the whole thing cash or credit or whatever, and maybe have the "INF****" be something that would start influencing your rep in an area, affecting the discounts (or not...) vendors are willing to give you.

 

Granted, it wouldn't help the "give ways to burn excess money at high levels" - it'd work directly against that, really - but still.

 

Anyway, aside done, carry on 🙂

[UltraAlt]

6 hours ago, Rudra said:

That was the problem with AE when it was first added though. Because you couldn't earn any xp or inf', just tickets

 

I have no idea what game you were playing. 

It wasn't in the same universe as the CoH that I was subscribing to when the AE was first released.

 

There were AE babies from the get-go, and they didn't get power-leveled to level 50 by sitting in the AE only getting tickets.

 

Edited August 18 by UltraAlt

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I have no idea what game you were playing. 

It wasn't in the same universe as the CoH that I was subscribing to when the AE was first released.

 

There were AE babies from the get-go, and they didn't get power-leveled to level 50 by sitting in the AE only getting tickets.

 

I remember ticket farms, but those weren't popular. And I don't remember anyone getting regular rewards from AE until after the patch after AE was released.

 

Edit: Yeah, I misremembered. The tickets were in lieu of random drops. My mistake. Apologies. (Edit again: I still don't remember power leveling farms that far back, just ticket farms, which I don't remember being popular, but seeing as I forgot how AE originally worked, I probably forgot those too.)

 

Edited August 18 by Rudra

[Lazarillo]

AE's gone into a feedback loop.  Farmers use it to get XP/inf at rates the devs find unacceptable, so the devs nerf rewards, so people who would use it for alternative access use it less, but farmers still pull in more than would come from "normal" content, so devs nerfs rewards harder, etc, etc.  I still don't understand why they don't just return rewards to normal but turn MARTy back on.

[Triumphant]

4 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

AE's gone into a feedback loop.  Farmers use it to get XP/inf at rates the devs find unacceptable, so the devs nerf rewards, so people who would use it for alternative access use it less, but farmers still pull in more than would come from "normal" content, so devs nerfs rewards harder, etc, etc.  I still don't understand why they don't just return rewards to normal but turn MARTy back on.

If this description of MARTy is accurate, I fail to see how that would be useful for anything.  

[Rudra]

Was MARTy even turned off? To trigger MARTy, you would have to be doing something beyond any level of game play. You would have to be hacking the game to pull off what MARTy says it counters. So it wouldn't come into play for things like farming or even exploit... uhm... exploitation....

 

(Edit: And to @Krimson, it wouldn't trigger for one-shotting the entire Freedom Phalanx. It would trigger for one-shotting the entire Freedom Phalanx, Arachnos Patrons, and Praetorian Preators at the same time.)

 

Edited August 18 by Rudra

[Lazarillo]

15 minutes ago, Triumphant said:

If this description of MARTy is accurate, I fail to see how that would be useful for anything.  

As a point of note, those are examples of things that would trigger it yes, as would things like "hitting extreme efficiency in AE farms back during the game's original life", as people did report hitting it fairly regularly.  Furthermore, at least as I've had it explained to me by people running some of the other servers, MARTy can be set and adapted as seen fit.  It's not a case of "it only works at value [x]", it's adjustable.

 

And that fits, since in our current system with it off, and with rewards nerfed, farming is still a bigger thing than it was in the days before.

[golstat2003]

yeah I'd bet money that AE rewards are staying just where they are, with no changes ever to move them up.

 

I'd also bet money you'd see either a.work to reduce it's rewards (VERY LESS LIKELY) or b.work to make other content reward more xp/inf (see LOF) than AE.

 

Don't hold your breath about AE returning to it's originally live rewards anytime soon. lol

[TheZag]

Im aware that the individual kill xp and inf in AE are less than their regular mission counterparts but AE xp and inf -->per hour<-- exceeds city mission play by a fair amount.  AE has large maps with lots of mobs that are tailored to be weak against a singular defense and resist stat.  It lets players overtune their damage at the expense of unneeded defenses and replay missions with no city travel time.  You also always get a 'good' map for farming instead of any of the maze-like cave and office maps that leave a few enemies hiding in some corner.  It isnt likely that the devs would make the fastest way to aquire xp and inf even more so.

 

 

[Lazarillo]

1 hour ago, TheZag said:

farming

Now imagine you're trying to use AE for its originally intended function of coming up with player-made story content that can serve as a reasonable alternative to playing the prewritten content.  They nerfed the people trying to actually use it to share their stories, to punish farmers who, as you noted, aren't even punished.

[Rudra]

17 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

Now imagine you're trying to use AE for its originally intended function of coming up with player-made story content that can serve as a reasonable alternative to playing the prewritten content.  They nerfed the people trying to actually use it to share their stories, to punish farmers who, as you noted, aren't even punished.

Since farm missions in AE and story missions in AE are still both player created missions in AE, what would you suggest to deal with the situation?

[Lazarillo]

53 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Since farm missions in AE and story missions in AE are still both player created missions in AE, what would you suggest to deal with the situation?

As mentioned, use the pre-existing MARTy system to throttle the amount earned over time, which would cap the farmers but leave the players using AE normally unaffected.

[merrypessimist]

10 hours ago, Krimson said:

Which players are doing this? Who even CAN do this? How do you one-shot a zone or the entire Freedom Phalanx?

 

This used to be extremely common back on Live before they implemented the target caps on powers. Fire tanks would pull entire zones into tight spaces and nuke them all.

[UltraAlt]

4 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

Now imagine you're trying to use AE for its originally intended function of coming up with player-made story content that can serve as a reasonable alternative to playing the prewritten content.  They nerfed the people trying to actually use it to share their stories, to punish farmers who, as you noted, aren't even punished.

 

The original DEVs nerfed the people trying to actually use the AE to share original story content (as intended) by allowing farming/exploits in the AE.

 

They said before the AE was released that they were going to permaban anyone that created or used missions in the AE for farming/exploits.

Once they release the AE, the bans happened. The people that were banned revolted.

Apparently, those players put enough money into the game that NCSoft made the DEVs cave on the issue.

All the posts about permabanning people for creating or utilizing AE missions for farming/exploits were deleted. They deleted a whole bunch of posts. Multiple entire threads deleted.

 

Now I know it would have been very difficult to police the AE when every player has access to it ... except if you generate a code to watch the xp and inf yield per a set time and use that for the guideline .. perhaps that was already engage when AE was released and the net stretched much wider than expected.

 

All that being said, any nerfing of the rewards in the AE are all due to farming and exploiting the AE.

Put the blame where it belongs ... on the Farmers and exploiters.

 

There are times when I just run random AE missions with other people.

Sure, it would be cool to run AE missions as a group.

 

But you know what kind of AE missions I don't way to play?

The ones about how cool your character(s) or supergroup is or a personal story about your character or supergroup.

... and, of course, any farming or exploit content regardless of how someone might try to "hide" what it is behind story content.

 

The only possible fix I can see at this point is to somehow reactivate that tracking system to look for farms and exploits and separate those missions from the actual story missions, so that you can go into the AE computer and pick story or farm and the only missions that come up will either be all story missions or farm missions.

The player generated tags is just a work around, but it doesn't solve the problem as not all farms are labelled as "farms" or "farm" and you can't do a search that will bring up everything not labelled "farm" or "farms".

 

 

Edited August 19 by UltraAlt