FARMING - What's the big deal?!

[Troo]

@Ukase Thanks for the input.

 

4 hours ago, Ukase said:

Some folks will never like it when someone else comes up with a clever way of "getting over" that's within the guidelines/rules. They just won't.

4 hours ago, Ukase said:

if it doesn't break the rules, then it's all fair.

 

As I said, I generally don't have an issue with farming,

Someone else mentioned 'time'. If the computer is doing the work is time being leveraged? Unfairly? It's debatable.

Being clever, great. With the understanding that pushing the rules can come with consequences.

 

When some push too far it can effect others. One farmer has no problem exploiting a vulnerability the resulting action to remedy it can effect other farmers.

 

That's sorta what happened with Empyrean Merit. A few abused a system for exponentially outsized rewards and the resulting action effected many. (possible over generalization)

[Ukase]

20 minutes ago, Troo said:

That's sorta what happened with Empyrean Merit. A few abused a system for exponentially outsized rewards and the resulting action effected many.

There's a perception issue here, and it's my problem not yours. But maybe someone can help me see it in a more "acceptable" fashion. 

You say a few "abused" a system. I don't see it like that. I see it as using a system. That's why it was put in place. Now, the end result might not have been what they were expecting. So, they adjusted. But it was never "abuse". Just use. Granted, some made more efficient use than others. The harm, arguably, was in removing it at the expense of any players who were using it. It's not like it was a glitch they took advantage of. It was a feature they used. 

Before the license agreement, the argument essentially boiled down to "you're a guest here, it's their game, they'll do what they think is best for the game". 
Between the lines, some folks figured their voice didn't count. Opinions will vary on that. In my experience, they have listened. But sometimes, the answer is just not what we want. 

Historically, it's hard to believe Matt Miller and folks didn't instantly expect players to milk AE for all it was worth. But, for me, the ingenuity of our fellow players astounds me sometimes. They do things that are seemingly wavelengths and levels above how I think and act. Using teleport to skip a cut scene? To me, that's clever. To some, that's unforgiveable. 

For what it's worth, I think AE is a fantastic creative tool. A fair number of folks make missions not designed for farmers. Some of them are good. The rewards are trash, so they don't get the play they deserve. And perhaps there's a case to be made for harm in those cases. That's for minds sharper than mine to ponder. 

As for me, while I'm against folks farming before they get their first or maybe 10th 50, because there's so much more to this game than farming, I really don't have any issue with any of it. Except when I see 4 or more accounts running at the same time. Then it irks me, because frankly, there are often times I want to do this - but don't, because of the rules. 

 

[Troo]

1 hour ago, Seed22 said:

You and everyone like you should learn to live with.

 

Interesting, while you do not like to be told what to do...

 

1 hour ago, Seed22 said:

Not only are you wrong

 

They are not totally wrong and like you, they can have an opinion.

 

On 11/3/2024 at 6:22 AM, Seed22 said:

This is 100% not true.

 

I was gonna let this go but since I am replying... Just FYI - Absolute statements can have inherent issues and tend to be easily discredited taking an associated argument with them.

 

I appreciate you chiming in and sharing your opinion. That's often the idea of a topic.

Folks are welcome to disagree without being disagreeable. We have lots of levels of experience with the game and life here.

[Troo]

3 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Using teleport to skip a cut scene?

 

Uh.. how does this work? I missed this nugget.

[Troo]

4 minutes ago, Ukase said:

there are often times I want to do this - but don't, because of the rules.

 

Maybe something to this thought.

There are things I don't do because I'm not supposed to but see others doing (traffic is a classic example).

[Ukase]

3 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

Uh.. how does this work? I missed this nugget.

From what I understand, in certain task forces, when a player crosses a certain line, a cut scene is triggered. If a player knows where that line is and ports well beyond it, the cut scene is never triggered. 

[icesphere]

Correct, there are two specific ones you can skip that bypasses the cutscenes in Aeon and MLTF. There's another way to bypass MLTF cutscene, but not sure if that has been fixed or not as I have not tried it in a couple of years.

[macskull]

Also before anyone gets all up in arms about this it’s worth pointing out that the one in Aeon, in particular, was intentionally designed to be skippable. I do wish they’d take a leaf out of the iTrials book and just… not play any of the cutscenes in a TF if everyone has the completion badge.

Edited November 4 by macskull

[TygerDarkstorm]

53 minutes ago, macskull said:

Also before anyone gets all up in arms about this it’s worth pointing out that the one in Aeon, in particular, was intentionally designed to be skippable. I do wish they’d take a leaf out of the iTrials book and just… not play any of the cutscenes in a TF if everyone has the completion badge.

I actually did get a dev response about cutscenes one time--they literally can't make them skippable (at least in legacy ones, idk about stuff they're adding) because in CoH, the cutscenes actually load in the needed mobs for you to fight after. So if we skipped them, there would be no boss or whatever to fight.

[Indystruck]

I am not affected by an AFK farmer standing in a sequestered part of Pocket D being afk for 5 minutes while they're alt+tabbed doing something else.

[lemming]

1 hour ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

I actually did get a dev response about cutscenes one time--they literally can't make them skippable (at least in legacy ones, idk about stuff they're adding) because in CoH, the cutscenes actually load in the needed mobs for you to fight after. So if we skipped them, there would be no boss or whatever to fight.

One where you can do see that with is the Sentinel fight at the end of the Dark Astoria Mu arc.

If you port past the cutscene trigger you can go all the way to the end where he spawns, but he will not spawn until the cutscene is triggered.

 

Though one can skip past that, have say a Devices character put down maximum Trip Mines, then have someone trigger the cutscene...

This is hilarious, but time consuming with no extra reward beyond a bunch of explosions.  (Hmm, will have to figure out how to do this and get a screen capture of a character walking away from that...)

[Ironblade]

On 11/2/2024 at 1:46 PM, Troo said:

Non-stop begging in global channels to be farmed. It's annoying. Punishment = grumpy but polite tells.

 

This is the only one that bothers me at all.

 

Most of my farming was to get some characters to specific levels in case I ever needed to access a mission and didn't have someone at the right level.  So I have stalkers named Agent 09, Agent 014, Agent 019, Agent 024, etc with each locked at the level in their name.  Currently, they have not been played in over 700 days and all have name release warnings but who cares.  They're only useful based on their level.

 

 

On 11/2/2024 at 2:56 PM, BlackSpectre said:

And quad-boxing? Man, that dude has a nice rig to support all of that!

 

Nah.  I was running three accounts at the same time back in 2005.  I would guess the computer I play on now could handle ten or more accounts easily.  Not gonna test, since that would be a bannable offense.  I just have three accounts.

[lemming]

8 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

Nah.  I was running three accounts at the same time back in 2005.  I would guess the computer I play on now could handle ten or more accounts easily.  Not gonna test, since that would be a bannable offense.  I just have three accounts.

You can do 3 per shard, so you could test 15 using the non-beta shards...

[Spaghetti Betty]

It's always those pesky farmers looking to make a quick buck, and it seems the powers that be always want to help them under the guise of "promoting economic growth" and "preventing freefall of resources". Now we have millions of pounds of cheese stored in underground caves and private, government-funded agencies slipping cash to major restaurants and public schools to shove more unnecessary dairy into our food!

 

Oh, you're talking about in-game farmers!

 

Those guys are alright!

[Ironblade]

12 minutes ago, lemming said:

You can do 3 per shard, so you could test 15 using the non-beta shards...

 

True.  I did not think of that.  Way too much effort to test, though.  On a side note, CoH is taking 1.3GB of RAM and I have 32GB.  So it looks like 10 instances would be doable.  CPU usage is under 5%.

[Ironblade]

On 11/3/2024 at 6:45 AM, kito said:

What farm map?

 

I notice no one answered this.  I'm pretty sure they were referring to the Labyrinth of Fog.

[wmtyrance]

I remember when Homecoming launched for everyone farming/power leveling a character was cool and fun. People were friendly to low-level newbies. Everyone knows those early levels suck badly. But now asking to get on a farm to power level is like a crime or something. I don't get why the community is turning this way. It's almost toxic how new players are treated now. Most people I knew who played this version have left with a bad taste of the sudden change in the community.

[tidge]

15 minutes ago, wmtyrance said:

I remember when Homecoming launched for everyone farming/power leveling a character was cool and fun. People were friendly to low-level newbies. Everyone knows those early levels suck badly. But now asking to get on a farm to power level is like a crime or something. I don't get why the community is turning this way. It's almost toxic how new players are treated now. Most people I knew who played this version have left with a bad taste of the sudden change in the community.

 

One things: It is trivial to level up, without stepping foot in an AE.

 

Another thing; I don't equate "new player" with "asking to power level". I want to believe that a really new player wouldn't want or need to "power level", since content pretty much scales with the powers available to the character.

 

 

[Psyonico]

26 minutes ago, wmtyrance said:

Everyone knows those early levels suck badly

Well shoot, nobody ever told *me* that!

[Snarky]

I farmed today for the first time in…a year?  I needed (wanted?) a 59 water/temp Blaster and i am short on time. My favored method is slow leveling theough every TF/SF/Trial.  But i got my alt acct farmer out and ground me up a new toon. Es war ekelhaft! (It was disgusting!) But i got my 50 and the world keeps turning.  Glad we have the option. 

[Without_Pause]

14 hours ago, wmtyrance said:

I remember when Homecoming launched for everyone farming/power leveling a character was cool and fun. People were friendly to low-level newbies. Everyone knows those early levels suck badly. But now asking to get on a farm to power level is like a crime or something. I don't get why the community is turning this way. It's almost toxic how new players are treated now. Most people I knew who played this version have left with a bad taste of the sudden change in the community.

The genuine early players of HC where there before the game was out in the open again. In other words, those were not new players. Even after the reveal, the vast majority of those who came back were vets on the game. There's no real issue with them power leveling to 50. I bet many of them were just trying to get their favorites back to Level 50. Now, new players coming in and getting power leveled with them not knowing how to play is absolutely an issue. I've been on fair share of teams where a player of various higher level obviously didn't know how to play the game, and the team had to hold the player's hand.

 

Do the early levels suck? Yes, but even soloing people often forget how quickly it is to leveling during that time. I'm currently perfectly happy soloing at +0x1 doing Gold at Level 24. I'm roughly getting a level from a four mission story arc, and those arcs are super quick to do. 

Edited November 11 by Without_Pause

[Akalabeth]

I like fire farmin' but I only use one character to do it.  It's relaxing and I like checking out different ones people make.  I level alts in it but don't take anyone else.  I can't say I've played all content, but I've done enough on live and on HC/Rebirth that I don't think I'm "missing" much by leveling my alts and getting INF.

 

The endless people who say things like  "LF ae farm have room?"  should be nerfed.  There's no reason for chronic sitters not to power level themselves and if you look at globals a lot of them ask on different characters throughout the week.  Yeah, I have a memory at times.

 

Pls stop running farms for these people. -_-

 

[Maelwys]

3 hours ago, Akalabeth said:

Pls stop running farms for these people. -_-

 

If I had the time, I'd run MORE farms for them. 

 

Of course, the map matters. Do I use the one where they have to click on 200+ glowie fruit trees before the NPC informs them that they've successfully harvested today's quota of apples; or the one which has a great big open field and they have to run up and down it for 30 mins pretending they're a plough?

 

Bonus points if they make brum-brum tractor noises whilst ploughing (and/or they bring a Marine Affinity or Earth Control toon- those crops aren't going to dig and water themselves...)

[srmalloy]

On 11/11/2024 at 8:27 AM, Without_Pause said:

Now, new players coming in and getting power leveled with them not knowing how to play is absolutely an issue

The HC staff addressed a bit of the 'AE baby' syndrome by eliminating the AE buildings in Atlas Park and Mercy Island, ensuring that new 50s whose entire experience of the game is doorsitting in farms in Pocket D at least have the concept of changing zones, even if they still have no idea how to get to different city zones (the classic "How do I get to Steel Canyon?" question from a 50 invited to a Positron TF). I can understand wanting to recreate characters they had on Live, but there's no effective way to to do that without making it possible for people coming from other MMOs where everything up to level cap is just grinding from using it to sweep to level cap without learning to play their characters.

[Ironblade]

On 11/10/2024 at 9:20 PM, wmtyrance said:

I remember when Homecoming launched for everyone farming/power leveling a character was cool and fun. People were friendly to low-level newbies. Everyone knows those early levels suck badly. But now asking to get on a farm to power level is like a crime or something. I don't get why the community is turning this way. It's almost toxic how new players are treated now. Most people I knew who played this version have left with a bad taste of the sudden change in the community.

 

Firstly, I think you're suffering from 'Good Old Days' syndrome, where everything was great and wonderful 'back in the day' but it's terrible now.  I've been here since the start and people used to offer spots on farms then and they were still doing it this past week.

 

As for the rest, certainly opinions can differ but my impression is that:

The community has not 'turned' any way.

There has been no increase in actual toxicity - maybe you or your friends have become more sensitive on the subject.

There has been no "sudden change in the community".