AE farms

[jubakumbi]

Whilst I will not tell others how to play (server load concerns are a separate issue), my recollection is that I had a few 50s that were played up through doors and street sweeping, slowly and painfully, respecced as many times as possible to find that perfect balance for the character and my play.

 

Those characters are still real to me and beloved, years later, and I have made new versions of them (Spines/Bio replacing claws/invuln, and DM replacing EM on an innvuln tank).  They wont be IOed Incarnates tomorrow, but they certainly will be in time, because I love them.

 

I also had a number of characters that I later designed, ‘perfect’ characters, all the math done to do exactly ehat I wanted flawlessly.  They walked into farms, walked out at 50, were bootstrapped into their IO sets... and got driven around a few times before being forgotten.

 

So, for me, I wont be doing it again.

 

This is my general outlook.

The characters I 'make really fast' vs. those I 'take the time to build up' are tossed aside as fast as I make them...

 

For really hardcore number crunchers and PvPers though, it has to be 50 before it can be crunched, so those people have a different outlook.

I am way more into the overall package - Name, Look, Power Combo - than in just running to maximum potential.

 

Other people powerleveling does not bother me, never has, never will.

Why would I worry about or judge the actions of others?

Mskes no sense to me.

[Dr. Gemini]

I suppose what frustrates me more than anything is the fact that creative AE content is apparently harder on the servers than farm content is.  I liked using patrols and ambushes, a lot, in my AE material.  Using them allowed me to give the enemies and other characters lines.  In doing this, I was following the example of the official content, which uses the same resources the same way.  We all have favorite NPC lines.  I assure you, my good man, Nemesis is most definitely 'down with the street'. Word up, my homie, as it were.

 

I don't think that is the case. I used to do the same thing in my arcs as you're describing, made the mission feel more dynamic. However, if I understand the issue with farms, it was having too many entities active at once. If I understood correctly, the patrols and ambushes in farms were designed to make most of the enemies active at once. That was not my intent in putting them in my AE arcs, its probably a safe bet it wasn't yours either?

[Zolgar]

AE farms do drop salvage, if you choose regular rewards rather than tickets. With the current price of recipes and influence/ticket rates for AE missions, ticket farming is vastly inferior to regular rewards anyway so I don’t know why you’d be ticket farming.

 

Some like the super reliability. Especially if they don't know how much level 50 common IO recipes sell for to vendors. >.>

 

I know if I run for tickets I can get 3 pieces of rare salvage ever 2 runs (and an extra piece every 7th run). Being only level 32, this translates to roughly 10mil an hour reliably for me, which is not bad for my level.

 

If I run regular drops it's a bit of a gamble. A gamble that I have won so far (2 purples that earned me 65mil between the two, not to mention a few other nice drops), but a gamble none the less.

[srmalloy]

AE farms do drop salvage, if you choose regular rewards rather than tickets. With the current price of recipes and influence/ticket rates for AE missions, ticket farming is vastly inferior to regular rewards anyway so I don’t know why you’d be ticket farming.

 

Two runs through a minor AE 'XP farm' with XP turned off and ticket rewards, one for common Arcane, one for common Tech salvage, usually sets that character up with the vast majority of the salvage they need for the first batch of IOs at level 12, alleviating the problem of getting to 12 unable to afford them. I expect the problem will get better when the server move drops XP back to normal, so you'll be earning more influence and getting more salvage for the same level increase. And if you get a rare salvage drop, kicking it into Wentworth's solves the influence problem for a long time.

[MunkiLord]

Whilst I will not tell others how to play (server load concerns are a separate issue), my recollection is that I had a few 50s that were played up through doors and street sweeping, slowly and painfully, respecced as many times as possible to find that perfect balance for the character and my play.

 

Those characters are still real to me and beloved, years later, and I have made new versions of them (Spines/Bio replacing claws/invuln, and DM replacing EM on an innvuln tank).  They wont be IOed Incarnates tomorrow, but they certainly will be in time, because I love them.

 

I also had a number of characters that I later designed, ‘perfect’ characters, all the math done to do exactly ehat I wanted flawlessly.  They walked into farms, walked out at 50, were bootstrapped into their IO sets... and got driven around a few times before being forgotten.

 

So, for me, I wont be doing it again.

 

I'm generally the opposite. I loved getting to 50 fast, putting together an expensive build, grinding for accolades, then seeing how far I can push the Scrapper and what I could solo with it. Neither way is better, but this is a good example of what makes CoH so fantastic, there is really something for almost everybody.

[Player2]

The only complaint I ever had about AE farms was the fact that it was difficult to identify them. I was never interested in farming, I just wanted to play interesting story arcs, and it was super irritating to start an arc that sounded like a story, only to have my poor blaster pounded into a pulp by a gigantic crowd of mobs the instant she zoned in.

 

The solution to this problem is for people to stop demonizing people who want to farm AE.  Yes, I understand that at present it's a server load issue and the Homecoming team wants to discourage it.  But listening to people whine about how AE ruins the game for them and AE farmers are bad for reasons of X, Y, and Z only make it so that people who create those farm type missions be discreet with their missions.  If they could advertise them as farms without some people getting bent out of shape for others using them or even that they just exist, then everyone would be able to find the missions that's right for them.  Farmers could find their farms and story-driven players could find what they want, and everyone could be happy.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb here by "attacking" people, but EVERYONE who whines about farms: STOP.  YOU play the game the way YOU want to.  If you encounter someone playing a different way and you don't like it... so what?  Ignore them and do something else.  Go find other players to team with and enjoy the game.  You may not be able to understand what enjoyment they get out of playing that way, but maybe they don't care for or understand your preferences.  Are they wrong?  If you say yes, I say shut it.  Everyone play the game however makes you feel happy.  Because if you're not enjoying yourself, why bother?  However, we do have to co-exist.  And trying to establish one way as the right way or the better way is just an opinion.  You're entitled to it, but the moment you try to shove it down someone else's throat, then YOU ARE WRONG.

 

Don't bother trying to change my mind.  I'm all about freedom, and while I don't share everyone's point of view, I respect their right to live and play however they want so long as it doesn't harm anyone else.  And no, someone getting to 50 in a day with a group of experts and not knowing how to play their character spoiling a team experience for you does not actually hurt you.  It's an annoyance, but you have tools to remove such people --or yourself if need be-- from your team and move on without ever having to interact with that player directly again.  So stop whining about AE and bad players and anything else about how you think the game should be played and just be freakin' grateful to have the game back at all.

[Sakai]

just be freakin' grateful to have the game back at all.

 

Finer words never spoken.

[pata]

hello, I created 3 AE farm to test

@Mr pata

ID:325

ID:327

ID:324

[Sanguinesun]

Whilst I will not tell others how to play (server load concerns are a separate issue), my recollection is that I had a few 50s that were played up through doors and street sweeping, slowly and painfully, respecced as many times as possible to find that perfect balance for the character and my play.

 

Those characters are still real to me and beloved, years later, and I have made new versions of them (Spines/Bio replacing claws/invuln, and DM replacing EM on an innvuln tank).  They wont be IOed Incarnates tomorrow, but they certainly will be in time, because I love them.

 

I also had a number of characters that I later designed, ‘perfect’ characters, all the math done to do exactly ehat I wanted flawlessly.  They walked into farms, walked out at 50, were bootstrapped into their IO sets... and got driven around a few times before being forgotten.

 

So, for me, I wont be doing it again.

 

It's always hit and miss for me. Honestly, I prefer being bumped to like 30ish, and then going the rest of the way naturally, because I don't much enjoy most of my hero concepts being... unable to do what they're supposed to, you know?

 

For me though the investment is in the concept, not the time spent. :)

 

There are times I wish there was a ‘start at 22 with SOs’ setting.

 

Relatively speaking there is.  Its called "DFB team LFM".  4 free SO's and exp after some runs of it to 22 easily, especially. :P

[Yamato]

AE farms do drop salvage, if you choose regular rewards rather than tickets. With the current price of recipes and influence/ticket rates for AE missions, ticket farming is vastly inferior to regular rewards anyway so I don’t know why you’d be ticket farming.

 

Some like the super reliability. Especially if they don't know how much level 50 common IO recipes sell for to vendors. >.>

 

I know if I run for tickets I can get 3 pieces of rare salvage ever 2 runs (and an extra piece every 7th run). Being only level 32, this translates to roughly 10mil an hour reliably for me, which is not bad for my level.

 

If I run regular drops it's a bit of a gamble. A gamble that I have won so far (2 purples that earned me 65mil between the two, not to mention a few other nice drops), but a gamble none the less.

So if you're under 50 but the AE mission is level 50 you can get purples?

[Zerethon]

I'll chime in here

 

On live, i had a farm i made with just normal factions, basically just a variant of the battle maiden farm, big open map, an AV group somewhere with the boss, and a few glowies to click, with a backstory

 

Essentially, a player-made version of the portal corp missions people farmed. I played mostly villains and we didn't really have a lot of good farms like heroes did

 

It never got nerfed or removed, actually got spotlighted or whatever at one point so i just left it active all the time.

 

Missions like that should be completely OK, Look, especially returning players like me that had literally dozens of characters at 50 don't feel like grinding every single toon to 50 by chaining radios and that sort of thing. I want to get to 50 so i can do all the things.

 

Nerf AE i'm just going to farm oldschool portal corp or redside grandville missions (there's a few of them) since i can still go in like i'm an 8-person squad solo and don't have to worry about people popping my glowies and crap.

 

Honestly, i might re-make that old mission and post it up with the original description. It's a farm, but it's not an exploitative one and would give a decent option to people.

[Jon]

AE farms do drop salvage, if you choose regular rewards rather than tickets. With the current price of recipes and influence/ticket rates for AE missions, ticket farming is vastly inferior to regular rewards anyway so I don’t know why you’d be ticket farming.

 

Some like the super reliability. Especially if they don't know how much level 50 common IO recipes sell for to vendors. >.>

 

I know if I run for tickets I can get 3 pieces of rare salvage ever 2 runs (and an extra piece every 7th run). Being only level 32, this translates to roughly 10mil an hour reliably for me, which is not bad for my level.

 

If I run regular drops it's a bit of a gamble. A gamble that I have won so far (2 purples that earned me 65mil between the two, not to mention a few other nice drops), but a gamble none the less.

So if you're under 50 but the AE mission is level 50 you can get purples?

 

Yep.

[Zolgar]

AE farms do drop salvage, if you choose regular rewards rather than tickets. With the current price of recipes and influence/ticket rates for AE missions, ticket farming is vastly inferior to regular rewards anyway so I don’t know why you’d be ticket farming.

 

Some like the super reliability. Especially if they don't know how much level 50 common IO recipes sell for to vendors. >.>

 

I know if I run for tickets I can get 3 pieces of rare salvage ever 2 runs (and an extra piece every 7th run). Being only level 32, this translates to roughly 10mil an hour reliably for me, which is not bad for my level.

 

If I run regular drops it's a bit of a gamble. A gamble that I have won so far (2 purples that earned me 65mil between the two, not to mention a few other nice drops), but a gamble none the less.

So if you're under 50 but the AE mission is level 50 you can get purples?

 

Any level 50+ enemies have the possibility to drop purples for anyone who participates in killing them.

[Sniktch]

Gonna puncture some myths, here - there is MORE THAN ONE KIND of AE farm. 

 

On live, i had a farm i made with just normal factions, basically just a variant of the battle maiden farm, big open map, an AV group somewhere with the boss, and a few glowies to click, with a backstory

 

Essentially, a player-made version of the portal corp missions people farmed.

 

This?  This is one kind.  THIS KIND IS NOT THE PROBLEM - at least from a server mechanics perspective.  Why?  Because it's not spawning double-digit quantity 8-player-sized ambushes and patrols at once.  Going in one second from 0 active AIs to over 200, all of them checking aggro, checking pathing, checking LoS, checking Z-clearance, moving as fast as possible to a single location, and there running into a wall-o'-death that easily maxes out the aggro cap for the player putting it all out, generating possibly double-digit defeat notices per second, and we haven't even touched on the cluster-fuck that happens when someone hits the aggro cap, an AI backs up out of AoE range, and the player is damaging an AI that can't properly trigger aggro on them because of that cap!

 

THAT is the kind of AE farm that causes server issues.  The problem is...you can't just disable that type of farm.  Why?  Because the only way to do it is put a hardcap on ambushes and patrols per-map, which A: we don't know if the Homecoming team knows how to do, and B: there'd be a lot of howls for blood from players 'outraged at this loss of creative freedom', despite their only published AE mission being 'BIG XP STROM145009!' or equivalent.  Because they don't want to lose their max-efficiency reward generator - and it IS max-efficiency, not just for XP but for ALL generatable resources they can drop.  Why?  Because if you can kill 11 minions in the time it takes to kill one boss, you're better off nailing the minions, because that's more XP - but also 10 more checks of the drop tables.  This system just leverages that to the max, and in the process makes the servers shriek. 

 

Honestly, I'm tired enough of the arguments I say just slap an "I win" button in the P2W vendors, but the cost is you forever after have a GenericHero/Villain# name and costume.

[SeraphimKensai]

Given the issues with Server resources as regards to the Agro cap, we should just remove it. It would be less taxing burning 400 warwolves in a dumpster again.

[Burnt Toast]

Not gonna happen...nor should it. 

 

Given the issues with Server resources as regards to the Agro cap, we should just remove it. It would be less taxing burning 400 warwolves in a dumpster again.

[jubakumbi]

Honestly, I'm tired enough of the arguments I say just slap an "I win" button in the P2W vendors, but the cost is you forever after have a GenericHero/Villain# name and costume.

 

Trying to shame people who like to Powerlevel and use AE is silly.

Did not work when the game was live, is really old now.

 

Sure, AE uses more resources than expected and therefore we know it has a material impact on the servers.

This has been discussed over and over again here.

 

That does not make AE, or Powerleveling, 'bad', or a reason to go shaming others.

This idea purpetuated for YEARS, this idea in CoH that AE and Powerleveling are 'cheating' or something.

 

If you don't like to use AE or Powerlevel, don't, but the idea that these are somehow 'morally bad' is laughable from my PoV.

[Without_Pause]

Farmers are gonna farm.

 

Lets be honest. Their impact on you will be:

• None as they or you solo.
   
  
• None as they are farming or in AE in general and you aren't.
   
  
• On your team helping you complete content faster since they have more pimped out builds.
   
  
• On your team not knowing how to play a build but not really impacting the team's performance is a real negative way.
   
  
• On your team not knowing how to play a build to the point of having a negative impact.
   
  
• Fighting you in PvP, and well, I don't recall PvP having rules about budgets.
  

 

So ultimately one thing is bad and having a global friends list and or SG can vastly limit that aspect. One could argue they are driving up prices on things, but they are also generating more items as well, so I think it is a wash at best. I have no clue why people still find farming to be an issue, and even more so when they likely aren't running around in your circles to begin with. Let people play how they want to. Getting butt hurt about what people do in a game just seems petty.

[scarasyte]

AE missions shouldn't effect anyone. All it really is is more missions, just consolidated to one building. I can't stand buzzkills. They see someone doing something a different way and it triggers them even though it shouldn't. I used to be like that once. Back when pay to win was first becoming a concept in games I was even against skins because I didn't use them. These days I take more of a liberty approach. As long as I'm not in a PvP match with someone who paid for a powerful advantage I don't have, it doesn't effect me.

 

Offtopic: Which by the way happened to me once in Star Trek Online. A buddy of mine bought this powerful ship on the P2W store and totally handed me my phaser banks. And all I had was the ships you EARN in the game through leveling up. My Romulan's Ego was never the same.

[Zolgar]

Farmers are gonna farm.

 

Lets be honest. Their impact on you will be:

• None as they or you solo.
   
  
• None as they are farming or in AE in general and you aren't.
   
  
• On your team helping you complete content faster since they have more pimped out builds.
   
  
• On your team not knowing how to play a build but not really impacting the team's performance is a real negative way.
   
  
• On your team not knowing how to play a build to the point of having a negative impact.
   
  
• Fighting you in PvP, and well, I don't recall PvP having rules about budgets.
  

 

You forgot one:

• In global sending you influence or enhancers because a couple million influence is nothing to them.

[brian9824]

AE missions shouldn't effect anyone. All it really is is more missions, just consolidated to one building. I can't stand buzzkills. They see someone doing something a different way and it triggers them even though it shouldn't. I used to be like that once. Back when pay to win was first becoming a concept in games I was even against skins because I didn't use them. These days I take more of a liberty approach. As long as I'm not in a PvP match with someone who paid for a powerful advantage I don't have, it doesn't effect me.

 

Offtopic: Which by the way happened to me once in Star Trek Online. A buddy of mine bought this powerful ship on the P2W store and totally handed me my phaser banks. And all I had was the ships you EARN in the game through leveling up. My Romulan's Ego was never the same.

 

Except it is 100% without a doubt effecting everyone.  It's already been confirmed that the AE missions use up FAAARR more resources then normal missions to the point that 1 AE mission might use the same resources as 20-25 normal missions. 

 

That is the reason the homecoming devs are against it, it LITERALLY kills the servers. 

[Chuckers]

this what happened in the last game i played hackers ruined it for everyone farmin AEs and gettin mobs to heal u and just anything to cheat there no extened maintenance there trying to catch the hacker and we pay for it so unless people don't let GM'S know of wrong doing's in the game it we ruin it and there we not be a COH IT WELL BE GONE TO THE AMERICANS!!!!!!!

 

I so wish there was a way to "thumbs up" a post... I bet they were dupin' rares, too.

[jubakumbi]

Except it is 100% without a doubt effecting everyone.  It's already been confirmed that the AE missions use up FAAARR more resources then normal missions to the point that 1 AE mission might use the same resources as 20-25 normal missions. 

 

That is the reason the homecoming devs are against it, it LITERALLY kills the servers.

 

No one here, that I can see, disagrees the implemention in terms of resources is an issue, it has been repeated...

 

We are talking about those poeple who chose to make a moral judgement about Powerleveling and AE.

Yes, it takes more resources because of old code.

No, it is not Evil.

 

That's all.

[_NOPE_]

this what happened in the last game i played hackers ruined it for everyone farmin AEs and gettin mobs to heal u and just anything to cheat there no extened maintenance there trying to catch the hacker and we pay for it so unless people don't let GM'S know of wrong doing's in the game it we ruin it and there we not be a COH IT WELL BE GONE TO THE AMERICANS!!!!!!!

 

I so wish there was a way to "thumbs up" a post... I bet they were dupin' rares, too.

 

You click on the "Give Inf" link under their name. It's a digital thumbs up.

[scarasyte]

Except it is 100% without a doubt effecting everyone.  It's already been confirmed that the AE missions use up FAAARR more resources then normal missions to the point that 1 AE mission might use the same resources as 20-25 normal missions. 

 

That is the reason the homecoming devs are against it, it LITERALLY kills the servers.

 

Simple fix for the devs; Make the rewards the same as normal missions. I never noticed I got more for doing AEs, but that's probably just me not noticing it. :/