AE farms

[CircularMoon]

Thanks for the reply, now Im clued up to what it is. - however, I personally feel its a waste, of course each to their own'n all that, sure, but its the charm of this game all about good team play and missions to have fun in? - I dont see a farm being fun!.

 

i remember earlier in this game all those years ago. - just overwhelmed with spam chat with FARM, FARM and FARM!...

 

if I recall, this game doesn't really have an end game when you reach lvl 50cap. - so whats the point in rushing there?

 

AE farms exists fine. - but not for me thanks!

[Piledriver]

There is endgame content.

 

There is also Ouroboros, which allows you to go back and play all the low-level content after you've reached level 50 and completely slotted your build, thereby avoiding the constant failure of your enhancements and need to run to a trainer (or accidentally out-leveling the contacts because you were running with a steamrolling team at boosted difficulty settings).

[Eiko-chan]

Didn't we have this exact same fight on the live servers? And didn't the Paragon Studio devs eventually nerf AE rewards and force arcs to get dev approval before being viewed as "regular" content?

 

We had this fight. And the farmers lost then, too, because of the technical limitation of the game code. The game simply cannot take AE farms being run at any appreciable level.

[Rylas]

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!!!!!!!

 

[Burnt Toast]

The hyperbole in this thread is hilarious....

If you can't find a mission team that is on you. Ever think no one wants to run that TF at the moment and it has nothing to do with AE? I don't run Posi; for example, because I like it.. I run it because I need it for a badge/accolade. I'm not worried about badges/accolades right now. I am more concerned iwth getting to 50, getting influence to enhance my characters, etc. I played from beginning to end.. I don't need to rehash the same stories from 15 years ago that I ran through numerous times.

I get the reduction in xp for AE due to technical reasons... just hoping this is something they can resolve because the game needs mor eoptions now fewer if you want people to stay interested... especially since there will not be new content.

 

[SwitchFade]

Good afternoon, everyone. I am encouraged to see that so many of us returned, and excited that we all can discuss our favorite game again. Over the years I have thought about issues such as these, concerning CoH, and I feel for everyone. Because this game means so much to us, and we are truly in it together, we should approach issues such as these from a singular perspective: sustainability.

 

Sustainability, in this sense, means long term continuation of the game, which relies on players. Invariably, we will suffer attrition as people eventually move on, and new players will be necessary. In ssance, we are a community, and we require a birth rate to sustain and grow. We lose people, we gain people. So here we are, and this is the key.  We all have our perspectives, wants and views, and to this end we must set aside our preconceptions in order to serve the game we love and assure this sustainability.

 

Now, the true nature of these issues is revealed and we must make conscious choices to serve the community and the greater good of sustainability. Yes, we all want what we want, and not all of our wants align, yet 80% surely do, and we work from there.

 

Ultimately, the core of the matter should be seen from the new players perspective, in order to sustain that love we all have, that experience that hooked us. We must keep that experience alive for them, so that we all may continue to be a family, and make no mistake, we are a family. Consider that in any family, any community, there are certain extreme desires that unfortunately are not in service of everyone, and we all realize that and we make small compromises to assure sustainability. For example, some people believe taxes should be abolished, yet we can agree that some personal beliefs such as this can be detrimental to community growth.

 

In the spirit of this, I merely comment on the best choices to capture and nurture the hearts of new players, which is what we failed to do previously. Should AE not exist? Of course not! Yet, shouldn't we find a way to not let it impact new players negatively? We can all agree that AE spam that crowds out all the reasons we all feel in love with CoH is detrimental, because of the culture and perspective it creates, and the impression a new player has. Let's put ourselves in their shoes, if they see only AE from day one, never learn or experience, never discover what we had the privilege of, we have done them a disservice.

 

Think of it this way, we all hold this game dear, NOT because of AE, but because of issues 1-12 that got us there. Let's allow new players to enjoy that too, and also have AE! But do it smartly, lock it like Peregrine was, keep it out of spam, level restrict it, anything to assure sustainability.

 

After all, we don't let 8 year-old children drive automobiles, no matter how badly they want to, because we know that have to learn and grow. AE isn't bad, but our application of it most certainly is.

[_NOPE_]

Is there an AE chat channel built into the system? I don't recall. If there isn't, then we could add one, and not make it a part of the default tabs that show up. Then new players won't be confused by it, but AE Farmers still have a place to "broadcast".

[Valverde]

Is there an AE chat channel built into the system? I don't recall. If there isn't, then we could add one, and not make it a part of the default tabs that show up. Then new players won't be confused by it, but AE Farmers still have a place to "broadcast".

 

That would actually be a really nice change. New players shouldn't be AE farming anyway, lots of good content to explore.

[Zaphir]

Honestly, I have no problem with the concept of powerleveling / farming -- a lot of people do it in a lot of games (I personally find it boring and unengaging, but different strokes etc). It's natural that when the players have control of a system to create content optimized for their favorite activity, they'll do it. Admittedly, giving standard rewards to any AE mission skews the balance a lot from how it was in live (there you could only have tickets/xp for most arcs, and standard rewards were restricted to Dev's Choice and Hall of Fame).

 

I love the Mission Architect, it is a great outlet for creativity and could be used to create a lot of diverse content (story arcs, challenge arcs, joke arcs, RP events, and yeah, farms) and I spent a lot of time playing (and sometimes making) story arcs back in the day. That said, if the only way to keep the servers from dying is to get rid of AE entirely, then I'd say do it... it'd make me sad, but eh, getting to play CoH again is worth it!

[Heraclea]

What puzzles me is that the only difference between 'farming' AE missions and story based missions is that the story based ones were put together by people who took the trouble to add a little bit of text to the events in their farming mission.  Seriously, that's all it takes.  I played one of the highly rated farms that's on live: it was filled with interesting custom critters, pigs, ducks, and chickens.  All it wants is a bit more text to become an amusing environment. 

 

Since the missions I had published on live all died, I've put in a couple old favorites.  One is 'Spread My Legions', a three mission story, villain oriented, in which you must assist Romulus Augustus to conquer the Past, Present, and Future.  I ran this one when I needed tickets.  The other is 'Who is Kidnapping the World's Great Philosophers', a one map story in which you must liberate philosophers and defeat Ayn Rand; it was meant as an allegory about the issues surrounding Wentworth's and the loss of value of inf.  Both of these could be farmed if wanted; most are made out of recolored and renamed standard mobs, with the more annoying kinds excised, and a few custom characters.  Both are story oriented.  Both are farmable. 

[Eiko-chan]

I feel like everyone reading this thread should also be aware of this fact:

Wait, so I'm confused. Is the AE server a separate piece of software/hardware?

 

The missionserver, as its called, is a separate piece of software that stores the mission data as created by players. It does use some resources, but that part is not a big deal. Once you start an AE mission, it's loaded in a mapserver, like any other mission. They are not treated any differently.

 

The problem is that players can build missions that are a lot more resource-intensive than normal missions from the game. When enemies spawn in normal missions, most of them have their AI in an "idle" state until they are aggroed, which doesn't require much processing power. But most AE farms rely heavily on ambushes or patrols, which spawn the critters with fully active AI. And that's the problem.

 

Missions are run on 9 servers with a total of 224 cores. For the most part you can run lots of zones and missions on a single core without a problem; but AE farms tend to max out a core all for themselves. If there's just 100 AE AI-intensive farms running, that eats half of the mapserver processing power for all 4 shards.

Farmers are not harmless. Farming actively robs resources from the other players.

[Venture]

I feel like everyone reading this thread should also be aware of this fact:

Wait, so I'm confused. Is the AE server a separate piece of software/hardware?

 

The missionserver, as its called, is a separate piece of software that stores the mission data as created by players. It does use some resources, but that part is not a big deal. Once you start an AE mission, it's loaded in a mapserver, like any other mission. They are not treated any differently.

 

The problem is that players can build missions that are a lot more resource-intensive than normal missions from the game. When enemies spawn in normal missions, most of them have their AI in an "idle" state until they are aggroed, which doesn't require much processing power. But most AE farms rely heavily on ambushes or patrols, which spawn the critters with fully active AI. And that's the problem.

 

Missions are run on 9 servers with a total of 224 cores. For the most part you can run lots of zones and missions on a single core without a problem; but AE farms tend to max out a core all for themselves. If there's just 100 AE AI-intensive farms running, that eats half of the mapserver processing power for all 4 shards.

Farmers are not harmless. Farming actively robs resources from the other players.

 

This!

 

AE hasn't had it's XP nerfed just to spite farmers, or even for balance reasons. It's solely been done to encourage people not to farm and reduce the demand for AE resources thus massively increasing the resources for, and stability of, the rest of the game. Unfortunately the current Server resources are limited and thus the only option is to reallocate resources from elsewhere. AE farms use a disproportionate amount of server resources and thus are the obvious place to reallocate from.

[barrier]

I feel like everyone reading this thread should also be aware of this fact:

Wait, so I'm confused. Is the AE server a separate piece of software/hardware?

 

The missionserver, as its called, is a separate piece of software that stores the mission data as created by players. It does use some resources, but that part is not a big deal. Once you start an AE mission, it's loaded in a mapserver, like any other mission. They are not treated any differently.

 

The problem is that players can build missions that are a lot more resource-intensive than normal missions from the game. When enemies spawn in normal missions, most of them have their AI in an "idle" state until they are aggroed, which doesn't require much processing power. But most AE farms rely heavily on ambushes or patrols, which spawn the critters with fully active AI. And that's the problem.

 

Missions are run on 9 servers with a total of 224 cores. For the most part you can run lots of zones and missions on a single core without a problem; but AE farms tend to max out a core all for themselves. If there's just 100 AE AI-intensive farms running, that eats half of the mapserver processing power for all 4 shards.

Farmers are not harmless. Farming actively robs resources from the other players.

 

That is a stupid stance. By your standards, GMs shouldn't spawn because they rob resources from people in missions. You're full of it.

[Venture]

I feel like everyone reading this thread should also be aware of this fact:

Wait, so I'm confused. Is the AE server a separate piece of software/hardware?

 

The missionserver, as its called, is a separate piece of software that stores the mission data as created by players. It does use some resources, but that part is not a big deal. Once you start an AE mission, it's loaded in a mapserver, like any other mission. They are not treated any differently.

 

The problem is that players can build missions that are a lot more resource-intensive than normal missions from the game. When enemies spawn in normal missions, most of them have their AI in an "idle" state until they are aggroed, which doesn't require much processing power. But most AE farms rely heavily on ambushes or patrols, which spawn the critters with fully active AI. And that's the problem.

 

Missions are run on 9 servers with a total of 224 cores. For the most part you can run lots of zones and missions on a single core without a problem; but AE farms tend to max out a core all for themselves. If there's just 100 AE AI-intensive farms running, that eats half of the mapserver processing power for all 4 shards.

Farmers are not harmless. Farming actively robs resources from the other players.

 

That is a stupid stance. By your standards, GMs shouldn't spawn because they rob resources from people in missions. You're full of it.

 

its a valid point when server resources are as limited as they are currently...

[barrier]

I feel like everyone reading this thread should also be aware of this fact:

Wait, so I'm confused. Is the AE server a separate piece of software/hardware?

 

The missionserver, as its called, is a separate piece of software that stores the mission data as created by players. It does use some resources, but that part is not a big deal. Once you start an AE mission, it's loaded in a mapserver, like any other mission. They are not treated any differently.

 

The problem is that players can build missions that are a lot more resource-intensive than normal missions from the game. When enemies spawn in normal missions, most of them have their AI in an "idle" state until they are aggroed, which doesn't require much processing power. But most AE farms rely heavily on ambushes or patrols, which spawn the critters with fully active AI. And that's the problem.

 

Missions are run on 9 servers with a total of 224 cores. For the most part you can run lots of zones and missions on a single core without a problem; but AE farms tend to max out a core all for themselves. If there's just 100 AE AI-intensive farms running, that eats half of the mapserver processing power for all 4 shards.

Farmers are not harmless. Farming actively robs resources from the other players.

 

That is a stupid stance. By your standards, GMs shouldn't spawn because they rob resources from people in missions. You're full of it.

 

its a valid point when server resources are as limited as they are currently...

 

Okay, no Giant Monsters for anyone. Keep server loads low! /s

[Piledriver]

Didn't we have this exact same fight on the live servers? And didn't the Paragon Studio devs eventually nerf AE rewards and force arcs to get dev approval before being viewed as "regular" content?

 

We had this fight. And the farmers lost then, too, because of the technical limitation of the game code. The game simply cannot take AE farms being run at any appreciable level.

 

No. They did not across-the-board nerf/reduce AE rewards. They did not nerf rewards at all outside removing doubled rewards from respawning/resurrecting enemies.

 

They did, however, break AE functionality repeatedly in an effort to herd farmers away from certain mission designs, thereby punishing anyone who ever used those features in a non-farm mission and making the AE system less capable for anything other than farms. A global XP nerf, as a permanent response with no plan of ever solving it through hardware or optimization, is just hostile to anyone using the system in any way.

 

Farmers never lost and never will. Take AE out of the game entirely, farmers will have even more of a corner on the market for their services using standard game content, just as they did before.

[Venture]

I feel like everyone reading this thread should also be aware of this fact:

Wait, so I'm confused. Is the AE server a separate piece of software/hardware?

 

The missionserver, as its called, is a separate piece of software that stores the mission data as created by players. It does use some resources, but that part is not a big deal. Once you start an AE mission, it's loaded in a mapserver, like any other mission. They are not treated any differently.

 

The problem is that players can build missions that are a lot more resource-intensive than normal missions from the game. When enemies spawn in normal missions, most of them have their AI in an "idle" state until they are aggroed, which doesn't require much processing power. But most AE farms rely heavily on ambushes or patrols, which spawn the critters with fully active AI. And that's the problem.

 

Missions are run on 9 servers with a total of 224 cores. For the most part you can run lots of zones and missions on a single core without a problem; but AE farms tend to max out a core all for themselves. If there's just 100 AE AI-intensive farms running, that eats half of the mapserver processing power for all 4 shards.

Farmers are not harmless. Farming actively robs resources from the other players.

 

That is a stupid stance. By your standards, GMs shouldn't spawn because they rob resources from people in missions. You're full of it.

 

its a valid point when server resources are as limited as they are currently...

 

also thinking about it a GM is just one mob and anyone fighting it is in the sam instance so the resource overhead is minimal. It's the map servers and the way the AI works that's the resource issue so GMs or multiple mobs is no issue at all

[_NOPE_]

I feel like everyone reading this thread should also be aware of this fact:

Wait, so I'm confused. Is the AE server a separate piece of software/hardware?

 

The missionserver, as its called, is a separate piece of software that stores the mission data as created by players. It does use some resources, but that part is not a big deal. Once you start an AE mission, it's loaded in a mapserver, like any other mission. They are not treated any differently.

 

The problem is that players can build missions that are a lot more resource-intensive than normal missions from the game. When enemies spawn in normal missions, most of them have their AI in an "idle" state until they are aggroed, which doesn't require much processing power. But most AE farms rely heavily on ambushes or patrols, which spawn the critters with fully active AI. And that's the problem.

 

Missions are run on 9 servers with a total of 224 cores. For the most part you can run lots of zones and missions on a single core without a problem; but AE farms tend to max out a core all for themselves. If there's just 100 AE AI-intensive farms running, that eats half of the mapserver processing power for all 4 shards.

Farmers are not harmless. Farming actively robs resources from the other players.

 

That is a stupid stance. By your standards, GMs shouldn't spawn because they rob resources from people in missions. You're full of it.

 

its a valid point when server resources are as limited as they are currently...

 

also thinking about it a GM is just one mob and anyone fighting it is in the sam instance so the resource overhead is minimal. It's the map servers and the way the AI works that's the resource issue so GMs or multiple mobs is no issue at all

 

HEY! Venture! There's another name from the past. Are you the same Venture from the old forums that always had a Synapse avatar?

[Senkan]

I used to use Statesman in a Peregrine mission with a kinetic defender. Those where the days.

[Sanguinesun]

How easy is it to fix AE awarding influence/experience?

 

It isn't an issue of being defined as a fix.  Its a matter of simply inputting different numbers to award more(or less).

 

I think perhaps you are voicing frustration on AE having been turned down in its rewards/incentivization to use the AE system.

 

That was done to address the map server/server stability issues that were occurring with over use.

 

My impression is that the server team has inherently no issue with allowing people to use AE, even if it is just for incessant and constant leveling/power leveling.  After all, they've been implementing all manner of things to let people level and play as they wish and with much more freedom and choice.  The current restriction is simply to mitigate the issues of stability for the servers. 

 

So in the future if there happens to become a better option for them to improve/increase the stability to handle the demand(perhaps the move to the different host, though Im skeptical) then it is possible that they will revert that.  They've left the door open to the possibility of it changing back in the future.

 

 

[IthrynIncarn8]

I have no problem admitting to using farming on my first 50 since homecoming popped up. I tried levelling 'the normal way' as so many people suggest, and I was on some TERRIBLE teams. Like, REALLY terrible. When I realised that I could do it myself, and quite efficiently, I did. I wasn't using one of the ambush maps, so I did run into the aggro cap at times. I do still find it amusing when it happens: just ignore the explosion of flames and that charring smell- it doesn't concern you...

 

I understand that the server resources are limited (hopefully less so with the upcoming move), but I also saw Tempest's comments in discord which seemed very much opposed to ae farming at all. This is something that bothers me. If the server can't handle it-fine. If the devs want to dictate how people play- that does ruffle my feathers. Especially now that players are funding the servers.

 

I really hope that this can be smoothed over soon™, and look forward to having more options.

[Sanguinesun]

I have no problem admitting to using farming on my first 50 since homecoming popped up. I tried levelling 'the normal way' as so many people suggest, and I was on some TERRIBLE teams. Like, REALLY terrible. When I realised that I could do it myself, and quite efficiently, I did. I wasn't using one of the ambush maps, so I did run into the aggro cap at times. I do still find it amusing when it happens: just ignore the explosion of flames and that charring smell- it doesn't concern you...

 

I understand that the server resources are limited (hopefully less so with the upcoming move), but I also saw Tempest's comments in discord which seemed very much opposed to ae farming at all. This is something that bothers me. If the server can't handle it-fine. If the devs want to dictate how people play- that does ruffle my feathers. Especially now that players are funding the servers.

 

I really hope that this can be smoothed over soon™, and look forward to having more options.

 

That is disconcerting to read in regards to what you are stating in regards to Tempest's stance.  I do hope that is not truly the case. Outside of the stability issues, I'm not sure what is found to be threatening about AE or any sort of farming in this freedom centric iteration of the game except perhaps(and this is just a speculative assumption only mind you) that Tempest or others may be allowing the original game's subscription business model institutional thinking influence too much their stance.  *shrug*

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Ok people lets take off the rose tinted glasses and be honest. In year 1 most of the super groups that cameto be known later for their large ranks grew those ranks by offering PLs to max as part of the signing bonus as it where. Literally ever single major SG of Virtue for example that I had contact with did this.

 

This imo is why there is a disconnect. For those that struggled to cap a single character during year 1 those who PLd a stable of them represented a major flaw in game design favoring farmers and PLing over just playing to have fun.

 

For most of us by year 3 we could even solo casual level a toon to cap by the end of a month, faster if a double EP weekend was up. And ironically from what I recall alot of the hate on AE was coming from those large super groups that just lost their best reason to join them over starting their own character based or RL friend SGs.

 

However imo if you needed an AE farm then you just outed yourself as bad at the game. hit 10 do a posi, by the time its over your 15, run a synapse, 20 at its end go do some striga isle arcs and the 2 TFs there. now your lvl 40 and that is like a few weekend long play sessions. Now you can go flash back finish up some arcs, and hit 50 painlessly.

 

For me AE was always for making arcs related to my characters to run myself and with friends for the custom clues to expand our RP stories.

[Sanguinesun]

Ok people lets take off the rose tinted glasses and be honest. In year 1 most of the super groups that cameto be known later for their large ranks grew those ranks by offering PLs to max as part of the signing bonus as it where. Literally ever single major SG of Virtue for example that I had contact with did this.

 

This imo is why there is a disconnect. For those that struggled to cap a single character during year 1 those who PLd a stable of them represented a major flaw in game design favoring farmers and PLing over just playing to have fun.

 

For most of us by year 3 we could even solo casual level a toon to cap by the end of a month, faster if a double EP weekend was up. And ironically from what I recall alot of the hate on AE was coming from those large super groups that just lost their best reason to join them over starting their own character based or RL friend SGs.

 

However imo if you needed an AE farm then you just outed yourself as bad at the game. hit 10 do a posi, by the time its over your 15, run a synapse, 20 at its end go do some striga isle arcs and the 2 TFs there. now your lvl 40 and that is like a few weekend long play sessions. Now you can go flash back finish up some arcs, and hit 50 painlessly.

 

For me AE was always for making arcs related to my characters to run myself and with friends for the custom clues to expand our RP stories.

 

I recognize your desire to demean players with different choices as bad, I would say simply that it is perhaps more appropriate to simply say it is a different choice, just as the other choices you outlined concerning power leveling that others found to be valid in the past. Your suggested TF chaining is also equally valid in terms of being a method, but keep in mind it isn't necessarily a valid choice for everyone due to their interests, limitations, etc and thus shouldn't be looked at derisively either. 

[IthrynIncarn8]

Ok people lets take off the rose tinted glasses and be honest. In year 1 most of the super groups that cameto be known later for their large ranks grew those ranks by offering PLs to max as part of the signing bonus as it where. Literally ever single major SG of Virtue for example that I had contact with did this.

 

This imo is why there is a disconnect. For those that struggled to cap a single character during year 1 those who PLd a stable of them represented a major flaw in game design favoring farmers and PLing over just playing to have fun.

 

For most of us by year 3 we could even solo casual level a toon to cap by the end of a month, faster if a double EP weekend was up. And ironically from what I recall alot of the hate on AE was coming from those large super groups that just lost their best reason to join them over starting their own character based or RL friend SGs.

 

However imo if you needed an AE farm then you just outed yourself as bad at the game. hit 10 do a posi, by the time its over your 15, run a synapse, 20 at its end go do some striga isle arcs and the 2 TFs there. now your lvl 40 and that is like a few weekend long play sessions. Now you can go flash back finish up some arcs, and hit 50 painlessly.

 

For me AE was always for making arcs related to my characters to run myself and with friends for the custom clues to expand our RP stories.

 

For the record, I play redside- I don't have those options available to me.