Chase_Arcanum

No, farming predates instanced missions. That's just how some started using it here. In earlier non-instanced situations, it had to be sedentary, optimized for reward, and minimized for risk

I agree.

How many people actually LOST their toons when that went through?

I'm honestly asking. A prolonged illness and death in the family made me miss most of the past 4 months of online drama.

Usually, when you encounter something as ambiguous as drawing the line between natural min/maxing and exploiting, there's a WIDE gray area. That gray area is where a Dev/GM would consider it bad enough to be breaking the system but a reasonable person may not think that he's pushed the boundaries too far. The best practice is to penalize the "black" cases but let "gray" go with a warning or much lesser punishments. It lets them better understand where the threshold lies without alienating them too far.

The devs did warn that they'd be datamining to find and respond to "abuses of the system" and that's a phrase that's necessarily vague (otherwise rules lawyers just skirt around it).

If they came down too heavily in the "gray area," that's a failure in execution.

...or establish a proportionate punitive element to deter people from taking said action... and request volunteers to report incidents they encounter so that responses to these problems have higher celerity and certainty.

Seems that's what the devs have done, and as the game developers, they've got the right to establish the rules- both through programming and through more traditional methods.

Don't feel too bad. You're halfway there!

A better idea would be to keep it insanely high, but turned off. Wait for the idiots to make some reputation comment. Then turn it on, blow them away, and say, "all the cool kids just keep it turned off, noob."

You do realize, of course, that a CoH version of that song wouldn't be accurate without Lady_Athyna featured prominently.

Or, if you're an oldtimer like me, you wonder how people forgot the original meaning of "farm" and took it to such ridiculous extremes.

"Farming" arose to describe a certain emerging style of play that focused on a carefully "cultivated" experience- one that maximized reward (whatever reward you were seeking) minimized risk, and narrowed the experience of the game to a very small location. ITF repeats certainly narrows the experience of the game to a small location, but I don't see it min/maxing reward.

What's happened is that people have taken to using the damn word when only a few of those characteristics are in play, making every idiot thing you do once you log in likely to be a "farm."

Come on people, if farming was that broadly defined, we wouldn't have needed to make up a word for it!

You'd be surprised how many times I've heard that phrase from rum-soaked friends... though not (I think...) about Samuraiko/Dark_Respite.

Still, I gotta agree. Dark Respite needs to do those videos.
Devs, make it so.

Oh, and to prevent this thread from appearing like a petition, I'd better thinly disguise this as a conversation... let's see... the thread topics so far seem to be Dark Respite, videos, deep decidedly-wrong needs, and rum. My wife reads the boards, so I'll omit the "needs..."

So... what rum goes best with Dark Respite's videos?

...which we absolutely must have... in case it hasn't been made perfectly clear yet...

Well, while "extremist insurgent" are both generic words, they've been adopted and made popular in the reporting of one particular ongoing and politically-charged military campaign. (It was a wording carefully chosen by the coalition forces to stress that these were a political fringe (extremist) and that the emerging government was not at a state of civil war as "rebel" might suggest.) Because of that, it's a term that can carry great controversial weight among some- particularly those who have very recently lost friends or family or seen close ones return irrevocably changed. A GM might have decided that the political and emotional weight associated with the current RL use of the phrase warranted removing it from the game.

Not saying I agree with the rationale, and I'd suggest you appeal it so others can decide if it was truly warranted, but I can see where their concern may lie.

I think the devs have, in the context of their posts, demonstrated that they're using the 'old schooler's farm definition as I had. In the totality of their posts and their actions, they've regularly associated "farm" with exploit behavior... and I really haven't seen them use "farm" much in "innocent" context.

This doesn't mean that the devs see "all farming as exploit." I think it means that many of them don't see much of what you call farming as "farming."

Honestly, I posted my conspiracy theory type thoughts... now another more realistic one struck me.

A new UI right up front with plenty of (untested) back-end functionality.

Plenty of room for bugs, memory leaks, and scaling issues that could affect the server as well as the client. That's probably something you want CONTROLLED access to. You have to manage the risk until you're sure it's ready.

If this was a single-player game, that'd be fine, but your actions affect others here... and when the actions in question have already been flagged as undesirable by the devs, it makes others feel more justified in addressing them.

Granted, I think even the devs weren't talking about "farms" in the loose terms. They were talking about the farms that border on- or extend into- exploit territory (see my definition)

I'll also grant that farms in this game have LESS of an impact than they do in other games. Zone-based farms have in past games blocked quest completion for DAYS for players, particularly for "named" spawns. That doesn't happen here. We're affected only by the rampant inflation that influence farming dumps on the market, or the gimping of a fun mission because some idiots constantly reset it to reap the reward again and again.

And finally, we're affected by the dev resources wasted chasing down those problems... and that's the one thing that we realize we have any way to mitigate. When we report RESPONSIBLY (not hair-trigger report-happy) we help the devs find the problem content faster.

Some argue that our reporting just swamps the devs, making it harder, not easier. I disagree. The devs actively requested we report... and if they were being flooded with too many "false positives" they could just as easily post and warn us to be more discriminating in our reporting...

And for the record, I was offline for the worst of the AE Farm issues, so I've never had to report a farming mission. Ever.

Beat me to it, so I'll share this one:

Sometimes overcensorship can really make a message much worse than just letting the minor offense through..

What is a Farm?

Well, I don't accept that it's just "Farming is going to do a mission or missions with the explicit purpose of getting loot drops, recipes, or money" as one of the early posters suggested.

That's just playing the game with a set objective. There was a word for that already, so a "farm" has to be something different... at least when it originated. Thus, my current working modification of that first post:

"Farming is going to do PREDICTABLE activity with the explicit purpose of getting loot drops, recipes, or money at an OPTIMAL RATE."

PREDICTABLE: It can be the same mission over and over, harvesting the same neighborhood in a one, or running the same set of AE missions. The point is, you've narrowed your focus to a very small subset of the game.

OPTIMAL RATE: Most of us min/max to one degree or another. At some point, when we over-optimize, we've so skewered the reward-to-risk ratio that it becomes an exploit, but not all optimizing is exploitative. Some of it is just smart play.


--- Now, some backstory ---

It started with "Hunting"

Back in the old days, "playing the game with a set objective." was just called "hunting." It was perfectly acceptable and actually the behavior anticipated by the developers. The term was so synonymous with "playing the game" that it wasn't even spoken.

The patterns appear
Then people started identifying "spawn points" and started focusing on them. This wasn't enough to stop calling it a hunt, though. Good hunters know where their prey can be found.

Something else happened that led people to need a new term. Something to distinguish "hunters" from... those other people.

Down on the Farm
So, what changed?
While, like most things, it was more of a slide. An evolution of sorts.

First, there's the degree of magnitude. A "hunter" knows where prey may be found, but if the prey isn't there, he usually doesn't sit there waiting for a respawn. Maybe a minute or two, but otherwise he's off looking for other prey elsewhere. A "farmer" settles down and just cultivates that one piece of land (or mission... or pattern of missions). Over and over.

Selecting one different "Hellions" mission after another would just be a hunter like a hunter moving from spawn to spawn. Selecting the same hellions mission and resetting it constantly... that was 'settling down' and farming.

Second, there's a degree of optimization. People like rewards. We naturally gravitate to the most rewarding activities. That's natural. We also try to mitigate risks... that's natural too. "Hunters" and "farmers" both do it. The hunter, by the nature of not being settled down, though, is open to unexpected risk. The farmer has mitigated those risks... sometimes to the point of exploiting the system.

The Exploit

You're going to encounter an exploit sooner or later. While hunting, the impact is limited: as you complete that mission and move on to another, that exploit is behind you. You might never even recognize it as an exploit. It was just a particularly rewarding single encounter. Since it isn't over-done, the overall impact to the game is minimal.

A farmer, though, hearing of fertile soil, may seek it out and find it's a very nice place to settle down, reaping the benefit of the grossly imbalanced risk:reward ratio of that site for all it's worth... until a dev comes in and busts the farm.

Not all farms are exploits, but this tendency caused many "hunters" to associate "farm" with "exploit."

Finally, the Decline of Hunt
The hunt still happens, don't get me wrong... but the term has fallen out of use. Instead of "Go Hunt, Kill Skuls" people now "Farm Skuls" I guess. The action's the same, but as the "farm" took on a larger meaning, the "hunt" has been marginalized.

There are many reasons for this. I think part of it lies in the social nature of the farm. The best farms give the best rewards with certain team builds, so there were more team advertising, thus more calls for "farms." Now, many focused group activities are just called "farm" regardless of whether they're "settled" to the point of predictability or "Optimized" much at all.

And that leaves us old codgers pounding our canes on the floor and cursing, "Dangnabbit, that ain't a farm!"

I know how you feel and what I do isn't NEARLY as time consuming as what I imagine making a video would be.

I still have draft copies my incomplete guide comics on my desktop. I still have a whiteboard with my brainstorming from ISSUE 11. Combine that with my limited play time, particularly with time lost to make the guides made me a very bad tester for closed beta.... (I Never DID do the Imperius Task force, despite having to write about it and use the costume), and my work just hit crunch time.

Yet... the draw is there... the temptation. The "eureka" moments where I suddenly know exactly what I want to do for a scene in every painful demoediting detail... The madness.

My wife has learned to recognize the "I just thought of another insane idea" look by now, but she's still uncertain whether to brew another coffee and encourage it or cut me off, hide the cats, and lock the doors.

You know it's bad for you.
You're trying to behave.
Yet at some level you want another trip down the rabbit hole.
I know I do...

So, do I support your smart decision NOT to do one or prod you on to chase the white hare?

<.<
>.>
: looks at the "drink me" potion in his own hand.


Umm... You first?

: poke.
I dare ya.

Right. That was what I was trying to Illustrate.

To many old-schoolers, a "farm" is inherently negative. For a very long time it was something that ONLY applies to the MISUSE or abuse of the system. Over time, it's been adopted by many more to have a much broader meaning by others... doing things that we'd possibly call a grind or a hunt, but not a farm.

-------

The point: if someone's so shocked that a person would brag about "griefing" something as innocent as a farm (in the casual sense)... maybe don't jump to the conclusion that he's using the term in the same way as you.

And before I jump on people that would defend doing something that's so BLATANTLY an exploit, maybe I should see if they're using the same lexicon that I am.

Tried to leave "knock knock" but apparently I have to spread the love around before leaving you any more rep...

I think you're safe. That's the case when you have to develop separate codebases for the products. City of Heroes uses Transgaming's CIDER tech, so while the initial setup for CIDER took some investment, future releases should be virtually seamless.

Nah, I've had the rep meter off since day one, but I still get reputation comments and a nice numeric value of my current rep.... If I bother to look.

Honestly, I can understand why.
Not animations or effects. Powersets.

1) Powersets change drastically in Closed Beta... and IIRC, during the FIRST powerset proliferation instance, people were reading the stats, reposting them for others as if they were set in stone, then rioting when it all changed before they got in the beta.

2) Powerset descriptions probably haven't been fully fleshed out. There's probably a lot of placeholder text & draft junk. I16 is a shot across the bow of another soon-to-be-competitor and SOME people are going to make comparisons. It is best not let those comparisons be made when you're still working on the material.

Hmm... well, when they expand to friend's roomate's cousin's spouse's second cousin, I might know someone that can get in!

What is tat and where can I exchange it for the good stuff?