Cobra_Man

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I've just did an MA mission, titled 'Get XP', which is an outdoor mission with Rikti Comms officers. It exists only to allow players to earn more xp than normal mobs - a pure farming mission. No story. No plot. Nothing except grinding out XP.

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I'm reminded of Mary Whitehouse deliberately watching "smut" on TV, just so she can write outraged letters of complaint to the BBC.

If farming offends you so much, why do a mission marked "get XP"? Why not go to the MA section of the forums, and look through the list of arcs advertised there?

However, I agree that the MA should have greatly reduced xp and inf. I was extremly suprised when they said mobs would give full rewards. I would happily make use of it for no reward at all. It is the best thing ever added to this game.

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Mary Whitehouse

I guess we're both showing our age PRAF

Nah .. I logged on and joined a team of friends who were already doing that mission. It's not one I would have picked through choice, and to be fair I think it was only picked to see what the deal was with it.

MA doesn't offend me at all. I think it's a great tool for the devs to use. I just think that if it's misused, it will spell big trouble for this game.

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The thing thats starting to bug me about MA is the fact the devs are now blocking any missions marked as a farm.



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The devs correctly understand that this game is adversley affected by excess farming.

For this reason they have been changing several aspects of the game and missions to prevent farming.

This makes it stranger still that they have given MA to us, which is tailor made for farming purposes.

I've just did an MA mission, titled 'Get XP', which is an outdoor mission with Rikti Comms officers. It exists only to allow players to earn more xp than normal mobs - a pure farming mission. No story. No plot. Nothing except grinding out XP.

I gave it a single star, but there are those that will give it 5, because it does what it says on the mission description - 'Get XP'.

MA needs to be pulled back in check.

Either remove xp and inf rewards or withdraw it altogether. To do neither will spell big trouble for this game.

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For me action equals reward.
For an example debt which you actually gain in the ma. Pay off x amount of debt equals badge.
A totally rewardless ma would make me stop using it.
There would be no carrot.
Some would still use it but not enough to warrant a whole issue dedicated to it.
Thus it would have been a waste of effort.

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Now you're seeing the bigger picture

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Also arguing realism in a super hero/villain game?

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It depends on what you class 'realism' as in any medium, be it movies, books, computer games etc.

For me realism can be interpreted as the reason that CoX has a plot, key characters, a city that has different named districts, or zones if you like.

If this game just had a selection of random arcs and missions that had nothing to do with each other, I would say it lacked realism.

Much the way MA does....

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So why is there a hospital in every ma building?

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It's a virtual hospital, which leads back to the realism aspect itself.

Prevoiusly if you were doing a real mission in places like The Hollows, Faultline, Creys Folly etc there is the real possibility that defeat will mean a long journey back to the mission, if no one can rez you.

Now - with MA - all you do is fall out of the virtual hospital, grab some inspirations and take the 4 or 5 steps to the hologram wall and you're back in the virtual mission within seconds.

Sometimes it even helps you to be defeated, so you can load up with inspirations for a difficult part of the mission.

Realism?

I don't think so.

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All in all the ma badges are weird. HoF arcs disappearing so people don't get credit, defeat badges.
I find hunting coralax in the hollows more fun than most of the badges.
Also virtual reality or not you take damage, you earn inf, you gain debt, you can mentor, you get mezzed and you heal.

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No you don't. Well we do earn inf, but that should be stopped as well, as should XP for MA missions.

It's simply a hologram virtual representation of CoX reality.

Badges and rewards should not be given for something that isn't real.

/unsigned.

No regular badges should ever be given for MA.

Doing an MA mission, you are not taking damage, or healing anyone. You're not defeating any mobs whatsover.

It's all simply a virtual reality representation, and deserves to be treated as such.

I'd go a step further and say that xp and inf should not be given for MA arcs/missions.

If it isn't real, no real rewards should be given. I mean the reason we are given influence in the first place is the recognition from the city that what we do in the real CoH universe (not VR MA) is making a difference for the good of the city.

Getting influence for carrying out a VR mission is ludicrous. Game breaking actually.

That would soon sort out the farmers from the people that just genuinely want to get involved in writing good arcs.

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MA is a sideshow. An amateur hour diversion, whilst we wait for the real CoX story to proceed in i15. Nothing else.

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To call it amateur hour when, to be honest, some of the writing I have seen in the MA is better than some of the dev stuff which appears quite weak of late is a bit rich.

And they can be fun, something else that seems to have been forgotten in Dev stories, canon or not.

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We're clearly playing different arcs then, although actually finding a good arc amongst the multitude of [censored] is a chore in itself.

I tried one called 'Death to Disco' last night. Calling it amateur hour was being kind to it.

It had 5 stars.....

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Agreed - both would be handy.

Even better would be if the QoL stuff got done between issues.

But if Issue 15 is just QoL stuff, then there will be a lot of people seriously considering their subscriptions (My latest one will be up around June and I'm already considering shifting it from 6 monthly to monthly, just in case one of the other MMOs grabs my attention).

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Agreed.

As it stands right now, with the utter disappointment of i14, I'm 90% certain to leave this game and go to CO when it comes out.

It will take a monumental i15, that is full of features, content, new powers, new zones, GFX upgrade etc to even bring that percentage back to 50%.

In fact I'm even resigned to the fact that if the CO release is pushed back, or it turns out to be poor, I'll just take my leave of CoX anyway - if i15 turns out to be anything less than I've described above.

I've played this game exclusively for three and a half years - with great enjoyment - so I'm not saying that lightly.

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Some of the stories in MA will rival or exceed the devs official output - that's inevitable. It's sad that many can attack or ignore them merely over the fact that they're non-canon. To some extent: So what?

A good story is a good story.

And many do try to stay within the bounds of established canon, and so are practically canon. If a story is good (or even great) and you'd accept it without blinking an eye if the devs had done it as part of I15s content then what does it matter that it's been done by a player as part of MA content? Heck - if the player is consistently writing arcs of great quality that stick to canon they might even become a dev one day...


But criticising potential stories purely due to being created by someone not employed by Paragon Studios is ridiculous.

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Player generated arcs are not game canon. They form no part of the CoX storyline.

I keep banging on about this, but it's quite simply true.

MA is a sideshow. An amateur hour diversion, whilst we wait for the real CoX story to proceed in i15. Nothing else.

Worse still as time passes there wil be so many farm and ego arcs, that finding an arc that might be fun to pass the time will be very difficult indeed.

If a player is consistently writing MA arcs to a high standard they may well catch the eye of the devs and get hired by PS. That would be a nice story indeed.

Me, I just want the devs to get on with the plot.

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You think he's just sitting there with his feet up, smoking an enormous cigar and pressing F5 every few hours or so?

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Who knows?

The lack of information was poor to say the least.

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Also, I think people should think about the size of the current dev team - a 15 person team gave us Faultline and the RWZ - the team is now three times bigger, so either NCSoft have decided to generously help out with the unemployment situation in America, or these extra 30 or so added to the team are actually working on something pretty big

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All well and good GG, but if the new 'big' content isn't in i15, I'll speculate that a large proportion of the playerbase will leave for CO.

The devs need to respond to the competition - it's as simple as that.

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ty - i did that and i hit 20 in like an hour or two (:

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Have any fun doing it?

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Yup, it was very fun actully Grouping with higher level players and joining a convo with them was very fun

And whoever asked if i used MA? to do it. Im new not sure what MA stands for but i went to the building where you do created missions - and got a team there!

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So how long did it take you to go from level 1 to 20 on your new scrapper?

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Welcome to the forums Confuser!

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Confuser joined the forums in 2006 first post better late than never to welcome i guess i joined in 2005 and still have only 39 post's and that mainly due to big CoX up's

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I read the forums but very rarely post..most of my posts are during downtime too...

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I see a putty tat .. erm a Kitty I mean

Hi mate

I'm going to go with the OP on this one.

For me, Mercy is designed all wrong. The enclosed part should have been slightly larger and in the center of the island, with extended parts going to the ferry. This where villains should start out from.

It should have had some form of open area for villains to congregate, with some missions being set outside the walls - as they are now.

I don't think there is any way that it will get changed, but I've always been curious about the odd design of Mercy.

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Ran into a custome group of Psi/Psi EBs a little while ago. That encounter went... quickly.

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I ran an MA arc, when I was checking the system out.

Nerva map full of MM Merc EB's only

I would imagine there's a lot of this type of dross on MA by now.

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I'll stick to my general chirpy optimism and say Issue 15 will be one to bring many wanted additions, and hopefully some of these graphical updates, no matter how minor. But until then, I'll stay away from the forums full of moaning and whining from the people who should take the hint already.

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It's hardly moaning and whining now is it?

The criticism levelled at i14 has been constructive in nature on the whole.

If I were to say that I hate this game and it sucks, then would be moaning and whining but I'm not. I'm simply concerned about the game. I've been playing it for a long time - without playing any other game - and I have lots of friends in the game.

The same thing can be said for many people that play CoX.

Most of my friends are basically looking at CO as an alternative to CoX. An alternative with many features that CoX doesn't have right now.

What I'm saying is that the CoX devs need to get the finger out and give this game an overhaul and IMHO i14 wasn't helping things at all.

MA is a terrific tool for the devs to use . It will allow them to produce quality arcs/missions/mobs etc. Giving it to the players was an error IMHO.

We need to see this quality, along with the long time rumoured GFX upgrade - and soon - or CO will take a sizeable section of the playerbase away from us.

There you go. Constructive criticism, not whining

Was it MA you used to level so quickly?

Make a new character and form a team of 7-8 people, or get yourself an invite to a large team.

Do normal missions and you wil level quickly through the lower levels.

I normally go from 1-6 in Atlas, then head to Kings Row and get both temp travel powers between lev 6-11. Depending on the mood of the team it can also involve a romp through the Hollows as well

After that it's on to Steel Canyon, Faultline or Skyway - or a mix of the 3. Keep the team size large and you'll be 20 before you know it

Farming is not the answer.

I've always though of Recluse as a Dr Doom type character.

He does what he does because he thinks it's right - regardless of the consequences for others.

^^^

Very well said indeed ML.

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We knew that I14 was going to be Architect. I'm surprised and amazed that people are complaining that the developers didn't include story content that wouldn't fit the theme of the issue.

[/ QUOTE ]I remember the Posi interview stating that "Mission Architect could stand on its own" and the uproar that followed, most of it was centered on how it shouldn't be the only thing about i14. Is it really a surprise that people are complaining about it again?

It couldn't have taken the entire dev team to create the tool so what I'm hoping is that it means they've been working deviously on i15, keeping it almost ready for months.

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Well said.

This, along with the fact that MA arcs are not part of the game canon, are the problems I have with i14.

To add in nothing else and then punt out a few cossies and a temp for £4.99 is ludicrous.

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My bet?

We won't see I-15 going live in less then 6 months.There will be stuff in it that I didn't expect and I am sure not the things we expect to be in it.

I also expect a new system to farm. They brought us:
The normal inf farms, the badge farm, the rare IO and salvage farms, the vanguard merits farms, the merits farms and now the ticket farms. There will be a new one in 1-15 or I-16 at the latest.

I know this sounds a bit gloomy and doomy but this way I can be pleasantly surprised.

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If you're correct about the 6 months, or even close to it, it will spell big trouble for this game.

I want it to continue to be successful, but in order to do that the devs need to move quickly and get some real content out to us - not amateur, virtual reality farm arcs/missions.

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Poptart .. You seem to be acting deliberately dense in your responses.

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Figured I'd speak to you guys on your level. Would be unfair otherwise.

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The rest of your post is peculiar. No one - except farmers - want 'UBER L33T ARC 12' or anything like it. I didn't say that and neither did ML, indeed the general consensus on these boards is that farming missions are bad for the game.

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Congratulations, immediatly after accusing me of acting dense you make a remark that fits 'dense' to a T. If you'd bothered to read the essence of my argument, rather than getting worked up over the title of an imaginary example arc, you'd realise what I was saying: new content is new content. You and Mother dismissing it and claiming it's lazy - simply because it isn't canon - is a ridiculous way of lambasting new story arcs. That's the only complaint you two have brought up against the system.

Again, if the only difference in a story arc that matters to you is who writes it, then that says more about your standards than it does the developers. I mentioned nothing about farming.

Constantly banging on about canon doesn't change the fundamental argument. Just shows your record player's broken.

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You were obviously still doing your dense act, so I'll let you off with that oversight

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I can switch away from my act any time (not that I would: seeing Londoner wet his little panties is hilarious), but you're going to struggle to break away from the genuine tract of ignorance you've been clinging to.

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Hmmm

Call it clinging or banging on about canon all you like. It will never change the fact that every MA arc is not game canon - unless the devs make it so by including it in the game itself.

There is simply no other way of getting around that.

Yup I'm complaining about i14 because of this. As issues go it was a non entity - as far as game canon goes - and if players are not into i14 it had even less to offer.

I did notice however that one of my friends had his MA arc pulled by the devs, because they said it encouraged farming

I guess that puts the game canon argument to rest.

I can see a whole lot of other arcs getting pulled - after players have spent a lot of time writing them. The farming ones deserve it but there will be arcs that aren't meant to be farms which will get pulled as well.

I'm just waiting on the backlash from it to happen. When it does you can be sure we'll hear about it

I can see what you're getting at Chilli.

In almost every comic book scenario the heroes and villains operate in the same city, New York, Metropolis, Gotham etc.

In an ideal situation I would love to have my heroes carry out missions in the Rogue Isles and villains in Paragon City.

The problem is PvP. Open PvP, flaggable/opt in-out PvP simply won't work in this game.

Open PvP is simply a non starter. It's too late for this game to have this. If CoX and CoV had started together it may have been possible but not now.

Flaggable PvP or opt in/out PvP is also pretty much a non starter. The harrassment, trash talking, chicken emotes etc would ruin the game for far too many people.

It would take a very complex method to allow opposite faction characters to opearate inside non instanced zones, and even then it would still have to have the capacity of some form of limited open PvP to work - which is the problem.

If such a system became available I would jump at the chance to go to the Rogue Isles with my heroes, but I just can't see it happening in this game's lifetime to be quite honest.

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There's no 'might' about it. MA arcs/missions are not game canon. If you're not sure what that means, go and look it up.


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Tough. Mother's argument is still petty - the demand is for new content, gets it, yet starts whinging because it isn't developer made.

That's the only distinction that people are getting hooked on, and it's hilariously weak. Or would UBER L33T ARC 12 really be different simply because War Witch put her name on it, instead of @W4R W1TCH? Oh, and the developers have stated well written arcs can make their way into the canon. So bang goes that side of the coin.

/edit - Hell, actually, I'd damn well put money on the argument going from "they're not canon" to "they're just the same old things " if the MA arcs had been published by developers. Nor Cal wouldn't be able to win, they really wouldn't.

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No that analogy would only work if (insert obscure reason about bread here) ....

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I'm sorry, I can't see your post past this shattered spleen I have.

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Poptart .. You seem to be acting deliberately dense in your responses. If it's an act, then I apologise but you're good at it if it is

First off I fixed the mistake you made in quoting me. If there was a way to have player generated arcs made as game canon, I would be all for it.

Right now they aren't, although I am aware that the devs have said that some arcs may be considered for a shift from a virtual setting to CoX game reality. I believe I said that earlier today as well.

The rest of your post is peculiar. No one - except farmers - want 'UBER L33T ARC 12' or anything like it. I didn't say that and neither did ML, indeed the general consensus on these boards is that farming missions are bad for the game.

We've had months of the devs tweaking farmable missions, to make them less so, yet ... here we have MA, which appears to be tailor made for farmers.

Now as for the game canon topic, it's really quite simple. If it occurs in the CoX dev written Universe, then it's game canon. Personally I follow the game story and plots as carefully as I can. I don't just grind my way to 50's over and over again.

The story matters to me. The fact that MA isn't part of the game canon is an issue for me - there's no getting around it. I like to immerse myself in this game - without going as far as RP, and MA just doesn't cater for that.

GR has come out and said that MA is newly developed and we are getting it around the same time as the devs are.

Given this I would imagine that the devs are busy working away to create a whole raft of new and interesting arcs/missions/mobs and perhaps zones for us to play - which are part of game canon.

We've seen how quickly some players can generate decent arcs and missions, so when i15 hits I can't think of any excuse for a wealth of new content.

Can you?

Last thing .. Londoner was responding to your really witty post,

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Your analogy would only work if you said the Coca Cola company wasn't adding fanta to its coke bottles...

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You were obviously still doing your dense act, so I'll let you off with that oversight