Dispari

That worked so well for SWG.

I saw it mentioned, was just curious if you had any ideas.

You've been able to use standard mobs like Council, Hellions, Malta, Arachnos, or Tsoo (and all the others) with full rewards in AE since day one. No change or nerf to the AE has impacted that and made legitimate leveling in AE harder to people who are playing by the rules and creating missions that are on-par with regular content.

There were two things that happened that impacted regular spawn exp a little. One was changing Freakshow exp which impacted AE and non-AE alike -- Freaks have always given a disproportionate amount of exp for their ease. The other was reducing the exp of Com Officers, since they have always been minions that give lieutenant exp.

Really, as solid as this sounds, there are a lot of things standing in the way of them cleaning up farms and such.

There are over 3000 of them. They can't do it in an automated fashion. There are keywords that can be applied to real things. Someone might have an arc about catgirls, or it might say "this arc gives really low XP," or even be a joke arc about farmers.

They can't do it manually because, well, they'd have to play over 3000 arcs to make sure they aren't legit. And people are posting new farms and things constantly. I'd much rather they spent their time doing something else, even if it's an intern.

They can't start banning people for petty or minor farms, especially stuff that no longer works like meow or bubble farms. For one, we've always worked under the theory that the devs accept regular farming (maybe not happily, but accept), just not exploits. As soon as an intern or the Indian outsource guys start cranking away at these, they'll find something that's kiiiiinda borderline and then we'll have rage threads the likes of which we haven't seen since the last time they punished people for exploiting the AE.

Really the devs can't win on that one. Best bet is to chug through it and report all those old farms clogging up the system yourself and get the team to pay attention to them. Of course, in the end that still means they'd have to play through the 3000 or so arcs to get them taken down. So it's pretty much a wash.

It's not so much that they can't find them. They're just as capable as we are. But they know that if there's anything we FREAKING LOVE to complain about on the forums, it's that the devs are wasting their time doing something when we'd rather they be doing something else (even if it's not even in their department).

That would/could work for things like +DEF, -DEF, +RES, -RES, +DMG, -DMG, +ToHit, -ToHit... what about things like -recharge, -speed, or mezzes? You could easily make a Mind/Plant pet that spams confuses and holds while doing no damage. Or knockdowns through Ice Slick. Or an arch-villain that just stands around with Choking Cloud or Oppressive Gloom on.

My original suggestion was that any critter who has powers that aren't damage-centric, that is any buff or debuff, reduces exp by a certain amount. An all forcefield helper wouldn't do any damage, but also neither would a dark miasma helper. But both of them are making your job easier, and by the rules of the new patch, not reducing your exp any unless you have more than one. I can't even begin to pretend I know what numbers to suggest, but I do know that any power that does damage is taking away experience already. So any power that's not just an attack (even if it does weak damage like Flashfire), should be reducing your exp gain in some fashion.

A pet that's MA/AR is taking away exp by doing damage. A pet that's X/FF should take away exp because it's buffing you. And a pet that's X/Rad should take away exp because it's debuffing for you. ALL pets should take away some amount of experience, not just select ones or select powers. Basing it only on damage dealt or number of pets is easy to exploit.

That, but also I'd rather see a more elegant approach to the system. One that actually considers what each pet is doing. The issue, I believe, is that pets who actually attack are taking their share of experience while pets who buff aren't. Pets who buff should get a special trigger to take an amount of experience off the top, whether you only have one of them or 20 of them.

The current "you're limited to X number of pets" enforces a DOUBLE penalty for offensive pets, and doesn't do anything against a small number of buffing pets. In my opinion, that does nothing to stop farmers from using buffbots (in fact, I believe it encourages them to use at least one), but causes a ton of collateral damage to legitimate missionmakers.

I'm happy about bugs and exploits getting changed, but not when it leaks over and affects legitimate missions in a big way. This one is pretty severe on that. I don't have a single arc this won't affect. And none of those have buffbots.

I checked, and almost every good arc out there has some condition that will be met by this change and cause a reduction in experience. Almost every Dev Choice, Guest Author, Hall of Fame, or 5-star arc has a couple allies, rescues, or hostages of some sort.

The looming restriction placed on editors now because of this change prevents us from using about half of the objectives. Pretty much the only safe thing we can do now is make nothing but missions where you only fight badguys.

Build a small cottage there.

I don't like this solution because it doesn't solve the actual problem. It doesn't make an attempt to take into consideration what the pets are actually doing.

The issue is, you can make pets of varying helpfulness with an almost inversely proportional amount of experience loss. If you make a unit that's range/range, he takes all the exp he does damage with. If you however make a unit that's debuff/buff (this is possible with a primary like Earth Control doing the debuffing), he does no damage, makes everything easier for you, and takes no experience with him.

This patch is making an attempt at fixing that in completely the wrong way. It's imposing a tax on the NUMBER of allies without caring one bit what they actually do. This is like paying your employees based on how many of them there are and not, like, actually what they do or how good they are at it. Even now it's unbalanced. Take for instance:

* Scenario 1: You have only one ally, so there's no experience tax. Your one ally is range/melee. He takes experience away from you by dealing damage.

* Scenario 2: You have only one ally, so there's no experience tax. Your one ally is debuff/buff. He takes NO experience away from you, but makes your job far easier.

* Scenario 3: You have five allies, so there is significant experience tax. All your allies are range/melee. They take even more experience away from you by dealing damage.

* Scenario 4: You have five allies, so there is significant experience tax. All your allies are debuff/buff. They take no additional experience away from you, and your job is insanely easy.

Why would you take a pet that reduces your exp when you could have one that makes your job easier and doesn't touch your exp? Or even better, why have no pets at all when you could have a debuff/buff pet along with you?

The proper way to handle this is to make it so pets that are contributing in a way other than dealing damage are still subject to an experience tax. Right now, that's not happening. You just get a tax based on how many pets you have. Your suggestion would only allow a different number of acceptable buffing allies that reduce risk for no change in reward.

My suggestion? Every ally that has a buff or debuff gives -10% exp per buff or debuff. The number of pets doesn't matter. Their non-buff/debuff powers don't matter (they're taking exp away when they deal damage anyway). So for instance, you have the following scenarios again:

* Scenario 1: You have only one ally, and he has no buffs/debuffs, so there's no experience tax. Your one ally is range/melee. He takes experience away from you by dealing damage.

* Scenario 2: You have only one ally, he's debuff/buff and has 2 helpful powers (Quicksand and Dispersion Bubble) so there's an experience tax of -20%. He takes no additional exp away through attacking.

* Scenario 3: You have five allies, and they have no buffs/debuffs, so there is no experience tax. They take experience away only from dealing damage.

* Scenario 4: You have five allies, and they all have debuffs/buffs, so there is significant experience tax. They take no additional experience away from you by attacking, but your job is insanely easy, and as a result you're getting little to no experience at all.

That's not what it's doing though.

Right now you can have a buffing/debuffing ally who mezzes and debuffs enemies while making you harder to kill. Far less risk, same reward.

Or you can have PPD battling Arachnos as an event somewhere in the map. And as a result get -60% exp for the entire mission. No less risk, far less reward.

An army of pets applying -300% RES to enemies while keeping them from doing any harm to you whatsoever, regardless of your AT, level, or power combination doesn't speed up farming?

And making farming far more accessible is just as bad as making farming faster anyway.

Do you farm on toons who are soft capped, RES capped, immune to slows, and ALL status effects, and fight enemies who are -ToHit floored, -DEF floored, -RES floored, -recharge floored, held, confused, and stunned? Because you could if you were using the right pets.

Then you were doing it wrong. Toggles are always on, and offensive debuffs are always used. Give the buffbots Dispersion Bubble or Sonic Dispersion and you have pets following you that ALWAYS grant DEF/RES and ALWAYS stack. All it takes is a couple FF users and you're soft-capped. You don't need them to cast individual buffs when they have toggles that are always on. Things like Quicksand and AoE mezzes work just fine too.

The issue is this change pretty much gives people permission to have an Earth/FF pet in every farm mission they make, while making it easier and not impacting the exp any. But it simultaneously breaks legitimate missions.

I would say that the exp drop happens based on the powers the pets have. If they have all offensive or self-defense powers, no reduction, no matter how many you have. But you start getting reductions the more buffs/debuffs they have. Even if you only have one. That would be the right way to do it.

This collateral damage is the issue I have with the change. It fixes the buffbot exploit but it also screws up hundreds, probably thousands of legitimate arcs that use regular allies in order to tell a story.

It also shouldn't impact if the pets have no buffs/debuffs. If you have a pet that's using Fire Blast and Fire Melee, he's already taking your experience. There's no need to take away even more experience simply because he's a pet. He's not doing for you what a Forcefield pet is doing. The only way he can contribute and make things easier for you is also already taking away experience as payment for his assistance. Pets that only have offensive or self-defense powers shouldn't factor into this new system.

I'm glad you brought this up. Here's a list of missions that will now give reduced, if not zero experience for at least one mission:

Relativity Be Damned - ID 177370
Tomorrow Belongs to Me - ID 10855
[ZQ] The Once and Future King - ID 71601
Batteries Included - ID 193760
An Internship in the Fine Arts of Revenge - Best Villain Arc '09 - ID 255146
Pandas vs. Rikti - ID 68930
Ctrl + Alt + Reset - ID 137561
Blight - Best Villain Group '09 - ID 140423
How to Save a Convention - ID 336241
Astoria in D Minor - ID 41565
Tales of Croatoa: A Rose By Any Other Name - Best In-Canon Arc '09 - ID 178774
Two Tickets to Westerly - ID 374002
Out of Place - ID 350577
A Penny For Your Thoughts - ID 348691
A Mythos of Mystical Mysteries - ID 84285
Purification - ID 352381
A Heart Breaking Story - ID 378511

What do all these have in common? They all have allies which will start killing the experience of the missions. They're also all Dev's Choice Arcs.

I didn't even go over Guest Author or Hall of Fame. And in case you're curious, there are only 2 DCs that don't have allies (although it's still possible they have allied gangs as patrols, battles, or bosses).

Nobody using allies that only attack was exploiting.

Pets who attack and deal damage already steal experience from you via killsteal code. Now they steal additional experience just by existing. Nobody was exploiting by running farms full of guys who are killing enemies for you, thus taking all of the experience and inf for themselves. The exploit was for having tons of allied buffers. The fix should only cover allied buffers.

Now simple things like having along an ally who only attacks will steal all of your experience. Having a battle between two groups where one is set to ally (Longbow, PPD, etc) will steal your experience. In fact, setting anything anywhere in the entire system to "ally" will steal all of your experience.

It's not just fixing the exploit of having along 6 pets who have you RES/DEF capped with FF and Sonic Dispersion, this change impacts every single arc who has an allied unit of any kind anywhere in any mission whatsoever. Which, having played through a ton of AE arcs, is damn near all of them.

Let me think. Since it apparently also counts any units placed with the "ally" flag even if they aren't following you, of my arcs:

David and Goliath: There are no actual allies that follow you, but two or three of the missions include allied police officers fighting Trolls, which will cut the exp to probably zero for half the arc.

My Date With a Celebrity: This is a joke arc with very little combat. But the little combat there was will now be zero because there are a lot of allied patrols and "ally" bosses that stand around just so you can hear people talking and be made fun of.

Nocturnal: A new arc I'm working on that has up two two allies that regularly frequent the missions; neither buffs or heals, they're attack/attack. One mission has 3 extra allies who are weak (and none of which buff or heal) who betray you later. That means that mission has 5 allies who will be eating your exp. So the "optional ally who betrays you later" is no longer an option. Also, one mission has an allied boss fight so that they talk to you when you come in. They don't actually contribute much and if they did they'd already be stealing your exp. Now they steal your exp for simply existing.

Please reconsider doing this change so it only applies to units who buff/debuff, and not allied stationary spawns whatsoever. Units who only attack are already stealing your exp. There's no need to also eat up experience based on them simply existing.

Yeah, but that locks you into resummoning it every minute, and it costs a ridiculous amount of endurance. I have it on my Dom and I just get tired of resummoning it and using up that endurance.

Hm, this kinda throws off an arc I was working on that has a few weak allies (5 total, none with buffs of any sort) and three of them betray you later...