Kitsune9tails

I don't think anyone is saying that the MA critters are not tougher. But I think it is possible that the lack of travel/hospital/fluff time may be beleived by the Devs to balance some of the increased toughness. After all, they want to keep the xp/hour within some min/max range, and you would gain xp faster than otherwise with the MA setup if the critters were not tougher.

Critters that were only as tough as regular PvE critters in the MA would give less xp, or you would have to move the store and hospital out of the MA building and possibly increase the amount of time it takes to get into and out of the datastream.

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One things the devs promised early on was that they were adding a lot of datamining tools so that they could find and punish people who did this. I haven't heard anything about that since the system went live, though. If they are punishing people for ratings griefing, they are doing it very quietly.

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If they are punishing anybody for ANY exploits or abuse in Mission Architect, they're doing it far too quietly. They're leaving people with the impression that they were bluffing.

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It is currently NCSoft policy not to discuss the punishment of any specific player with any other players. There could be mass bannings and you'd never know until you read about it in the papers.

The problem is not that your SG mate wants to control what you do, IMHO. He wants to have what you have. He'll get there eventually, but he also wants to get to where you are much faster than he already is.

From the (projected) Dev point of view, it is likely that he is under the Speed Limit, whereas you may be over it. If you are over it, they are more likely to slow you down than speed him up. In any case, raising the Speed Limit does not help him or them.

I don't care if people farm, so long as:

1) It doesn't kill the game via burnout, jealousy or boredom.
2) The farmers enjoy it (see number one).
3) The nonfarmers are not affected (see number one).

This is another kind of Speed Limit.

You can have a game that has ultraoverperformers in it if you are prepared for everyone to eventually either move at that speed (so that effectively it is not ultraoverperformance), except for the minority that doesn't care. If your game is not set up for everyone to move at the speed of plaid, then balancing ('punishing' the best with nerfs and 'rewarding' the turtles with buffs) MUST happen, or everyone loses as the game dissolves.

Except: Due to the MA, the ultraoverperformers can no longer consume content faster than it can be made. This fact may change everything.

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A better, more community friendly, solution might have been just flagging all the boss farms after the first one as duplicates and deleting them.

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There are over 20,000 missions. Missions that are found to be farms were already being deleted or banned as quickly as they could find them (presumably). Apparently, these measures were not sufficient.

Morreover, they are already being accused of banning arcs that fit the pattern of abusive arcs but are not 'intended' as such, like challenge arcs.

Moreover, apparently one practice is to publish a farm mission then unpublish it when it is not being used to prevent it being banned (undoubtedly part of why we have over 100,000 arc IDs used for less than 50,000 arcs).

I'm not sure the Devs yet know how far they may have to go to get things to a place where both they and we are happy.

Some extreme and seemingly incompatible thoughts have been competing in my head:

1) Having an Instant 50 option at character creation (and perhaps for existing characters) would remove all point in 'racing' to 50. It is precedented by Guild Wars. Due to the MA. there is now infinite content for level 50 characters (missions are being published faster than you can run them). maybe the players that would get bored and quit if they had insta 50s are users that you would lose anyway.

2) Create a Speed Limit, code it in as a Diminishing Returns or hard cap on rewards being gained faster than a certain speed. Now people can farm to their hearts content if that is fun, and they don't break the game. You lose only people that feel they have to beat the system (or are used to speeds far above 'gamebreaking'), and casual players are unaffected.

3) Let people buy purples and levels with real money.

Any of these would kill farming, if that's what you really want to do.

I don't think the Devs really want to kill farming per se. They just don't want people to feel they need to farm to advance at a good speed (whatever that is).

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Actually, what I hope the Devs would realize is that we need more missions objectives both in the MA/AE and in the normal in-game content!

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Yes.

I was surprised that there's no kinds of mission with switches that need toggling for doors/bridges/traps and would help add to the teamwork aspect.

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See the Cavern of Trancendance mission in the Hollows.

My two cents:

The Devs are loathe to tell us what the "Speed Limit" is for rewards for what I guess are very understandable reasons (haven't figured them all out, competition would use the info, setting the speed limit high enough for normal play but low enough to prevent abuse may not be possible).

Regardless, there is one. There is some speed which, if adopted by enough people, would NECESSITATE nerfs (or some sweeping restructure of the game, like an 'insta 50' mode or something).

I think they should decide on a Speed Limit, tell us what it is, and enforce it with hard code. Otherwise, guys like you are just going to find it anyway, just like the Real Numbers.

A question: if the Devs publicized a Speed Limit, and actually said 'garnering rewards faster than x/y is too fast', and if that Limit were somewhat smaller than what you can hit now, would you quit or just edge really close to the limit?

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stop busting on my avatar

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I see what you did there...

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"Kill All" is pretty much [u]the lamest mission criteria of all time[u] from my viewpoint and should [u]never[u] be used.

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THIS.

Although I won't take off stars for it, I have DEFINETLY quit and not rated or simply NOT PLAYED arcs that have kill alls. Unless there is some compelling reason for it, (of which the arcs I've played already DON'T have one) there really is no reason for a kill all.

With the recent cap on in mission ticket rewards there's even LESS incentive for me to bother with arcs that have Kill Alls.

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This is one reason why a quits/plays display would not solve things in and of itself. Different people have different 'instant quit' criteria, ranging from Kill-Alls to Vahzilok.

No system that depends upon the opinion of the masses is fair or can be fair.

EVEN IF there were no 5 star or 0 star cartels, we would still have the split between the "If I died, it's too tough" people and the "If my team didn't wipe at least once, it's too easy" people, not to mention the people who prefer one style of storytelling over another.

It can't really be fixed, because unless you 5 starred the arc yourself, you can never be sure it is a 5 star quality in your opinion. Are you a text reader? Do you care about misspellings? Do you have author inserts on principle?

The best ratings system imaginable using RL methods would basically be a glorified spelling and syntax checker.

On the other hand...

Players should have the ability to vote people into the Hall of Fame and award them a free slot if they want to, whether the arc in question is Watchmen, Spider-Man, or Mansquito.

Devs should have the same right.

Still awesome on Champion and Victory, still infinite content on every server.

Out of over a hundred thousand players, it's pretty much a given that several thousand like the MA, and several thousand don't.

However you slice it, it's more content than any other game has, period. Having trouble finding well written arcs? Check out the various review threads on this here forum.

The Devs have stated that a design goal is that fighting a foe in the MA should be like fighting a PC.

Of course the average critter is much dumber than the average PC (YMMV) and so needs to actually be MORE powerful.

That said, it does seem like Shuriken may be out of line. A squishy should be able to face down spawns of minions and really only worry about adds, and not have to rest after each spawn (above level 20 or so).

But I can't help thinking that it may be that in the MA it is actually intended that...

White = moderately challenging spawn
Yellow = dangerous spawn
Red = very dangerous spawn, minmaxers only, please
Purple = Run Away!

...like it says in the tutorial.

The problem is that if the new ranged attacks are intended to be dangerous to hover blasters, how dangerous do they need to be? The minimum danger level to threaten a would be hover blaster might also be squishy-endangering level. By definition, even.

Oops double post.

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Then we have Shurikens. Clocking in at 25% more damage than the "normal" 8 second recharge attacks, but sharing Throwing Knives' fast animation.

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This might be deliberate. Martial Arts is widely regarded as a relatively weak set: maybe it was given a stronger ranged attack to bring it up to speed?

Ah you are correct. We still need to get Sunstorm to lower Standard difficulty a tad: like Mind and Psi foes not having Confuse on Standard, for instance.

Bah, I meant to say 6/hour (Posi seemed to hint that 8 levels per hour is too fast).

In any case, it probably would not apply to pre-debt levels.

Here's my latest, hope you enjoy it!

Arc Name: Kiss Hello Goodbye

Arc ID: 156389

Faction: Heroic (But could easily be run by a villain who can be hired to un-kidnap somebody)

Creator Global/Forum Name: Kitsune9tails

Difficulty Level: Tested with a soloing L25 Inv/Fire Tanker primarily

Synopsis: Kiss your usual inner monologue goodbye! This mission is narrated by the whiskey-and-cigarette kissed voice of Film Noir and hard boiled detective stories. When a beautiful dame with a missing sister rolled into your City, the nights got hot and the action got wild! Can you figure out the mystery before the end? Can you save yourself from a terrible trap? If not, Kiss Hello Goodbye!

Estimated Time to Play: 1 hour (more if you clear all)

This should be soloable by most skilled players if they are careful and pick their battles.

Hereby presented for review by whoever so desires...

Arc Name: Kiss Hello Goodbye

Arc ID: 156389

Faction: Heroic (But could easily be run by a villain who can be hired to un-kidnap somebody)

Creator Global/Forum Name: Kitsune9tails

Difficulty Level: Tested with a soloing L25 Inv/Fire Tanker primarily

Synopsis: Kiss your usual inner monologue goodbye! This mission is narrated by the whiskey-and-cigarette kissed voice of Film Noir and hard boiled detective stories. When a beautiful dame with a missing sister rolled into your City, the nights got hot and the action got wild! Can you figure out the mystery before the end? Can you save yourself from a terrible trap? If not, Kiss Hello Goodbye!

Estimated Time to Play: 1 hour (more if you clear all)

This should be soloable by most skilled players if they are careful and pick their battles.

Also throwing my newest onto the heap!

Arc Name: Kiss Hello Goodbye

Arc ID: 156389

Faction: Heroic (But could easily be run by a villain who can be hired to un-kidnap somebody)

Creator Global/Forum Name: Kitsune9tails

Difficulty Level: Tested with a soloing L25 Inv/Fire Tanker primarily

Synopsis: Kiss your usual inner monologue goodbye! This mission is narrated by the whiskey-and-cigarette kissed voice of Film Noir and hard boiled detective stories. When a beautiful dame with a missing sister rolled into your City, the nights got hot and the action got wild! Can you figure out the mystery before the end? Can you save yourself from a terrible trap? If not, Kiss Hello Goodbye!

Estimated Time to Play: 1 hour (more if you clear all)

This should be soloable by most skilled players if they are careful and pick their battles.

I may be reading too much into Positron's follow up MA Abuse statement, but it looks like 3 levels per hour may be the benchmark to consider.

Once you can cherry pick custom critter powers, it shouldn't be a problem. Until then, watch out for custom foes.

Maybe the ranged attacks are stronger because if you kite a foe, he will only be able to use the ranged attack over and over (waiting for it to recharge) rather than walloping you with a full attack chain at melee?

So, if you are toe to toe with a martial arts foe, will he do more damage with Thunder Kick>Crane Kick>Daragon's Tail> Eagle Claw (or whatever) than with Shuriken ... shuriken ... shuriken?

I ask because I am not sure.

Actually it should be fairly easy to figure out; maybe I can test this later.

Form an 8 man team at max difficulty (that is not exploiting), play for an hour, track your xp. Calculate your levelling rate from that. Now we know how fast your normal teaming is.

Multiply that speed by 2x, and we have the speed of a team you would consider exceptionally fast.

The cap should probably be around that number.

If that number is faster than 10 levels per hour, your speed standards are probably too high for this game (and therby likely to high for any MMO I have ever heard of).

I would be happy with any rate of levelling the devs would be happy with. It's just that it's clear that 20 levels per hour is too fast.

If 20 levels per hour is too fast then I say cap the xp at whatever is acceptable, rather than delevelling players and nerfing mobs and putting timers on missions.

Where do you think would be a reasonable place to cap the levelling rate? Legit question.

50 hours is like 3 to 5 times the rate of the casual player who does not PL.