Megajoule

I'm told that FF "allies" spamming Detention Field has been fixed, at least at Standard and maybe Hard too (haven't verified it myself).

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Not a good idea, and ultimately, not fair.

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Perhaps. But do you deny that everything I said there would happen?

Draw a hard line, and rules lawyers immediately start trying to blur it again, in their favor. And the ones who aren't trying to weasel around it are all going the speed limit plus their best guess of the error margin of the cop's radar gun - faster, if they think there's no cops around. (How close can we get to violating the spirit of the rules without actually breaking their letter?)

I've seen it before in other games and outside games too. It's a certain kind of player, a certain kind of thinking, and it's everywhere. Which means, I suppose, that it's stupid to try to fight it, but I'm strange and idealistic that way. That just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you should.

I suspect the reason the devs haven't drawn a line yet is that they know the moment they do, every farmer will be right up against it, and some will be putting one foot over it but claiming their other foot wasn't so it should be okay. (And some will sneak across it in the dead of night, swearing each other to secrecy first, and complain when they get caught.)

I have a great SG and playgroup, with our own global. I'm lucky that way. Should those who don't be abandoned to the mercy of spam?

"Don't bother to clean up the environment; we'll all just form our own gated communities and pour our raw sewage over the walls. Problem solved!"

I was opposed to farming, but I was able to mostly ignore it until MA hit. Sure, I got the occasional invite to fill or farm, which I politely declined.

Since I14, it's been a different story, even on Virtue (the only server I play on). Broadcast has become jammed with farm chatter, not just in Atlas or PI but every zone where an AE building exists - which, thanks to the Devs, is most of them. Likewise, the MA system itself is jammed with farm missions without any pretense to story or anything but maximizing xp/time.

I was willing to try to ignore farming, but the farmers have made it impossible to do so - unless I get rid of broadcast, set myself to /hide, and remove other game features that I believe I should be able to use and enjoy like any other player. I don't think that's fair. And then there's the increased difficulty of finding arcs in the AE browser that I might actually want to play, and the likelihood that options will be taken away from me as a mission creator in order to close loopholes that have been exploited by farm makers and players.

I tried to turn a blind eye, and I managed for years, but I can't anymore. The farmers are that noisy now, even on Virtue.

I feel sorry for the Devs, too. I doubt that "50 in a day" was what they had in mind when they came up with the MA. I imagine that for them, it's a bit like giving kids an Erector set to see what marvelous things they build, and coming back into the room ten minutes later to find them stabbing and hitting each other over the head with the pieces.

Says the author whose arc is three from the end.

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so put yourself in hide from searches. then you won't get bombarded. i love how people scream about getting tells and yet we have all these features to help prevent this.

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So, if you don't like being bothered by farmers, the "solution" is to just:
Stop listening to broadcast
Stop looking for teams
Stop being visible to others
Stop going to zones with AE buildings
Stop posting your negative opinions

... what else? Stop playing on your regular server? Stop playing, period?

One of the reasons I've always been fond of this game is that I could at least pretend it wasn't like all the others. But with every update, the people who are trying to turn it into ProgressQuest have gotten more visible and more aggressive. It's very discouraging.

(I await the inevitable cries of "so leave.")

Dude, if you're going to drop that much text on a player, just go ahead and write it up as a story and post it in the Fan Fiction section. And I say that as a writer and a mission creator.

Ooh, nice.
Both of my arcs are listed in my signature, and both are four missions long. I hope they're "epic" enough for your tastes; they're both definitely strongly story-based. I appreciate your taking a look at them when you get a chance.

The state of the art in MMO design has advanced a bit in five years, what can we say? Lessons were learned, mistakes corrected. (Now we have all new mistakes!)

I've seen plenty of farm chatter on Virtue, in zones that didn't use to have it. I'd like to see a solution besides taking Broadcast out of my tabs altogether.

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That single line PM unleashed a half-page torrent of personal invective on your part, with you calling me "bitchy", "uppity", and "massively self-important" (among other things).

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Well, you've done a fine job countering that assessment in this post.

Three parsecs is just short of 10 light years. Fairly close, as such things go. (Tau Ceti is at 12.)

TerraFan:
Tagging them is one option; another would be to publish them only as needed, which makes ratings etc irrelevant.

Just a quick bump for my arcs, which are now both listed in my signature.

My feeling is that [FARM] is a tag some would like to be able to add to other people's descriptions...

<QR>

Just wanted to note that one of the reasons why so many missions (Architect and canon) have no "moral or theme" and are "just a bunch of stuff that happened" is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to write such a story for literally thousands of characters. Done poorly, it can run into power-posing and/or snap a player right out of the story, even make them quit rather than continue.

Consider a familiar question for heroic types: "What would make you break your code vs. killing?" The problems are obvious right off: some heroes don't have such a thing in the first place, and those who do have different thresholds, different answers to that question. If you present me with an arc where one of my more Silver-Agey heroes snaps and wastes a Smug Snake in front of TV cameras, because the clue or mission debriefing says so, that's it - I'm done. I probably won't rate it down because I'm not vindictive that way, but I will not be finishing or recommending that arc.

So, how do you make a story that isn't JABOSTH without taking away a player's control of their character or making assumptions that will probably be wrong at least half of the time?

When you find out, let me know so that I can use it with a Nemesis officer (that is, Sniper class) "of appropriate level" - no, a Warhulk or Fake is not suitable.

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Not sure how helpful that is for them to do that. If they aren't wanting farms, they need to post it where people will see it. But, I don't expect to see that post, because it would raise more questions than they are likely prepared to answer. Such as, "where is the line between challenge and farm?" and "do you consider the current dev content acceptable 'non-farm' missions?" Its such a subjective term that I don't envy them attempting to define it, but if they don't take a shot at providing their version of a definition, its hard to accept complaints that player content is exceeeding their desired limits.

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Exactly. They could put "NO FARMS" on the front page in 72pt blinking letters of fire, and some people would still try to weasel out of it.

"They didn't define 'farms'" - "well, my arc isn't a farm" - "that's not what they said to me two years ago" - "who's it hurting anyway" - "I pay your salary, don't tell me how to play" ...

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A 4 is very, very good.

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I agree. But under the criteria the Devs have set for obtaining more publishing slots, a 4 is "not good enough." (Not to mention sorting/visibility issues in the current implementation of the browser.)

Still waiting for an announcement of alternate means.

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Because the mass public will cancel out idiot votes by jerks, as long as what you've done is GOOD. And if what you have done isn't good, you'll hear about that too.

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Thing is, in my experience, it's the jerks that are the majority. You aren't going to cancel that out with a minority.

(Actually, scratch that. The real majority are apathetic, but since they don't participate in the process, they might as well not exist. Only those who speak up count, and there are a lot more shouting drivel and obscenities than making reasoned arguments.)

Good arcs will get downchecked by the selfish and the clueless, through no fault of the author, but just because someone doesn't like your name or the color of your custom boss' costume or they had a bad day at work or they love EBs or they hate EBs or they're trying to keep their arc near the top by pushing all the others down. There are many more reasons to vote an arc down than there are to vote it up, to obstruct rather than support.

Welcome to democracy in action - rule of the mob, in its rawest, stupidest, most selfish form.

So it seems that both HoF and DC were implemented... poorly.
*headdesk*

I used to know someone who claimed that if someone failed to "adequately" secure their property, he was justified in taking it. That others called this "theft" concerned him not at all, unless he was caught and punished for it. If a thing was possible, it was okay for him to do it.

The intent of the Devs has, IMO, been made adequately clear over the last five years. Their failure (so far) or inability to close off every possible means of exploiting the game should not, again IMO, be taken as any sort of permission to do so, any more than leaving the door of a house or apartment unlocked (or with a lock that's easily picked) entitles you to take the contents.

On Topic - My guide to farming:
Don't.

Put them in a Battle, perhaps. Battles seem to start/be resolved before the player(s) even get into range.

A warning, though - while most fans of JRPGs still seem willing to put up with scripted failure, You-Lose Boss Fights, etc etc, not everyone wants that inflicted on them, especially in a genre which is all about solving problems through bold action. Put something like this in your arc and you can expect to take a hit to your ratings, or even RAGEQUITs and/or bug reports.

I'd like to recommend "The Footsteps Initiative" (meta-humor, not serious, but also not a farm and VERY funny), "Villainous Values" (already posted), "Hearts on Fire", the "Wholesale Soul Sale" by @Wonderslug, and anything by @Twoflower.