Nethergoat

It never ceases to amaze me how many people on these forums are genius infallible mindreaders.

The meaning of "exploiter" in a gaming context is universally negative.
Hacker, glitcher, exploiter- they all mean "cheater".

If it's incorrect, as yours is, then no it shouldn't.
If it is correct, as mine is, then yes it should.

Are you ESL?
Because that would explain a lot about this thread.

Your ability to intentionally misinterpret things is perhaps your most impressive skill.

Power customization is a major addition to the character creator, a game feature with broad appeal. Players have wanted it for ages, and it will soak up many game hours of player time as they mess around with it.
That makes it good content.

It isn't aimed at fascinating anyone endlessly, it's aimed at expanding a popular game feature.

Your position requires pretending that GR isn't looming on the horizon and soaking up all the efforts of the 'story' team. Or pretending it's going to suck.
I don't find either pretense believable.
The last paid expansion we got kicked all kinds of butt, and so will this one.

No you aren't, your crying about not getting what GR is going to deliver.

You have unrealistic expectations and then you whine when the devs don't meet them.

I am far from a dev fanboi and I think they've been doing a great job.
Criticism of their output over the last few issues is the expression of some deep-rooted pathology, because it is not rooted in reality.

Darwin has no place at the table of a voluntary pastime. The game gives you everything you need. Luxuries exist on a different plane.

And my philosophy is "if you aren't willing to make an effort, you don't deserve them".

Why exactly do you feel the market should change to accommodate players that will never accept it?



In the real world ignorance of the law does not excuse criminal behavior.
In the game world failure to use available resources does not excuse ignorance.

I'm sorry that tantrum of theirs drove someone off.

I should say, their intent matters only insofar as they impose it on the playerbase.

Relying on intent to keep players in line rather than code leads to the unhappy result you mentioned above.


Adding the carrot of spawn size adjustment to lure farmers out of MA was a smart move. Now all they need to do is get the drop rates fixed.

Yes it can.

It becomes inefficient after a certain point so I doubt anyone will do it, but it is absolutely possible.

I don't care what their intent is, I deal with reality.
If they can't enforce their intent it's meaningless.

you're REALLY stretching there.

It's too bad the old forums sucked so bad or I could go and hunt up one of the dozens of OMG SEWER FARMS ARE RUINING THE GAME threads that were posted back when they were the cancer that was killing the game.

I wonder what future system the devs will introduce that makes people pine for the wholesome days of MA farming?

Farming is farming.
The behavior is identical, only the scale is different.

Farming is farming, it doesn't matter where you do it. PI, DA, MA, the sewers, it's all the same behavior- fast progress via efficient game pathing.

Your "boring" is my "awesome".

And around and around we go!

CoH players love their costume customization.
This adds another whole level to the system that attracted many players to the game in the first place and which keeps at least one player (shout out for Sam Tow here) subscribed in the face of overwhelming ennui.

Players spend a meaningful number of game hours messing around with their characters looks. The addition of the ability to customize your powers is a huge upgrade to an already robust system. It certainly qualifies as content.

How long has the costume creator held people's interest?
No, it isn't a 'new zone or two'. Who's saying that, other than you?

When the devs eat it, I am not shy in expressing my opinion.
When they do good, they deserve full credit.
I16 is a giant heaping bowl of good.

I'm not sure why.
When you talk sense, we agree. I recall several threads in the heat of MA Madness where our viewpoints coincided.
When you say things that don't make sense, I object.

See, that make no sense.
It isn't an either/or deal.
The animation guys don't make zones.
I'm not "trading" customization & mission slider customization for ANYTHING, I'm getting it in addition to whatever other content the rest of the dev team is working on.

In this case that is clearly Going Rogue- we're frankly lucky we've gotten ANYTHING for free with what must be a huge amount of resources they've routed to the paid expansion.

You are bound and determined to see the glass as half empty. And that's fine, as long as you don't start insisting that I become your partner in pessimism.

Aside from a brief freak-out over MA 'exploits' the devs have been on one heck of a roll lately. I genuinely don't understand people whining about their adding a feature that players have been requesting for 5 years.

Chiming in to the 'my approach' sub-thread:

I mostly solo these days- babies generate random AFK's like nobodies' business. I still manage to rack up a decent # of hours over the course of a month, but I can never count on more than a few minutes of consecutive gameplay.

My gameplay is like my marketeering- mostly concept driven. I get an idea and pursue it as long as it maintains my interest.
"I wonder how much inf you could make playing inefficiently and selling drops?" Voila, a concept stalker is born.
"I wonder if the 'old' content is as terrible as I remember it being? And how does it compare to the newer stuff?" 19 levels of arch/elec blaster later, and the answers are "yes" and "horribly".

To get all the way to 50 a character needs to engage me completely- I have to like the concept and story (even though I don't 'do' RP I absolutely require the character to fit snugly into the game world) and their powers have to engage me on a visceral level.

I skip around a lot between alts.
Lately I'm rotating between my level 40 ar/dev (motivation: can a l337 SuperBuild(tm) restore him to some meaningful fraction of his pre-ED efficiency?), my level 19 arch/elec (motivation: compare and contrast 'real' content across level ranges), my level 30 ninja/willpower stalker (motivation: how much inf can you make stealthing missions, killing a minimum of enemies and just selling drops?) and my level 29 mace/inv brute (motivation: a control for the stalker- I'm playing him with my usual mix of drop selling and market gaming).

With IOs, it depends on the character. The majority are slotted with generic IOs + a few key IOs (-kb, procs, etc). I have two UberBuilds, my level 44 fire/ice blasting DA farmer (all set bonuses keyed to DA, perma-oro'ed and parked in Moth Cemetary) and my level 50 fire/rad controller, who I log in when I feel like some high level farming or to PL friends on his zombie map. My ar/dev is well frankenslotted- I have a l337 build waiting for him to hit 50, but was able to frankenslot him for pocket change while building up wealth for his eventual buying spree. And the Goat, as my namesake, obviously requires a grotesquely, ostentatiously expensive UberBuild even though he's mostly retired these days. I got a leg up by picking up a couple of PvP sets to slot before the prices went bugnuts- he's probably over a billion right now, although they only cost maybe 150 million at the time. =P

But mostly, I'm fine with generics. I enjoy playing characters more than planning them out.

I have a bad spending problem that manifests in shopping binges any time I get near the 600 million mark. The stars aligned just right for this to happen- MA farming drove the price of purples through the ceiling right as I was getting ready to slot a couple of sets and the devs announced that I16 would let us set our own spawn sizes.

I did the math (counting on my claws and hooves) and opted to wait for the inevitable price drop once the farmers returned to their homeland in PI.

Logging in a few times a week to tend his flipping made the inf pile up fast- a lot faster than I thought it would. I actually have two other billionaires right now- I should take their pictures for posterity, it'll probably never happen again.

Vet badges, like forum post count, are meaningless predictors.
plenty of vets are dumb, rude and annoying, plenty of newbs are smart, friendly and fun to team with.

Judging someone by vet badges is as stupid as judging them by skin color or gender.

exaggeration for effect is an entertaining rhetorical device, as long as it accurately reflects the argument being made.

here's the quote:
Farming in a sewer makes them smile, farming in MA makes them unhappy.

And I don't really have an 'argument' here, I'm just pointing out they hypocrisy of lauding one type of farming while deploring another.

No, because I dislike hypocrisy.

"farming is great as long as it's not that dirty MA building!" is a foolish statement.

The AE building is an office building.

I've been on a total of one sewer team that faced any kind of 'challenge', and that's because there were a couple of yay-hoos who kept running off down the wrong tunnel and dragging spawns back with them.

Otherwise, a well-run sewer team is about as dangerous as any other kind of organized farm.

Farming is farming, the behavior is the same whether you're doing it in the 'wild' or in the MA building.
If you dislike the behavior in MA it is hypocritical to laud it in the wild.

WOW that's ugly!

I think it's even worse than a character I made for a vet reward whine thread a long time ago who used every vet costume piece available to me at the time.

GRATZ!

So, uh, how is farming the sewer for fast levels is 'better' than farming MA for fast levels?

Because it's in a sewer, not an office building?

True. But even though it was a nerf to supply it was still a sop to complainers- now they could grind for their shiny instead of buying it. The sorts who were complaining were unlikely to notice that it was taking them longer to get the goodies than if they'd just earned inf and bought them on the market.

Creating the appearance of making something more available while nerfing supply is some nice jiu jitsu!

Exploiter is an insult. Applied to a stranger in the context of an MA Baby whine the meaning isn't hard to grasp.

If you meant it in a happy funtime casual friends jokey way, that part got lost somewhere between your brain and the keyboard.

You aren't a mindreader, sorry. You don't know how that guy got his kheldian.
It isn't like level 50 is some tremendous grind any more. "regular" PL'ers can do it in short order with no 'exploits' required.

It is funny how you claim you didn't insult anyone, then in the next paragraph heatedly defend your insult.

*thumbsup*

How so?

I mean, the search function stinks, but I was always able to find stories if I wanted them and farms if I wanted them.