Nethergoat

On my fire/rad nothing lives long enough for the immobilize duration to matter.

Mine is slotted for damage, recharge & procs.

I've played a couple of Dev's Choice arcs I thought were as good as anything else in the game.

And in my experience having devs create an arc does not mean it's good, has good writing, or is fun. =P


Any creative endeavor is going to be a grab bag.
Pros will create a more consistent product (hopefully anyway), but get enough amateurs working on missions and their best efforts will stand tall in the ranks.

Oh absolutely. I'm all for whatever people find fun.
Right now I have a 'concept stalker' I'm playing. A regular guy with a sword, no superpowers, so no travel power. He's getting by on swift, hurdle & Gift of the Ancients +runspeed. And, whenever possible, he travels to missions without setting foot on the ground (he's in Sharkhead now, which is a good environment for it).

I wouldn't press the restrictions on anyone else, but I'm enjoying it.



This I don't understand.
It's not like most of the minions and lieutenants in the game are that fascinating, or that we don't fight them a billion times during our careers. Novelty has its own value.

I like the creative aspect of MA for the same reason I like checking out player bios while I'm running around the game. It's fun to see what people dream up, even when most if it is junk.

It's a preference, the 'cost' is so minimal it's not a factor.

If I were somehow rendered unable to perform any other action but stare at my monitor for the duration of the mission, that would be a meaningful cost.

As I would be free to do whatever else I wanted, the 'cost' is reduced a few mouse clicks and a tiny fraction of my attention.

Some dude on an internet forum telling you he has cancer might have cancer.

Then again, he might not.

You'll do better if you address my points instead of making up your own and attributing them to me.

?
I don't care one way or the other.
I don't find his tale plausible, but he's irrelevant to my larger points.

I post a lot.
Drawing my attention and earning a reply isn't the amazing feat you paint it as.

I suspect there's some projection at work here, since you're the cat who never walked away from a chance to bust out the caps lock.

They're never going to be steady, long-term customers. Period.

What is healthiest for a game is to appeal to a wide cross-section of potential players. Having stuff that appeals to the obsessive/burnout crowd will earn you more money over the course of your games existence than not having that stuff.

If your game can appeal to RPers and farmers and 'regular' players and these kinds of burnout zealots, fantastic!

When you're running a business your goal is to make money, not hold hands and sing Kumbaya.

And no addict will ever thank you for helping them.
They'll succeed or fail in their battle base entirely on their own resources- what you think about them or think they should do is completely irrelevant to their internal struggle.

I don't find his story compelling. You don't go from being a squarejohn story arc running solid citizen of many years good standing to a ticket-snorting power levelling megafarmer overnight, just because you stepped into MA.

Any purported longstanding "good customer" who uses the forums should already be aware of the many, varied alternative routes the game provides to earning rewards, no? Has presumably been having fun playing other ways, and so understand that their miserable MA grinding isn't the only thing available to them?

You can lead the horse to water, etc etc etc.

No, I wouldn't.
I want to play, so I play.
If I wanted to level fast while I did something else, I'd doorsit.
When I had surplus time, I'd do both.

Of course, the motivation was much greater in the old days- real debt, no xp smoothing, no Oro, no base teleporters...heck, no BASES.

It was a much more appealing prospect that it is today, with all our modern conveniences.

The only thing it 'cost' me to click into a mission then go do the laundry was some fraction of my monthly fee.

I am slightly envious of today's doorsitters, since there were no drops back in my day- well, inspirations and enhancements, but nothing to get excited about.

I don't know him from Adam, he's just some dude on a forum.

Wait, are you implying that some anonymous stranger on the internet might be less than truthful?
Impossible!

There's nothing knee-jerk about my reactions, they've been smelted in the fiery furnaces of a generation of farming threads.

That's no more a problem for the game than a gambling addict is a problem for a casino.
As long as they can pay up, anyway.

'some people' cut themselves compulsively. 'Some people' make themselves vomit after they eat. etc etc etc.
Are they a public hazard? No?
Then leave them to it.

It's ridiculous to pretend they'd stick around and be ideal customers IF ONLY they weren't presented with the AWFUL TEMPTATION of farming.

They're here for the farming. If it wasn't here, they wouldn't be either- they'd be off somewhere that let them farm.

To pursue my gambling addict analogy, the old ladies grinding the slot machines won't suddenly become high stakes Blackjack players because you take out all your slot machines.

They'll just go to some other casino that does have slots.

I'm sure it does- churn is a reality of the genre.

You're never going to turn those types of gamers into "good" customers though. So just take what you can get from them and be thankful.

I've seen plenty of those threads over they years.
Mostly from players who never quite seem to leave.

But hey, believe everything you read on a forum if you want.

You can't stop it.
All you can do is keep adding content so they'll hopefully come back.

You can watch TV, or do the dishes, or chat with friends, or make dinner, or whatever while you doorsit.

I'm at a point now where my time is so limited I want to actually play when I'm logged in, so doorsitting is off my menu.

But it does indeed generate 'free' rewards, in that you can level & get drops while you're AFK doing something else. Even playing another game, if your setup can handle it.

Although pre-MA there were always people in PI offering cash for a doorsit spot, or selling runs...so perhaps the free lunch is a thing of the past after all.

That's his problem, not mine.

And he's operating on a logical fallacy- anything he can grind out in MA I can get from the market in less time with less effort. So could he, if he visited the market forum and took some notes.

Who's forcing them to do it?
Nobody? Oh, okay. Just checking.
And who are "all the people" anyway?
I mean, I've never met one.
In my experience people do things they think are fun, or that advance their goals, or both.
I doubt there is a meaningful number of players out there joylessly grinding away just because they feel obligated to.
Well, outside the gold farming community, anyway.

This game is really simple. Leveling is easy, earning rewards is easy.
There's no reason for anyone to play in a way they don't enjoy.

Although the accountants don't care if you pay your fee grudgingly or joyfully, as long as they get their money.
Bean counters don't care about motivation.

I on the other hand have seen every square inch of IP.
Why, you ask?
Back in the day my friends and I got so tired of running back and forth across the zone to various mission doors that were a million miles away we just farmed our way around it in a circle. All the way around it. Until we out-leveled the zone. We even mowed down the Devoured Earth that hang out on the island around Terra Volta, because we didn't know any better.

I didn't see anything during this marathon that really stood out or endeared the zone to me. The bridge is different, but hacking your way across it isn't far removed from working your way down a regular street full of spawns.

What architecture can I see in IP that I can't see in any other city zone?
I put forth that its only standout feature is its immense, annoying size.

And as I've already said, distance doesn't impart originality.
No zone in the game delivers such a knockout, immersive, interactive environment that I miss anything by simply bee-lining to various mission doors as efficiently and quickly as I can.

Well, except maybe the Shadow Shard. Not that it's any more interactive than anyplace else, but it is visually stunning.
Of course, it's also so tremendously annoying for most people to traverse they're forced to stop and smell the spine-shooting eyeballs & waterfalls of blood. =P

There's nothing compelling to do in zones besides sightsee, and I guess RP, although that's not my gig.

For nearly every player in the game, zones are just lobbys to cross on their way to missions. If the devs want us to approach them differently, they need to give us some motivation.

It's fine that you think walking across a giant zone is the fun thing to do- whatever floats your boat.
But objectively it's not an activity that appeals to many players.


Nobody's asking you to- do whatever you like.

But most players are like me, and find lots of pointless running around to this or that distant outpost annoying.
But don't take my word for it, just observe the various changes to the game over the years- train stations for previously dead-end zones, temp travel powers for the low levels, purchaseable travel powers for the higher levels, the City Traveller vet reward, the Oro portal, base teleporters, Gather the Team, etc etc etc.

The original 'vision' of retarding progress by making us schlep everywhere stunk on ice, and they eventually figured that out.

If you like it, fantastic- I'm not trying to convince you of anything.

Convenience is badly needed by most of the older content in the game.
If they can't go back and re-write it, giving us greater travel flexibility is a helpful work-around.



It's like anything else involving the player population- some designs stink, some are impressive.

What I've found it boils down to with the anti-farming crowd is "If I do it, it isn't farming- if YOU do it, it's farming".

Although once some guy actually tried to tell me that my DA runs weren't farming because I thoroughly enjoyed them. To be farming, he said, I would have to approach it with a sour face and be grinding for rewards.

The fact that many of us 'grind' rewards with a smile and a happy nod for everyone who passes by is beyond the understanding of most Kontent Kops.

A self important comment from a non-farmer who thinks their style of play is superior in a thread I've been following is actually directly in my way.

The quality of your logic is at least consistent.

I play the game in a way I find entertaining and enjoyable.
Your opinion of my playstyle has no impact on that fun or enjoyment.

So spare me your condescension, thanks.

QFE.

I can run one AE mission and fill up my recipe inventory with set IOs off bronze rolls.

Time invested: 20 minutes or so.

Meanwhile I ran pretty much the whole Tina Macintyre arc with my super efficient spines/regen scrapper over the last couple of days, and only got a handful of IO recipe drops.

Time invested: several hours.

When?
I don't remember any previous wave of "exploits" that resulted in players staying away from increased rewards. The devs eventually patching it, yes. Players saying "oh heavens, I'm earning too much ______ for this!", no. Or at least not in meaningful numbers.

You or I may demur, but 'most people' will keep hammering anything that overrewards until the devs make them stop.

I don't personally roll with doorsitting or leeching either- not because there's anything wrong with it, but because it's boring.
But again, 'most people' won't turn up their noses at 'free' rewards.

The problem with MA is twofold- the ability to fill maps with bosses & lieutenants which can be tailored to the strengths of your character which allows the generation of outsized rewards in a relatively short time frame, and tickets. Tickets let players distill all of their rewards and turn them into 'the good stuff', set IOs.

I can see why the devs were cautious about giving normal drops to MA missions, but their solution did nothing but magnify the problem.


Rather than create some complicated formula to reward diversity in enemy composition, they should just apply an 'army list' style menu to MA. So any scenario you create will be mostly minions, with fewer lieutenants and only a sprinkling of bosses.
This creates a more balanced reward environment without restricting player creativity in creating new enemy factions.

I don't see a ton of utility in player discussions of this topic, operating as we are entirely in the dark regarding the formulas the Devs operate with.

We can pinpoint stuff that overewards simply by looking around and seeing where everyone is, and we can discuss the whys and wherefors of that particular piece of content, but without access to the devs files more theoretical discussions seem rather pointless.

I'm not crying for non-existent anything.
But meaningless 'travel for the sake' of travel isn't compelling gameplay.

The popularity of MA is your answer.

I personally prefer the happy medium- I do like being out and about in this or that zone, seeing the sights, running into other characters. I dislike long, pointless voyages to this or that distant mission door, notable only for the irritation they trigger.

The CoV approach of "mostly in one zone, with occasional detours" is my preference.


It's impressive how some people can work an anti-farming whine into any thread, however far removed from the topic of farming it may be.

CoH, CoV, whichever you play you're dealing with a small handful of generic entrances 99% of the time. Warehouse, snake hole, office building, tunnel, etc.

IMHO A generic entrance that's a few hundred yards from where I'm standing is preferable to a generic entrance two zones away.

Distance does not impart originality.

You must just love IP & Nerva.

I on the other hand prefer a compact, well integrated environment to a sprawling, unplanned one. Give me New York over Los Angeles any day.



I dislike the harshness of many of the custom MA groups, but I've also found custom enemies who are surprising and different without being murderous. And of course there are players who enjoy leaping face-first into the meat grinder and seeing if they can survive.

In any case, I don't have an issue with Hydra as opponents. They're no better or worse than most of the enemies in the game. I do have issues with a pointlessly long fedex leading back to the same mission door sporting the same enemies.

My disparaging of the Hydra was in response to a post claiming they are so interesting and different a foe that two kill-alls in a row should be cause for celebration rather than complaint.