Nethergoat

M1nd43v4Burn1ng gets my vote!

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I think we've forgotten how broken the powers system was at launch.....

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Not me.

The first character I ever made was an MA/SR scrapper.


>:E

Your I16 info is waiting at 11:59 PM July 31st.

=P

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Wait a minute, let me get this straight. (I a noob ww person)...if you post your salvage at 1, not only will it sell faster (duh, minimum bid) but you'll actually sell for more? Like, if someone bids 1mil on salv but yours goes for 1...you'll get 1mil-ww charges?? o.o


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Yes.

The market matches the lowest listing price with the highest current bid.

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Your argument is weak, because before we didnt have farming in Mercy Island and Atlas Park....

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I've farmed snakes to get out of Mercy ASAP. And I seem to remember this thing called I think a "bank mish"?
And sewer teams are hardly story arc content.

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Nethergoat, I am asking this in all seriousness: do you really, really, deep down where you really live, think that what's going on related to AE issues is good for the future of the game? Be honest.

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The only long term negative I see regarding AE is the infantile dev hissy fit when players dared to use it in ways they didn't approve of. If they don't correct that 'us vs them' mentality right quick there will be real trouble down the road.

It's a transformative addition to a static franchise. A huge disruption of the status quo was inevitable, and IMHO welcome.

All this nostalgia I've been wading through the last couple of days about the "right" way to play and how newbies are being "subverted" by the evils of AE is nonsense.

They said it would let you level 1-50 then they stuck one in just about every zone there is- they wanted EVERYONE to use it, they wanted new players to find it easily, they didn't care if people walked in the door and never left except to train. AE has its own hospitals and its own vendors and most of them are within spitting distance of the market.

I do not have such a dim view of dev competence that I think that's all accidental, or that it "got away" from them like some virtual reality Frankenstein's Monster.

The 'make your own game' aspect of AE is a HUGE selling point- that's why it got a box release. They expect it to inject new life into a largely static franchise.

One more point most everyone has ignored is that AE is a tool for developers as well as players. They'll be going from writing missions in a spreadsheet to a full featured GUI environment. I think this will have a huge impact going forward on the quantity of new missions and story arcs we'll be seeing from the devs.

AE isn't a finished product. They'll keep balancing rewards until they reach a point where it isn't so much better than the 'real' game that all the power players live there. And they'll be making new content of their own using the AE tools that will make the 'real' game more appealing. Because lets face it, all of the low and most of the mid level content has been showing its age for a while now.

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I am a little surprised by my perception of your stance on all this, since of all possible people posting in these forums, you seem to be the one who would LEAST want to put up with the tsunami of idiocy engendered by inexperienced AE babies.

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I don't see it being qualitatively different than any previous wave of PL'ing that created a population of uninformed players with high level characters.

They'll be subsumed by the rest of the population sooner or later. If more stick around to check things out than leave it's a net gain for the game, however annoying they are in the short term.

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I don't have a problem with vets running 50,000 mito farms all the live-long day. That might in fact be a fun way to test out a toon one might not have been willing to invest 6+ months in leveling. But c'mon - you canNOT be missing the tidal-wave of n00bitude even now laying waste the waterfront of Paragon.

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It's the same as the Winterbabies. They'll either grow up or get lost- hopefully more of the former than the latter.
The devs will (eventually) get AE under control and start pumping out their own AE-built content and we'll have more of an equilibrium between 'virtual' Paragon and 'real' Paragon.

As long as they don't go bugnuts on their own players again, I'm content to wait out the transition.

It happens. Wait it out, the cycle will turn around again soon enough.

Everything goes crazy on 2xp weekend, if nothing else.

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I LOVE the AE because of the cool custom storyarcs.

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SHHHH we're not supposed to talk about those, only about how awful and terrible and no good it is.

=P

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Don't forget, the items frequently have a less than25% chance to drop when defeating an appropriate enemy.

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the first time I quit WoW was after gathering some super annoying # of crockolisk crystals, or some nonsense. The 'right kind' only spawned on this one small section of coastline, and of course there were usually some other players working on the same quest so we kept stepping on each others toes.

I usually don't mind that particular mechanism, but that time it ticked me off. Maybe because there were so few of them to mow.

yes, good thing nobody ever farmed before AE.

Here's why people pay so much for salvage.

Conspiracy theorists, pay attention.

Let's say a level 50 character wants to craft something to sell or to slot. Let's say it's an Expedient Reinforcement Acc/Dam they bought on the market for a few million inf.

They look at the market and hey, some of the salvage is way more expensive than they used to be. Pneumatic Piston for 100k? Jeez! That's not much less than the rare Essence of the Fury!

So at this point the player has a couple of options.
1: put in a 'reasonable' bid and wait around.
2: jog to the AE building and grind tickets to roll salvage with.
3: pay market prices.

Why do so many people opt for choice #3?
Because they have a couple hundred million in play money lying around and blowing a few hundred K on salvage for a multi-million inf IO that you're either going to slot or re-sell for many millions in profit isn't a big deal.

For a lot of players inf<time. Let's look at the investments we make in choices 1, 2 and 3.


I can bid and wait.
Sometimes these will fill while you're looking at other stuff, sometimes they take overnight, sometimes longer.
Time invested: 5 minutes to 48 hours (estimated).

I can hit AE and grind my own.
Time invested: 10-20 minutes for a soloer (expecting that you'll want to finish the mission for the ticket bonus- why not, since you're there).

I can buy salvage NOW for a few hundred k, craft my enhancement and be off.
Time invested: a minute or so.

Only one option offers instant gratification at no real cost (when you have tens of millions of inf a few hundred K isn't a meaningful sum). It should surprise no one that this is the most popular option.

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Except it really didn't transform the game. It just changed the point of it to farming.

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thanks for the confirmation I was indeed wasting my time.

Carry on.

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I'm using the one that applies to video games. Which one are you using?

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'building' whatever you want with a variation of an SDK.
Playing with the game instead of just playing the game.

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You still go through the content in the same way, you just don't go through the world in the same way.

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Interface changes can make a profound difference in play experiences.
While we're still bound by linear leveling, we aren't bound by a linear game progression. Playing any level of content you want, of any level of difficulty, with any team composition, whenever you want.
That's not the "same way" we've always done it.

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The freakout is more due to the community structure being turned inside out, I'd say. It'd be much the same if Portal Corp was placed in Atlas. Except the word "bridge" would be coming up in complaints as often as "farm."

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Plopping a Portal Corps office in Atlas would also be a step toward a more freeform game by short circuiting the 'right' way to level.

low level hero content suffers from intense suckitude.
it's mildly less irritating that in days past thanks to various innovations (teleporters, jet packs, etc), but it's still slapped together, deadly dull and travel intensive. It encompasses a lot of bad, discredited design philosophies.
If I were the devs I'd certainly want to funnel 'newbies' into AE- it's a much more involving introduction to the game than the stock content or a sewer team.

low level villain content suffers from intense overexposure. It's much more engaging and well written than blue side, but there's so little of it that a few trips up the ladder drains its essence. But at least it's fun the first few times you run it, unlike blue.

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Upping the drop rate of PvP IOs for a short period of time will probably have a negligible impact on the actual PvP zone/arena population - they won't care about anything other than the drops so as soon as the rate goes back to normal they'll leave.

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Manufacturers don't hand out coupons because they fail.
It gets people to buy your stuff, and if a couple of them keep buying it when prices go back to normal it's been worth your while.

Getting people to try your product is the only way to grow the population. With PvP, a game activity that generates a lot of negative preconceptions, convincing people to check it out has a lot of up-side.

Maybe a drop rate boost isn't the best motivator, but they should do something to attract the masses. IOs that are impossibly rare won't do diddly to boost participation.

all I know for sure is we need another AE gripe thread like Jabba the Hutt needs more nubile slave girls.


uh.........wait.
strike that, reverse it....

There's a particular spot in Moth Cemetary where I love to farm zombies that's very cool, a tomb/tunnel deal where you get the 'Seeker of the Unknown' badge.

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The term was coined in this context for games that allowed you to go through existing content in as free a manner as possible.

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Ok, we're using different definitions.

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The MA doesn't really change the way in which you go through the game's content. And given that the gameplay itself is essentially the same, the game *isn't* becoming anymore freeform.

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It changes the way you go through the game's content in a profound way. If it didn't nobody would be freaking out.
You can team with whatever levels you like, you can do content from any level range you like, and via Oro you can cover 'real' content you missed on the way up.

That provides a tremendous boost in flexibility and places much more discretion in the hands of the player.
I call that 'freeform', you may call it something else.
But it's in the game.

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I don't accept that the MA is a step towards freeform, sandbox style gameplay.

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You can pretty much make any characters you want and tell any story you want with MA.

That's a sandbox, unless the kids today are using some newfangled definition of the term.

And the game overall is becoming a lot more free form.
That isn't really debatable.

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It's a paradigm shift. It's intentional.

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I highly doubt that it is intentional.

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Well, either you're wrong or the devs all have room temperature IQ's and their gaming experience stopped at Monopoly with their cousins.

I said in a thread long, long ago, before there was even a hint that AE was coming, that player-generated content was the future of the genre and would transform MMO gameplay.

It's blindingly obvious to anyone who's directed their attention at gaming for any length of time.

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I think the dev team simply got a lot more than they ever bargained for. A lot of it is lack of foresight IMO.

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The only thing that surprised them was the farming- note their disorganized overreaction to it.

Again, I said this would transform the game before it came out.
And I know a lot less about MMOs than they do.
That's the only possible result, assuming the system works at all.

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Again I don't think that's the case. And I have never seen any dev comment that supports that sandbox play is their new overall goal for the game.

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Think what you like, it is what it is.
The importance of level has been de-emphasized over the last few years. The game has become more free form, more diverse and more of a blank canvas for players to make of what they wish.

I'm not saying they're turning it into The Sims, but the basic structure of the game is no longer rigidly hierarchical.
tutorial-atlas-kings-steel-blah blah blah isn't the only game in town any more, now it's just one play option.

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Perhaps because it's not there.

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Nawp, that's not it.

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Look I agree the devs intended AE to have the ability to get someone from 1 - 50. That is indisputable. I do NOT however, believe they planned it to get someone from 1 - 50 in a MUCH more efficient and rewarding manner than regular content.

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Sure they did, up to a point.
New content nearly always over rewards- that's one of the ways they get people to run it. Then after a while the "problem" is fixed and things go back to normal.

AE is just more complicated by an order of magnitude than anything else they've ever done. It's not surprising it got out of hand.

And rewards have nothing to do with my main point, which is that AE is intended to provide an alternative to 'normal' content.

If that wasn't the intent, it wouldn't be in beginner zones, it would be some kind of level-gated, limited access deal like the Rikti War Zone.

And the bottom line is the devs don't care if people abandon their old, tired content for AE, as long as they keep paying their subs.

Dirty secret AE detractors are ignoring- most of the content in the game is pretty boring, and most of us have played it 100,000 times. Red side has less junky content, but also a lot less content period.

If AE spares one new player the tedium of clearing warehouses in King's Row and jogging miles back to their contact, it will have served a valuable purpose.

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It's why I have always said that this game didn't need AE...it just needed some core gameplay improvements and expansion of the current content.

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Uh.................that's exactly what AE is.

I'm starting to think I'm wasting my time here.
Have a nice day!

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It seems to me that sandbox style gameplay doesn't generally involve congregating in a single room around a pillar of light.

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the pillar of light is substantially more attractive than most of the other mission entrances in the game.

Or do you only accept those round pillars of light all the high level types used to spend all their time hanging around at Portal Corps?

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I don't see much meat on the bones of the "omg ae is ruining things' argument beyond a nostalgic fixation on how a lot of us veterans are used to playing.

It's new, it's different, and a lot of people prefer it to the 'real' way to play. That isn't a bug, it's a feature.

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Honestly, this isn't about approving or disapproving play styles.

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Really?

Then why is all the whining about playstyles?

"I don't like people spending all their time in AE" is a comment on playstyle.

So is "People should play like me and do story arcs and TFs".

This entire discussion is explicitly about playstyles. There isn't much to any of this anti AE ranting besides "waaaah everyone is spending too much time in AE and not enough doing what I think they should!"

Some points to consider, which I've already mentioned-

Design goal of AE: to allow players to level 1-50.
AE buildings intentionally placed in low level zones.
Auto-sidekicking removes all impediments to teaming between level ranges.

It's a paradigm shift. It's intentional.

The game is moving toward a more freeform, sandbox style of gameplay and away from the old rigid, linear hierarchy of levels.

I don't get why it's so hard for some folk to see.

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I want a Resistance of the Goat too!!! And i want it NOA!!!

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Hawr!

this gives me an idea for a new avatar....

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I need help.

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I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place!

=D

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There is no practical difference between "none for sale at any price" and "one for sale for 1 Billion INF" to most players.

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"most players" aren't the audience for ultra rare IOs.
Whether or not they can afford them is irrelevant.

Your 'most players' mantra isn't relevant to high end goods, no matter how many times you repeat it.

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PVP IO's traded amongst PvP players, and benefiting the players that actively PvP, instead of being on the market is a design failure only if the devs wanted these to be available in ways other than PvP.

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One of their design goals is to be the much requested 'reward' to draw more players to PvP.
They can't do that if they are so rare their only appeal is to the hardcore PvP crew.

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The scenario you describe would encourage people to PvP for IOs...

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Yes, exactly.
Rewards are an excellent way to get players to try things they might otherwise ignore.
And if you get enough of them to dip a toe in the water, some will take the plunge.

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I can't say that makes a lot of sense to me...

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That doesn't surprise me.