Shard_Warrior

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
One of my characters yesterday went from level 9 to 16 within the span of a single AE mission. Total time spent was around 30 minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not unheard of in non-AE content... with a full team on a higher difficulty, it is possible to level fairly quick outside of AE, so I would say that the XP rate is about the same.

Where AE DOES break this IMO is that it totally eliminates the time sinks of traveling; needing to report back to a contact etc. Instead of having to run across the Hollows or Steel Canyon back to your contact to get the next mission (or even just travel to the next mission), you run all of 10 feet to reset the arc and play it again.

I think this is something the developers did not take into consideration.

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah cuz it is super fun running across the map -

[/ QUOTE ]

Not debating whether or not something is "fun" since that is subjective to the player... just stating fact. Time sinks due to travel are part of most every MMO.

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh please, with all the zone teleportation, and he fact you can get a travel power very early on your caharacter. Bringing CoX 'travel time' into this arguement is ludicrous. Travel time in CoX is NOTHING compared to ANY other MMO on the market, bar none. In fact, it truely amazes me when anyone says omething in this MMO is 'hard' as this is truely and 'easy mode' MMO from start to finish (and that's NOT really a bad thing as sometimes you want a more relaxed MMO exprience). But please, 'travel time' is not, and never really has been a large issue in this MMO.

[/ QUOTE ]

Never said it was a "large issue", just that it is something that exists. Trust me, having played WoW and ran everywhere for 40 levels travel time is nothing in this game compared to that. There is still some level of time involved with travel though.

Also, not every player has access to the Mission Teleporter, Oro portal, Pocket D porter or base.

[ QUOTE ]
Same with a pug. Not my fault you want to force people out of the AE so you might have a slightly better chance of not having to take the initiative and make your own damned team.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've no problems finding teams. It's fairly easy to make them for anything really. Can you go back and quote me where I said anything about not being able to find a team?

If this is what you think is my reasoning behind my posts here, you're entirely mistaken.

The main difference being your toon had to leave the AE building to do those radio missions and had to find a team to run the ITF.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd really like to know how you create custom bosses who dont deal damage.

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't say they don't deal damage. Of course some will hit harder than others will. The main difference being the players are custom designing the bosses to be as easy as possible. Low risk for high reward.

[ QUOTE ]
you need also a team to run a 54 custom boss farm and they hit harder than Cimerorans I can tell you

[/ QUOTE ]

Depends entirely on the selected powersets the bosses have.

[ QUOTE ]
The developers want it to be possible to go 1-50 within AE.

[/ QUOTE ]

AFAIK, no developer has ever posted "We want our players to level from 1 to 50 in AE only and never experience everything else the game has to offer".

[ QUOTE ]
Heck, I know someone who runs the ITF all the time, at least twice each day, and has been doing this since it was released. And the guy keeps getting fun, and buying expensive IO recipes with his merits. Are you going to judge him and say he must stop with his "farming" ?

[/ QUOTE ]

Not a very good comparison IMO;

1. The ITF requires a team of players who have completed a non-AE story arc to enter the Cimerora zone.

2. Cimeroran's are generally a lot tougher than a custom created enemy group of Lts and Bosses intentionally created with minimal attack powers and minimal defenses and can be easily defeated with brawl. The risk vs. reward ratio is entirely different between this and the ITF.

3. Even though the ITF takes place all in one zone, it still requires the players to travel more than 10 feet inside the AE building to complete the TF.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
One of my characters yesterday went from level 9 to 16 within the span of a single AE mission. Total time spent was around 30 minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not unheard of in non-AE content... with a full team on a higher difficulty, it is possible to level fairly quick outside of AE, so I would say that the XP rate is about the same.

Where AE DOES break this IMO is that it totally eliminates the time sinks of traveling; needing to report back to a contact etc. Instead of having to run across the Hollows or Steel Canyon back to your contact to get the next mission (or even just travel to the next mission), you run all of 10 feet to reset the arc and play it again.

I think this is something the developers did not take into consideration.

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah cuz it is super fun running across the map -

[/ QUOTE ]

Not debating whether or not something is "fun" since that is subjective to the player... just stating fact. Time sinks due to travel are part of most every MMO.

The only setting farming missions should have is the "Arc Locked" that the customer support team will put on them.

Positron was very clear about how they will be handling farms in the AE.

[ QUOTE ]
One of my characters yesterday went from level 9 to 16 within the span of a single AE mission. Total time spent was around 30 minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not unheard of in non-AE content... with a full team on a higher difficulty, it is possible to level fairly quick outside of AE, so I would say that the XP rate is about the same.

Where AE DOES break this IMO is that it totally eliminates the time sinks of traveling; needing to report back to a contact etc. Instead of having to run across the Hollows or Steel Canyon back to your contact to get the next mission (or even just travel to the next mission), you run all of 10 feet to reset the arc and play it again.

I think this is something the developers did not take into consideration.

Congratulations. You have won 100 dollars. Please press "1" to collect your prize.

[ QUOTE ]
I understand your intent behind level gating the MA to "force" people to realize that it's not the entire game. But at this point I think all that would do is slow down the MA farmers, not stop them.

[/ QUOTE ]

If I'm reading the OP's post correctly, he isn't mentioning farming, rather there are new players who think that the AE building and Atlas Park are the entire game and do not know of any other zones or content.

I personally get all sorts of questions like "how did you get that cape" or "how do I change my costume" ... from level 40+ players with only AE badges in Atlas Park.

Sure, some of them are farmers, but every now and again I run across someone who truly doesn't know there is more to the game. For this reason, I could get behind the AE contact showing up after level 15. If it were me, I'd make the AE contact level 30+.

[ QUOTE ]
The issue with regen back in the day wasn't really regen. It was regen combined with tough and weave.

[/ QUOTE ]

There was more to it than that. Back in the day, there were builds with perma stackable Dull Pain and perma MoG. Before ED, you could slot the healing to the extent it was very difficult to overwhelm the regen rate. We used to have a spines/regen scrapper who would tank Hamidon during our early raids. Even Hami could not do enough damage fast enough to kill him.

I think what hurts Regen more these days is not necessarily any kind of debuff resistance... it's all the clicking involved. It suffers from the redraw associated with these clicks too. If I had to re-roll my MA/Regen, I'd go SR or WP due to not having to stop attacking and click.

However, I also keep in mind that Regen is one of two scrapper sets that has access to Quick Recovery, so slotting for end reduction becomes less a necessity.

That said, I would not mind seeing some level of -regen resistance added into the set. Thematically, that makes sense to me for a regeneration set. It could be added in via Fast Healing or even Resilience to make it more of an attractive power to take.

Happy Birthday Cath! My best wishes to you for a safe, happy and healthy b'day. May all your birthday wishes come true!

I agree. One thing I will give World of Crapcraft is that the battleground merit system worked very well. Even if you lost, you got something and could apply them toward PvP related gear. The only drawback to it was that people would zone in on a team to the BG and just sit at the spawn point and not really do anything to collect the merits.

Ah, such sweet memories of Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley in World of Poopcraft where spawn camping was rampant; where you could enter a battleground with people 10 levels your superior and get pwned all night long... how I miss it so...

Anyway, back on topic. I like this idea. You already have something similar to it with RV (supposedly a "control the resources meets capture the flag zone), but combining it with a mayhem scenario would be slick.

Would you allow for points to be earned for destroying objects or preventing their destruction in some way?

[ QUOTE ]
My second one with a global friends PUG and a Sun Splitter handicap was 41 minutes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Pure gold

You can, but making it work as a link as it already does with non-AE contacts would be much more recognizable. It also avoids having to run to the AE terminal to search for the new arc.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Scratch that, same time but I want to try the new TF. What zone can you pick that up?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you run that one, you must yell "KKHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAANNNNN!!" in broadcast.

IMO the SF is more fun, but if you are running the hero one I can bring something.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, going to do it on heroes. I heard it wasnt that good. How long does it take from start to finish?

[/ QUOTE ]

Depends on your team build. What I've seen works best is something that can tank, 2 or 3 debuffers and the rest damage. We had that kind of team makeup a few nights ago and finished in under an hour.

[ QUOTE ]
Scratch that, same time but I want to try the new TF. What zone can you pick that up?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you run that one, you must yell "KKHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAANNNNN!!" in broadcast.

IMO the SF is more fun, but if you are running the hero one I can bring something.

Wanted to add a couple more items to this list;

[color= orange]"Set Dressing" for maps[/color]
It would be great to add some "set dressing" to maps that give it the flavor of what it is being used for in the story. For example, the ability to add "tech equipment" to a Tech Lab map to make it appear more like a laboratory. Think of having an option to add "Tech Set Dressing" which pulls from items that we have in creating bases. Same would go for arcane.

This could also include adding NPC civilians. I was running some arcs this weekend that took place in Atlas Park during a "parade", yet there was nothing there but enemy NPCs. These would add a great deal of immersion.


[color= orange]Add some of the Base Items as Defendable or Destructible Objects[/color]
I ran two arcs where you had to "destroy the enemy base generator" that was a very large map, supposedly powered by this tiny generator. I think it would add a lot to immersion and challenge to have items like the Fusion Generator as an item in the MA.

I know what you're saying and I see it as kind of a "kobyashi maru" in terms of slot space.

You can have an unlimited amount of custom groups right now, but you're limited to using ~2 or 3 completely decked out groups in one arc. If you want to introduce more custom groups, you need to use up another arc slot. It would be nice to be able to use more, such as 1 custom group for each mission in an arc. Having to stick with existing in-game enemy factions limits creativity in many respects.

True, people would complain about 200K being too small, but people would complain if the file size was 1MB or 100 gig. People will complain regardless of what the devs do. That shouldn't deter them from doing anything or trying to make improvements/enhancements to existing tools.

Folks, it would be really great if everyone could just grow up a little. The nitpick-fests and semantics do absolutely nothing for helping to make AE created content better.

I don't promote this arc to be any masterpiece of literature nor profess myself to be the second coming of Shakespeare.

I created this arc as something fun to do. If you enjoy it, that's fantastic. If not, that's great too. Everyone has their own preferences, opinions, likes and dislikes.

Anyway, I'm removing this arc from the AE and PMing a mod to lock down this thread as its become counter-productive at this point.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to run the arc and provide comments.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You do know that in I15 they already decreased the amount of space that Custom Critters take up? I was easily able to add in a 3rd Lt. and 2nd Boss, plus add auras to all of the Customs in the group, with lots of room left over. I can easily add in a couple more without running out of room, when the arc had been running out of room before.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes I am aware. You're still very limited in what you can use. Try making custom groups with more than 2 minions, 2 Lt.s, 2 Bosses, 2 EBs and an AV. It still takes up a lot of space.

[/ QUOTE ]
Okay, the group I was talking about has 4 minions, 3 Lts, and 2 bosses. (The there is room for the AV, but I don't need him for this arc so removed him from the group.) That is 9 custom characters, same as your list. The other custom group in the arc has 3 custom critters, 2 Bosses and 1 Lt., plus recolored versions of 7 standard mobs, along with the regular versions of all of the standard mobs. So I am up to 12, with room for at least 2 more. And every single one of the custom critters has some kind of aura, and most of them have a customized weapon.

The 4 mission arc is at like 82% right now. I could easily add in another mission, but the story doesn't require it. My problem these days is fitting necessary information into the 1000 character limits.

So I have a wide variety of customs already in the mission, with the wonderful option of adding in more for flavor. Yes more room would be nice, but the changes that have already happened have made things much better.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're just proving what I have been saying. What do you do if you would like to have a third custom group in your arc? Or a fourth or more?

If one or two custom groups are taking up that much file space (in your example ~82%), it can hopefully be made to work more efficiently. Alternatively, allow us a means to purchase greater file space along with the upcoming additional arc slots.

Yes, the changes that have been made are very nice and do help, yet IMO there is still room for improvement.

I sent in a bug report and petition about this, along with a few other things.

From what I got in response, there are some bugs with ally behavior, rescue missions failing and spawn placement not working.