The_Alt_oholic

Hmm.

I understand you correctly a farmer intentionally looks for exploits and abuses them until "a dev comes in and bust the farm." - that is to say that you believe the farmers exploiting what they can until they are caught are their exploit is shutdown.

Clearly, finding exploits and abusing them is against the EULA. The EULA says that were are to report exploits when we find them.

The agro cap is in place to help cut down on farming entire maps at once. I seriously doubt it will be stopped to help people that want to farm.

If you want to be a Tank and not a short bus Scrapper, take Taunt.

I'm strongly against reverting to the days that entire maps of warwolves are herded into a dumpster.

I see have seen tankers herd in non-farm missions. Herding a group or a room is different than herding a whole map.

My off-handed guess is that it charges like 10 per week or something once you have the basic accolade. This is as guess as I alt jump so much and have so many characters, but it seem right. I don't ever seem to have 3 or 7 charges unless I used some. I always start with having 10 or 15 or whatever per Day Job power.

Your levels at a day job improve after getting a badge that can help recharge things faster. This especially is evident in the Market Teleporter which will recharge faster as you get to the advanced levels of the Day Job badge - or at least it used to.

Excuse me for continuing this off thread topic but I feel like I need to address it.

Okay, then sitting at a table isn't role-playing either.
Until you actually dress-up in a costume and "pretend" that you are your character and actually do physical combat with things then you aren't role-playing?

I can't say that I've run or worked at a gaming store, but I can say that I played in pen-and-paper RPGs for about 20 years or so before I started playing CoH. I free-lance wrote for a RPG gaming company for around 3 years.
Making your own call on what role-playing is just that.

There are different levels of role-playing.
You definitely aren't roll playing in a MMORPG as there are no dice to roll.

I have never bothered with all the OOC garbage in CoX because when you talk about mechanics and such, you are obviously OOC. THere are too many times in CoX that you can't chat in character fast enough to get your ideas across to your party in a timely fashion. That is simply how it is.
However, when you have time to stand around outside of a mission waiting on people or you are standing around in the Pocket D trying to RP that is role-playing as far as I'm concerned.

Nitpick how you would like. That is up to you.

I'm not a mini-maxer in CoX. I build my characters based on character conception as much as possible; I don't use Hero Planner or any character building guides. That isn't to say that I don't utilize Raptor packs or the like to get around with a magic character if they are available.

As for the mechanics of the game not being RP friendly, sure they aren't. But neither are +2 Swords in D&D. As soon as you say +2 the RP is out the window according to your definition. And on the D&D note, as soon as the DM talks about situations they are occ or are you saying as taking on a narrator point of view that they are still role-playing?
But you don't have to address mechanics while you are role-playing. The hows and whys of what or how your character is doing something is up to you to decide in CoX. If you don't want to decide that you are casting spells or built some tech gear then you are the one that isn't role-playing. Players that take time to do so are.

Each part of the role-playing process is just that.
Even you agree that character conception is part of that process. In fact, it is fundamental in role-playing. With out having a character conception, there is no character to role-play.

Is character conception sometimes used as an excuse for character's powers? Sure. Isn't that the point?

Once that foundation is in place, then you can build more on the role-playing to your own tastes and to the level that others will interact with you as-they-say "ic".

If you don't want to have a RP experience in an MMORPG that is your choice.

There are those of us that do RP on various levels in CoX - regardless of your opinion or not.

I'm for this kind of mechanic as well, but I would restrict the AE in zones so that a character could not enter AE missions in a zone that is below their level - with the exception of the Rikti Warzone (I'm adding this now as this would pretty much fall within my guidelines for below, and it is the only dual-alignment zone with an AE.)
This plan removes spamming for higher level AE teams from the starting zones.

And, if the DEVs, really want to help put a stop of PL'ing in the AE, they should not allow characters to access AE missions in zones that are more than 20 levels above them - or - characters that are 20 levels below the highest member of the team are automatically kicked when they try to enter a mission that is over 20 levels above them.
I think the 20 level spread is generous as the AE was not intended to be used as a power-leveling tool at all.
This second plan works to stop pl'ing in the AE by not allowing level 1's and level 50's to be on the same team in the AE regardless of what zone they are in.

In many cases it is true, regardless if you say otherwise.

Not true.

I've seen role-playing in CoX and not just in the Pocket D on Virtue, and not just by the few players that I normal play with. I PuG a lot and many times spontaneous RP breaks out about one thing or another.

I'm not saying that everyone is strictly "in character" the entire time. I'm saying that role-playing does go on. In fact, as soon as you write a bio that is a back-story, you are role-playing and there are plenty of characters with back-story bios.

Thanks for the clarification.

And you have to unlock the CCVanguardSigil by using Vanguard Merits at a RWZ terminal in a Vanguard Base.
I just figured this out last night when I was turning in some Vanguard Merits.

There are people that will kick you as soon as they see that you do knockback. Those people are few-and-far between.

If a tank or scrapper is leading the team, you are more likely to get kicked if you us your knockback to knock enemies away from them.

Some people will kick you if your knock back is causing problems for the team.

My 50 blaster is energy/energy and he was never kicked from a team, but I relied mostly on single target attacks.

I agree with the others about trying to knock the enemy into walls and into corners.
I will add to knock enemies toward melee characters and not away from them. So when enemies get through to the backfield, feel free to knock the enemies back up to the front line all day long - since they shouldn't be back there in the first place.

It all comes back to understanding what the rest of the team is doing and working to use your powers in order to augment the powers of the rest of the team.

For example::
If there is a controller on the team, wait until they hold/immobilize the enemy before you attack.
If there is an ice slice down or freezing rain, use your knock back to knock enemies back onto/into it versus off/out of it.

Of course, if the team is starting to wipe, knocking the enemy all over the place just might give your team enough time to recover or escape.

Which means that farmers (that are marketeers) do have an effect on the price of common salvage.
And if common salvage sells for a lot, then even non-marketeer farmers will be likely to sell it.

So at least some farmers do affect it because they are marketeers, and even non-marketeer farmers get involved when prices are high on common salvage - which they have been (in cycles) since the AE was introduced.

As an Anti-farmer that has reported many exploit farm/pl'ing missions in the AE, I'll let you know my criteria.

We are talking about the balance of risk versus rewards. Therefore, anytime that they players are given a far greater advantage over the enemies in the mission or the mission is set to yield far greater rewards than normal, I consider it an exploit farm.

That is to say, if you feel that you are getting far greater rewards than you should be - and this is obvious enough in many cases that even someone that hasn't played the game before can say "hey? why am I leveling so fast?" - then you know it is an exploit.
If the AE mission isn't constructed in the same kind of mob balance as a normal mission, I consider it an exploit farm

I would go into specifics, but we are not supposed to post exploits in the forums.

I agree. The OP seems to be picky and so was the person that didn't want to team with them.

I can make a team of any combination of AT's at random based on the players that are willing to accept invites and have a team that will be able to mow through rugged by level 5-7 and inv by level 30-35 without team wipes as long as the team works together as a team - and - the players that are having a hard time are willing to modify their behavior to improve their survivability and mesh with the team dynamics better.
Usually when someone falls on my teams it will be the same player falling over and over again because they won't modify their tactics to fit the teams dynamics.

Then again, I don't like running the same kinds of teams all the time. It's boring to me.
I like the excitement of seeing teams being successful with odd combination of powers.

My preferred team type at this point is the no tanker/no scrapper team.
And like I said, most of the time no one falls on the team unless someone is over anxious and then it is usually that character that falls...repeatedly.

I disagree.

Not only does it give you the opportunity to tag someone as disagreeable that other people may agree with, it give you the ability to insult them at range with a comment that only they can see, and pretty much must see when they open their options window. That nasty comment could come from anywhere and you have no idea where it came from

It also allows populars (as a cliche term) to bully outsiders.

It can't possibly be that there are so many power-leveled 50's trying to get purple sets?

The more characters that are power-leveled to 50, the more demand there is for purples. If you are going to get power leveled to 50 so you can be uber, then you have to have purples to gain full uberness.
The more you are willing to cheat to get to that uberness, the more likely you are to buy from RMTrs so that you have enough loot to buy all those purples at the higher prices.

To some isn't about playing the game any more, it is only about uberness.
It is sadt hat some of these players are the newest ones.

Not true.
I'm not going to say what my nitch is because that would be stupid on my part, but I am selling what I'm selling at prices that I could only get on 2XP Weekends before - a price that is more than x3 what I used to sell them for - and I'm not selling purples or +procs.

There are other items that have gone up as well, but not as much. I'm not going to point out which as that will narrow down the market and spread intel.

I'm a market PvP'r.
Farming and AE babies are inflating the market regardless of if you or other players decide to say otherwise.
As I've said, I'm selling items for x3 what I was before AE. I'm taking advantage of the inflation that you and some others (all farmers it seems) claim does not exist.

Actually it doesn't. It would be a lot slower path to level to 50 by just mission complete rewards, but you could level to 50, so it does not invalidate the statement.

I would rather that we didn't have to remove the majority of mission rewards in order to get this situation straitened out, but that is becoming more obviously the case.

I'd be happy enough if the tickets only unlocked unlockable-content, and I've already unlocked it all.


Even if only Dev's Choice and Hall of Fame missions were the only missions to give xp in the MA, you would still be able to level to 50 in the MA and,thus, the statement that you can level to 50 in the MA would not be invalidated.

The sad part is that some farming missions may have become DEV's Choice or Hall of Fame missions because of the criteria used to select the missions and the fact that they may not be "inspected" before they given these rewards.
Or that is at least what appeared to be happening as far as I could tell for a while, maybe this oversight has been resolved. It may have even been resolved a while back. I've been fed up with the situation in the AE for quite a while now and don't inspect it like I did in the early days.

I see nowhere that indicates that MA is an alternate path to get to level 50 in less than a day in anything released by Paragon Studios or NCSoft - that is a notion that is only lodged in the brains of exploiters.


The very least that could be done at this point is to separate a farming AE from the normal AE and place the farming AE in a non starting zone, maybe in it's own zone that his new and has everything the farms need/want.
At that point, the Farmers can have no complains when their accounts are closed when they try to get farming teams or post farming content in a non-farm area of the game. If this happened at least the farmers wouldn't be in Atlas any more and their wouldn't be farming missions in the way when people were looking for the "story" missions in the AE.
I'm still under the understanding that the DEVs don't want any farming going on in the AE - let alone the exploit-farming that is so common place in the AE.

I have managed to dig this up ::

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ing#post967505

If the DEVs aren't against farming in the AE, then why is this mentioned?

"...Players that have abused the reward system egregiously may lose benefits they have gained - leading up to and perhaps including losing access to the characters power-leveled in this fashion. ..."

"...Players are urged to avoid using common farming terms in their story title and/or descriptions. Even if it’s a joke, DO NOT run the risk of having an arc banned and requiring Customer Support to grant you your publishing slot back. ..."


They don't want farming in the AE.

There were older threads that said what I have said pretty much verbatim in regards to the fact that they do not want the AE to be used as a "farming or power-leveling tool".

I'm so glad that the EU is on these forums now.

Hopefully, your insight will bring in a breath of fresh air on this issue.
I know I've waging a massive battle against AE farming in the NA forums.
There are plenty of NA players that are insistent that the DEVs have never said that they don't want farming in the AE and that they have a right to exploit the AE as long as there is an ability to do so - regardless of how much we remind them that the DEVs are against farming in the AE and that they can be banned, etc. for exploiting the AE.

I'm very glad to hear that the EU servers have managed to avoid the evils that are on going on the NA servers.

Thank you.

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Secrets of the Lake
arc# 174351

I did. And had before you posted, and continued down.
Turbo jumped of the deep-end, but I did agree with the first posts about letting the team fall if they were blindly running after a player that didn't have a grip of what was going on - like the OP's situation.

I have both dived into help when I see my team getting in over-it's-head and decided "that's way too bad a situation and I'm not going to fall because they are obviously diving into a situation that the team can not handle."
My backing of Turbo came the comments in regards to that. The "let them fall in order to let them learn a lesson" is what I read out of Turbo's original posts. Since I think that is one of the two viable options ( 1) save the day or 2) save yourself), I felt that Turbo's position at that point was viable.

Maybe you read something different into it at that point, or I wasn't reading the text the same what that you were.

At any rate, back to the original post -- I still think that the reason that the OP was kicked was Tankertude and not because the Forcebubble was interfering with the team as a whole.