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Curbing Farming

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Radiac
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Curbing Farming

Ideas I've had about the kinds of farming that went on in CoX and how to combat them:

1. Award mission success to anyone who, in a given mission, defeats some ungodly number of minions, lts, bosses etc, even if they don't click all the glowwies or defeat the named boss. By ungodly number I mean, like 2 times what you'd get if you did the mission with maximum spawn settings. This is the "mercy rule" basically for the mobs. From a flavor text standpoint, this could be reflective of the mob surrendering after being thoroughly trounced enough by the hero.

2. OR Count a mission as FAILED by anyone who, in a given mission, defeats some ungodly number of minions, lts, and bosses without actually completing the mission objectives. The NPC giving the mission could scold the hero for wasting too much time punching stuff and not actually investigating the problem. This could come off like the police chief chewing out the loose cannon cop for playing it fast and loose instead of by the book, etc. Maybe "failed" is not the right word, but definitely don't award the mission success bonus if such exists, and consider the case closed on that mission, so to speak.

Different missions could be explained up front by the NPC to be type 1 or type 2 from the above. Some NPCs could be "all type 1" or "all type 2" etc.

While this may not curb all forms of farming, it has the potential, I think, to make a significant dent in the type of mission farms we had in CoX. This way if people do want to just mindlessly grind mobs, they have to go to a place like the Crash Site or Boomtown etc to do it. This gets more people "outdoors" visibly fighting the mobs out in the open world, which at least makes the place feel more lively, I would hope.

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I'm not trying to provoke,

I'm not trying to provoke, but really, why should farming be suppressed?

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I think there's the

I think there's the assumption in some sense that a mission is intended to be a thing that will be offered to the hero, and once accepted then the hero will attempt to complete it as best he or she can, not just milk it for all the XP/loot he or she cares for ad nauseam. Call it an immersion thing or a suspension of disbelief thing or whatever. I think it's more realistic to have rules like I mentioned in my original post than not to. Without this stuff, or somethign like it, you're just restocking the mission map with infinite mooks over and over, instantly, as soon as one exits and resets. It immediately feels more "gamey" and less "role-play-y" when you allow that.

That said I'm totally in favor of repeatable missions, I just want to complete them over and over not farm them by exploiting cracks in the mechanics of how things work to controvert something that was intended to work one way, but I'm abusing it for personal gain by zagging when expected to zig. It doesn't feel very heroic to do that. That said maybe farming, in a meta sense, is a MORE immersive thing for villains to do. You can flagrantly abuse the rules as written for personal gain, which is what a villain WOULD do. I was never much of a redsider in CoX so I wouldn't be an expert on that.

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Unfortunately I think people

Unfortunately I think people will always find some way to farm. I believe the Devs in CoX started to give up on the whole idea of stopping and curbing farming there towards the end because as soon as they nailed the coffin shut on one way someone else found another. It's the nature of the beast. How about instead of trying to stop it or curb it, we make something that is specifically designed for it separate from the story arc? That way the people that want to farm can do so, and the people that want to play the story can do so. Any time you try to tell somebody you can't do this, someone always says, "Wanna bet?".

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What about farming is a

What about farming is a problem?

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The concern over farming is

The concern over farming is in the use of it for "MAX XP L00TZ" like the monkey farm exploit. Not an issue for us.

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But I like clearing maps. I

But I like clearing maps. I mean REALLY like maps where I go through and kill everything so now im being told my playstyle is wrong?
Also I cant see, from a roleplaying perspective a Hero being told "Criminal Organisation X" is doing really bad things. Go in and stop them but don't arrest everyone only those that you need to to complete the mission (as Heroes we don't kill we arrest - although some heroes will kill its up to you).
Why would I leave any of the villains/criminals free to cause further mischief?

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My view is that there are a

My view is that there are a variety of things that will be fun to do in COT, as in COH. Some players like some play-styles, some like others. We should enable lots of options, and allow players to have all the fun that they want to have. Live and let live, even if it creates some differential outcomes.

For example, I was never a PVP'er. Having PVP caused PVE players some minor hardships -- we had to go to PVP zones to get Shivans, and also for badges, and for Warburg nukes, for example. Some of the best, and most expensive enhancements were drops from PVP, and so became very expensive if you were a PVE'er and wanted to get them.

But I think we should have PVP. It brings in and at least partially sustains a group of players that add a lot to the game.

A similar argument can be advanced about having farming. I think farming is going to happen, no matter what. It would be better to plan for it, and enable it, and realize that lots of players want to get loot and drops from just going in killing (oops, I mean "arresting") lots of bad guys. I farmed, a bit. not too much, but a bit. It was fun. But I also "farmed" the streets around the high end of Peregrine Island very frequently for the same reason. That location provided a continuously regenerating supply of level 50+ enemies who could be killed in small groups just for the fun of it. High-level street sweeping. It's fun, at least for me, and also for many others. It should be enabled. And yes, I got a lot of influence and loot from it. I earned that loot.

Now, I'm not talking about exploits. That can be suppressed. But many of us know that it was just plain fun to go to Cimerora sometimes and clean the walls, testing a newly created level 50 against large mobs.

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At the risk of sounding

At the risk of sounding obtuse, what am I supposed to take "Not an issue for us." to mean? Do you mean:

A) We don't care if this happens, and assuming it will happen we won't try to discourage or prevent it.

OR

B) The way the game is going to work this won't really be a thing people feel they need to do in any kind of big way, like they did in CoX.

For the record, I would prefer B.

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Also farming is needed for

Also farming is needed for Badges/Accolades/etc like the one where you needed to kill 100 Clockwork-things that the bosses spawned (names??).
If you had a mission with lots of Clockwork bosses you would want to clear that map to help with the Accolade, but not if I get penalised for it.

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I'm leaning more towards A.

I'm leaning more towards A.

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cybermitheral wrote:
cybermitheral wrote:

Also farming is needed for Badges/Accolades

I do mot believe the farming 'issue' includes clearing a map of enemies. The 'issue' of farming is in finding a way to Side-step completing a mission/map so that it can be run again, repeatedly. So, instead of progressing through the content, a person is re-running the same content, over and over.

And they do that because there is some risk/reward in the mission that is out of proportion to the effort required to participate in it.

Come on, Cybermitheral, you KNOW this, stop playing dumb.

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Consultant wrote:
Consultant wrote:

I'm not trying to provoke, but really, why should farming be suppressed?

JayBezz wrote:

What about farming is a problem?

Fireheart wrote:

I do mot believe the farming 'issue' includes clearing a map of enemies. The 'issue' of farming is in finding a way to Side-step completing a mission/map so that it can be run again, repeatedly. So, instead of progressing through the content, a person is re-running the same content, over and over.
And they do that because there is some risk/reward in the mission that is out of proportion to the effort required to participate in it.

I don't think there's anything fundamentally "wrong" with farming in MMOs and I don't think the Devs should ever spend too much time trying to eliminate it completely because that would be a fool's errand.

But I think Fireheart hit the issue on the head talking about farming being a symptom of place in the game where "risk vs. reward" is not balanced well. All things being equal MMO players will always gravitate towards scenarios that provide the largest gain for the least amount of work. That's not a "bad" thing in general. But if the particular case allows for TOO MUCH reward for TOO LITTLE risk then something needs to be adjusted. It's all a matter of degree and I think most people, if they're honest with themselves, knows when a particular situation is simply far too broken to remain in place.

Farming is not a "black or white" thing as far as the Devs go - it's not all good or all bad. But they will likely attempt to adjust/prevent the most extreme examples of it in favor of keeping it within acceptable limits. This was the mindset of the CoH Devs and I see no reason why that would or should be different in CoT.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Farming is not a "black or white" thing as far as the Devs go - it's not all good or all bad. But they will likely attempt to adjust/prevent the most extreme examples of it in favor of keeping it within acceptable limits. This was the mindset of the CoH Devs and I see no reason why that would or should be different in CoT.

It is also a reason as to why the Dreck mission got changed to a timed mission as well. Because far too many people were running/resetting it in teams of 8 *repeatedly* one after another without actually completing it due to the potential for double XP to be awarded from the Freakshow. The nice large openness of the map coupled with a high mob density also contributed to this as well for being a "PL'ers" map.

And once IO's came in, it wouldn't surprise me if it became a decent one for just farming recipes as well...

I actually blew my Dreck mission away a few years after the change so I could get a friend of mine to 50. He had spent a very long time without actually hitting level cap... about 6 years or so. And I had been away from the game (although not away from my friends though) for a few years then...

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Farming is not a "black or white" thing as far as the Devs go - it's not all good or all bad. But they will likely attempt to adjust/prevent the most extreme examples of it in favor of keeping it within acceptable limits. This was the mindset of the CoH Devs and I see no reason why that would or should be different in CoT.

It is also a reason as to why the Dreck mission got changed to a timed mission as well. Because far too many people were running/resetting it in teams of 8 *repeatedly* one after another without actually completing it due to the potential for double XP to be awarded from the Freakshow. The nice large openness of the map coupled with a high mob density also contributed to this as well for being a "PL'ers" map.
And once IO's came in, it wouldn't surprise me if it became a decent one for just farming recipes as well...
I actually blew my Dreck mission away a few years after the change so I could get a friend of mine to 50. He had spent a very long time without actually hitting level cap... about 6 years or so. And I had been away from the game (although not away from my friends though) for a few years then...

The original "untimed" Dreck mission was a prime example of this.

I actually used that mission myself for some occasional farming (back in the first few years when having, say, 100 million INF was a uber-huge amount). But when that mission finally got nerfed I wasn't totally mad or surprised in the least. In fact I was sort of amazed they let it last as long as they did. *shrugs*

The "fixing" of the Dreck mission didn't stop farming nor was it actually meant to stop it. Everyone jumped over to alternative farms (like the Demon missions) almost instantly and life went on. The point was that the Dreck mission was by-itself simply TOO good as far as the Devs were concerned and it had to be toned down.

The Devs don't care that we farm - they just don't want it to be so easy that it's all that ANYONE wants to do.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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I'm not going to say I didn't

I'm not going to say I didn't farm missions occasionally, I definitely did. On Radiac, my main, I had a mission against Carnies in a warehouse or something specifically for trying to get the Archmage accolade, then after I got it I kept it in case someone else wanted to do it.

I also used to try to do the Praetorian missions from the Portal Corp contacts to get the Portal Jockey Accolade on all my toons, and would usually try to invite others to get in on that badge action as well.

I just think it feels more flavoriffic to actually complete the missions instead of just milking them for XP/swag/badges. Compare farming a Council mission for the werewolves badge to actually completing repeatable missions against Mot's cronies in Dark Astoria. In the repeatable missions, you can at least accomplish something, like clearing that particular map of those particular mobs, or whatever, and feel like you're not cheating the NPC. (I realize its just a game and they're not real, the NPCs, but from a role play standpoint... you know what I mean).

Anyway, assuming anyone DID want to stop mission farming, do you think this system would accomplish that? If so, what kind of farming would people resort to? Open world hunting? I don't really consider that farming at all, actually. There you're "cleaning up the streets" if you're a hero or "taking over the neighborhood" if a villain.

In the areas where there's a high mob density (your Boomtowns and Crash Sites, etc) then I think if you make the open world mobs "high difficulty" meaning large mob size and bosses present, etc but relatively "docile" meaning they are not easily provoked accidentally and they're easy enough to avoid altogether when you're just "passing through" so to speak, then open world PVE has it's merits. All you need to do is have areas where various mob types spawn in large numbers so that you can get the various badges you want. That said, maybe some of them should be rarer or harder to find, just to make THOSE badges less easy to get. That way you could have events that spawn the rarer baddies and attract people with such.

I think as long as there's enough soloable repeatable content, e.g. open world hunting space and/or repeatable NPC missions, there should be no need for CoX style mission farming, really. That said I don't understand why people are so stuck on keeping it.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

I think as long as there's enough soloable repeatable content, e.g. open world hunting space and/or repeatable NPC missions, there should be no need for CoX style mission farming, really. That said I don't understand why people are so stuck on keeping it.

For what it's worth I don't have an overriding need for CoH style mission farming in CoT. Ideally CoT will have enough content spread around in such a way that there would be no need to keep specific missions for farming.

That said I do suspect that CoT will develop its own version of "farming" that might not require hanging on to specific missions but may well involve something else. Whatever that "something else" is I'm sure the CoT Devs will keep it under control accordingly.

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A combination of both A and B

A combination of both A and B, like so many other things.

To avoid exploit farming, putting in an XP curve. Cannot earn more than x amount per hour. Prevents the "monkey farm" and "winter lord baby" type exploits.

To avoid mission repeat farming, put in a per-mission XP curve. The more times you run the same mission in a set period, the less experience you earn per run.

Avoiding the "kill 100,000 Rikti Monkey" type badges.

It does not prevent it, but it does make it less rewarding, which is all we are aiming to do. If someone really wants to beat up Tyche 15 times in a row, well, have at it. But we're not going to let you powerlevel someone from 1 to cap in a day doing so however.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

It does not prevent it, but it does make it less rewarding, which is all we are aiming to do.

This pretty much sums up what I think the Devs' attitude on farming in any game should be.

We all know, sooner or later, someone will figure out how to PL characters from "1 to cap" in a day or two in CoT. It's going to happen despite every good intention to prevent it. But as long as the method to do that is kept so annoying and/or monotonous that 99.9% of the playerbase won't want to bother with it then that's all you can (or really need to) do.

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I especially like the idea of

I especially like the idea of avoiding badges with excessive kill (or heal or whatever) requirements. I must admit I did resort to some farming behaviors I wasn't proud of to get some of those type badges in the past.

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Do we actually know if there

Do we actually know if there will be badges for something equivalent of "kill 100 ghosts?"

Those ghost kills were always easier to do with a team, rather than on your own...will we be able to get "credit" for each kill that a team member makes?

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For what it's worth, I think

For what it's worth, I think there should be a badge for defeating some number of everything. I mean, CoX had a badge for Tsoo Sorcerors, but not the minion level ninjas, ink men, etc. You could make the common thug badges really uncreatively named, like "Defeated 100 Ninjas" and then award more awesome sounding named badges for harder-to-get stuff further up the food chain.

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Fire Away wrote:
Fire Away wrote:

I especially like the idea of avoiding badges with excessive kill (or heal or whatever) requirements. I must admit I did resort to some farming behaviors I wasn't proud of to get some of those type badges in the past.

The CoH Poster Child for Ridiculously Excessive Requirements: The original version of the Empath badge.

The original version of the Empath badge (established in Issue 2) required you to heal 1,000,000,000 hit points to earn. To put that into perspective it was conservatively estimated (by multiple players who were well versed in mathematical analysis) that it would have taken the average player roughly 20 YEARS to earn that via "normal play". In this case "normal play" (a.k.a. not farming in any way) was estimated to be an average amount of healing done over the course of an 8 hour play session. Imagine having to play the same character every day for 8 hours a day for 20 years just to earn one top badge!

The true irony of this situation was that the Dev in charge of badges at the time (Matt Miller, a.k.a. Positron) repeatedly claimed that there was "nothing wrong with the one billion value" and that it was "working as intended".

So one has to wonder why when Issue 13 rolled around that the requirement for this badge was dropped to 100 million. If the original was "working as intended" why did the requirement get cut to 10% of its original value? As it turns out the Devs adjusted it again all the way down to 10 million in Issue 16. This means that the final version of Empath only required 1% the number of HPs the original version took. Working as intended my ass... ;)

No other badge was as radically reduced as Empath was. It went all the way from a badge you were practically required to farm every day for 6+ months down to something a person could get almost without thinking about it in a few weeks. I'm not in favor of trivial badges in games, but likewise I'm certainly not in favor of badges that take decades to earn either. Hoepfully the CoT Devs have learned the lesson here.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

For what it's worth, I think there should be a badge for defeating some number of everything. I mean, CoX had a badge for Tsoo Sorcerors, but not the minion level ninjas, ink men, etc. You could make the common thug badges really uncreatively named, like "Defeated 100 Ninjas" and then award more awesome sounding named badges for harder-to-get stuff further up the food chain.

Some of the later CoH "defeat badges" had an interesting mechanic (that I hope CoT borrows) where you got more "credit" towards the badge if you defeated boss versions of the critters instead of minion versions. This allowed people to work on those badges at their own pace based on their capabilites and/or goals.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

For what it's worth, I think there should be a badge for defeating some number of everything. I mean, CoX had a badge for Tsoo Sorcerors, but not the minion level ninjas, ink men, etc. You could make the common thug badges really uncreatively named, like "Defeated 100 Ninjas" and then award more awesome sounding named badges for harder-to-get stuff further up the food chain.

The route they ended up going in CoX was to make the defeat badges for any of the spawn types for a faction. You can see that in the Pretoria faction defeat badges. I think that is a bit more sane than having a separate badge for each level and/or type of spawn per faction. Though, I would not be opposed to badges for special named eb/av/gm level spawns from a faction.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

A combination of both A and B, like so many other things.
To avoid exploit farming, putting in an XP curve. Cannot earn more than x amount per hour. Prevents the "monkey farm" and "winter lord baby" type exploits.
To avoid mission repeat farming, put in a per-mission XP curve. The more times you run the same mission in a set period, the less experience you earn per run.
Avoiding the "kill 100,000 Rikti Monkey" type badges.
It does not prevent it, but it does make it less rewarding, which is all we are aiming to do. If someone really wants to beat up Tyche 15 times in a row, well, have at it. But we're not going to let you powerlevel someone from 1 to cap in a day doing so however.

From the spirit of what you're written so far, I can try to extrapolate that there might be some kind of rule or mechanic preventing the level-capped characters (who do not care about XP anymore, presumably) from mission repeat farming for influence, randmomized drops, etc. Options 1 and 2 as I mentioned them in my original post would do that, but I'd be curious to find out whether or not MWM is in fact going to prevent or discourage that sort of thing.

As I've already mentioned, this may lead to more open-world street sweeping, which I personally would prefer to mission repeat farming, as it get's the people into the public areas, and generally makes the game look more full, and thus more fun.

On the other hand, another thing you could do is make the average quantity and quality of randomized swag drops a function of the amount of XP gained for the event that triggers the drop. That is, defeating a minion in the 3rd run through a mission might get you very little in terms of influence and swag, but defeating that same minion the first time through got you decent returns. Also, the mission success rewards would be more desirable then, one would hope. For the level-capped, just base the swag return on the amount of XP that WOULD have been earned, had the person not been level-capped. That might work quite well, I would think.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

Doctor Tyche wrote:
A combination of both A and B, like so many other things.
To avoid exploit farming, putting in an XP curve. Cannot earn more than x amount per hour. Prevents the "monkey farm" and "winter lord baby" type exploits.
To avoid mission repeat farming, put in a per-mission XP curve. The more times you run the same mission in a set period, the less experience you earn per run.
Avoiding the "kill 100,000 Rikti Monkey" type badges.
It does not prevent it, but it does make it less rewarding, which is all we are aiming to do. If someone really wants to beat up Tyche 15 times in a row, well, have at it. But we're not going to let you powerlevel someone from 1 to cap in a day doing so however.

From the spirit of what you're written so far, I can try to extrapolate that there might be some kind of rule or mechanic preventing the level-capped characters (who do not care about XP anymore, presumably) from mission repeat farming for influence, randmomized drops, etc. Options 1 and 2 as I mentioned them in my original post would do that, but I'd be curious to find out whether or not MWM is in fact going to prevent or discourage that sort of thing.
As I've already mentioned, this may lead to more open-world street sweeping, which I personally would prefer to mission repeat farming, as it get's the people into the public areas, and generally makes the game look more full, and thus more fun.
On the other hand, another thing you could do is make the average quantity and quality of randomized swag drops a function of the amount of XP gained for the event that triggers the drop. That is, defeating a minion in the 3rd run through a mission might get you very little in terms of influence and swag, but defeating that same minion the first time through got you decent returns. Also, the mission success rewards would be more desirable then, one would hope. For the level-capped, just base the swag return on the amount of XP that WOULD have been earned, had the person not been level-capped. That might work quite well, I would think.

If you could concisely state, Radiac...what's the problem that needs to be solved via diminishing returns on INF gained over time, if the player is not leveraging an exploit?

Folks will spend time in public areas if it's an attractive and fun option; which I'm sure is a MWM design goal. There's no need to drive folks to public areas by removing other attractive and fun options...particularly, if no exploitation constitutes the attraction and fun.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Some of the later CoH "defeat badges" had an interesting mechanic (that I hope CoT borrows) where you got more "credit" towards the badge if you defeated boss versions of the critters instead of minion versions. This allowed people to work on those badges at their own pace based on their capabilites and/or goals.

Unrelated but related (in a fashion): This is how Wildstar does their "Kill X" missions. They do it as a Percentage value that goes up accordingly... with the "easiest" mobs giving the smallest increase, and some of the "group scale" mobs giving a huge bonus. And this also scales according to level as well, so if you are slightly lower level than the mob, they count more than if you are the mobs level.

So this encourages you to sometimes go in over your heads if you want to do it "nice and fast", or take the slower route if you want to do it normally. To be honest, because they also share contributions between several players, very few "kill X" quests take a long time to complete, and you are typically doing 2 or 3 (or more) other things at the same time anyway

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Catherine America wrote:
Catherine America wrote:

If you could concisely state, Radiac...what's the problem that needs to be solved via diminishing returns on INF gained over time, if the player is not leveraging an exploit?

This is where we once again get into the murky waters of what the Devs of any game would define an "exploit" to be.

Sometimes it doesn't have to be some kind of bug or specific mechanic involved - sometimes it's just a matter of the Devs arbitrarily deciding that being able to earn X amount of INF per second is fine but being able to earn Y amount per second isn't.

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To Catherine America:

To Catherine America:

Dr. Tyche mentioned some rules as pertains to powerleveling and so forth and those rules, as far as I can tell, do not affect the level capped, thus I was asking for some additional detail regarding the level capped. Whether or not you want to call mission repeat farming an exploit, I was merely asking for more information about that specific segment of the population and how mission repeat farming may or may not be handled. I also mentioned how this related back to my original post and other ideas I had about it. Since it is my theory that my original ideas, were they implemented, might push potential power levelers and gold farmers to the public areas to hunt, I threw that in as probably being a positive thing, in the sense that people can see people having fun. It's like looking through the window of a restaurant, if there are many people in there apparently enjoying their meal, it must be good. It's basically good advertising for the game itself, I feel, that's all I meant by that.

It's also possible that people might just do more missions which can be completed and are repeatable, like the ones the one contact in Dark Astoria had. No story Arc, no progress, just "go here, defeat the badguys, maybe get some threads" or whatever. Repeatable (completable) missions. Or people might do more TFs, I don't know. I suspect they'll go wherever the rewards are highest.

Now I will happily give you my opinion on mission-repeat farming. I define mission repeat farming as "doing all but the last little bit of a mission, thus leaving the mission uncompleted, then exiting the mission and resetting it so as to restock it, then going back in and doing most but not all of that same mission again, rinse repeat for personal gain in the form of XP and/or influence and/or swag drops." This behavior, IS in my opinion, an exploit, due to the immersion-breaking nature of it, whether it's being done for XP or swag or both. Personally, I would expect, in a role playing sense, that: 1) the mission map isn't going to just automatically refill with mooks, instantly, every time you leave and come back, ad infinitum, 2) your contact that gave you the mission has a right to expect you to try to complete it to the best of your ability, which leads to 3) the contact might punish you for NOT trying to do what they asked you to do (and what your character, one has to assume, agreed to do) for them.

If you want to know how I really feel, if it were up to me, not all maps would restock with mobs instantly and completely as soon as you exit and reset. It should probably take a few days of game time for the badguys to get reinforcements enough to restock the map completely, with some trickling in slowly, or maybe the boss has to call in the back platoon all in one shot wait a few hours for them to arrive, etc. Either way, the "instant refill" thing should be quire rare, and only used in places where it fits the flavor of the thing, like the evil cult is opening a gate to another dimension filled with mobs and they're just pouring in, etc. Also, as I mentioned before, NPC contacts would react differently to you if you took their mission, told them you'd do it, then spent that time milking it for all it was worth instead of just completing it to the best of your ability.

If I'm going to design an MMORPG, then I feel it should be designed with the RPG aspect in mind to this extent. If somebody else wants to design a game with the power leveling and gold farming players in mind and make a game that appeals most to them, then that designer should probably make a game where the most lucrative mission is the only one that exists, everyone does it, nobody can ever possibly finish it, and all the mobs are vulnerable to everyone's attacks and have attacks are that highly resistible by the players. I personally would hate that game, but then that's not my "play style" I prefer the "immersive gaming RPG experience" play style to the "grind mindlessly and endlessly for swag and turn the fun game into a boring repetition of simple menial task" play style.

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1) Again though, what is the

1) Again though, in short, what is the problem that needs solving via a "DR on INF over time" solution?

2) I don't understand the relationship between immersion-breaking and an exploit. Immersion exists in-game wherever it's found, and otherwise one's own mind. Arresting 250 ePunks over-and-over again may deeply immerse one into the realm of feeling like superhero...as opposed to "only heroic" by stopping the ePunks from bringing down the web.

3) Related to #1... XP over time is going to be throttled or capped, so what's the trouble with mission-farming by level-capped toons? Or level-capped minus 1, minus 2 or minus 3 toons even?

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Avoiding the "kill 100,000 Rikti Monkey" type badges.

Personally, I find that when there's a faction that my character really likes to fight getting a special badge/title for killing 100,000 of them is really rewarding.

It has nothing to do with the XP gained or mission replay but it has a lot to do with knowing my character is known for her Vampire Hunting skills in-game.

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1) If you insist that mission

1) If you insist that mission repeat farming is not a problem, you'll be left with this question unanswered forever. I think one has to accept the premise that if rules are being implemented to prevent mission repeat farming, then the people responsible for those rules being written as such view the mission repeat farming as a problem. The fact that you and/or I might not wholeheartedly agree with them on that is a thing, but you can't simply demand that all rules solve problems then not accept mission repeat farming as a legitimate problem and demand that they ignore it. For me, the rules as written ought to make the game fun. A rule, or a game mechanic, or an object that might exist or not exist in the game, even if it doesn't solve a specific problem, might contribute to the fun nonetheless, and as such I'm fine with it. For what it's worth It sounds to me like they're making a pretty good game here, from what I've read so far, though they're not doing everything the way I would.

2) To me, some things fall under the category of "reasonable suspension of disbelief" and others don't. In a game where we accept the existence of magic spells, technological and scientific things that are as-yet unknown in the real world, space ships, time travel, etc, one will tend to suspend one's disbelief about those things, it's part of the comicbook superhero genre, after all. Things which, on the other hand, seem to violate the expectations of common sense within that fantasy world, like maps automatically and instantly repopulating themselves with mooks for us to easily dispatch over and over, as often as we'd like to, is just nonsense, and there's no reason for it as far as I'm concerned. Where is Dr. Tyche getting all these extra goons from all of the sudden, and if he has them, why weren't they all in the map the first time? Shouldn't it take some time for him to muster more hapless henchmen for us to defeat? Again, SOME missions might have some kind of explanation for stuff like this, but not all of them all the time, as a general rule. That's just beyond sanity, and that kind of stuff I find "breaks the fourth wall" and makes you feel like a guy playing a game, not a hero saving the day, thus I feel it violates "required RPG immersion realism".

3) From the standpoint of gaining an unfair advantage over other players in the game, there's no problem. From the standpoint of RPG immersion there's the thought that maybe the game should work in such a way that you can't do mission repeat farming, because it seems highly unlikely in real life for it to actually work that way. At least to me that thought does occur. I mean, this is an RPG, it shouldn't be treated like Pac-Man where you're just concerned about getting a higher score and nothing else, and to hell with the fluff. The fluff should count for something here, I think.

For what it's worth, I think allowing people to continue to do mission repeat farming for diminishing returns as Dr. Tyche mentioned is just as unrealistic as what CoX had (because you're still restocking the maps instantly and completely as the general rule, as far as I can tell), albeit less rewarding in the swag sense, and I personally wouldn't handle it that way, if I were making the rules, but I'm not. Despite this, it sounds like it ought to cause the game to have fewer people engaging in mission repeat farming, which I'm for. That said, I'm left wondering what, if anything, they intend to do about the farming behaviors of the level capped, because Dr. Tyche never mentioned anything about that specifically.

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JayBezz wrote:
JayBezz wrote:

Doctor Tyche wrote:
Avoiding the "kill 100,000 Rikti Monkey" type badges.

Personally, I find that when there's a faction that my character really likes to fight getting a special badge/title for killing 100,000 of them is really rewarding.
It has nothing to do with the XP gained or mission replay but it has a lot to do with knowing my character is known for her Vampire Hunting skills in-game.

I agree. I totally want to be able to get the "Scourge of the " badge, just to know that my toon is feared, and rightly so, by that faction and to be able to prove it to others.

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Catherine America wrote:
Catherine America wrote:

1) Again though, in short, what is the problem that needs solving via a "DR on INF over time" solution?

Again it may have nothing to do with preventing "exploits" - it may just be they don't want some people to earn INF that much faster than other people, for whatever reasons that matter to them.

The "problem" they are solving may simply be the Devs don't want anyone to be able to earn more than X INF per unit time. Period. It's really just that simple.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

JayBezz wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:
Avoiding the "kill 100,000 Rikti Monkey" type badges.

Personally, I find that when there's a faction that my character really likes to fight getting a special badge/title for killing 100,000 of them is really rewarding.
It has nothing to do with the XP gained or mission replay but it has a lot to do with knowing my character is known for her Vampire Hunting skills in-game.

I agree. I totally want to be able to get the "Scourge of the " badge, just to know that my toon is feared, and rightly so, by that faction and to be able to prove it to others.

I think you guys might be missing the point here. Out of all the defeat type badges in CoH Zookeeper was unique because it originally required 10,000 kills which was 10 times more than any of the next largest defeat type badges ever in the game. The only reason that huge number was anywhere near justifiable was because Rikti Monkies were Underling level MOBs so killing multiple thousands of them was relatively easy (albeit time-consuming).

I don't think having "Scourge of the X" type badges would be a horrible idea if done correctly as "Master" type badges that you might get after getting the "Normal" level ones. But I agree with Doctor Tyche in that I don't necessarily want to see basic-level defeat badges require relatively astronomical requirements.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

1) If you insist that mission repeat farming is not a problem, you'll be left with this question unanswered forever. I think one has to accept the premise that if rules are being implemented to prevent mission repeat farming, then the people responsible for those rules being written as such view the mission repeat farming as a problem. The fact that you and/or I might not wholeheartedly agree with them on that is a thing, but you can't simply demand that all rules solve problems then not accept mission repeat farming as a legitimate problem and demand that they ignore it. For me, the rules as written ought to make the game fun. A rule, or a game mechanic, or an object that might exist or not exist in the game, even if it doesn't solve a specific problem, might contribute to the fun nonetheless, and as such I'm fine with it. For what it's worth It sounds to me like they're making a pretty good game here, from what I've read so far, though they're not doing everything the way I would.
2) To me, some things fall under the category of "reasonable suspension of disbelief" and others don't. In a game where we accept the existence of magic spells, technological and scientific things that are as-yet unknown in the real world, space ships, time travel, etc, one will tend to suspend one's disbelief about those things, it's part of the comicbook superhero genre, after all. Things which, on the other hand, seem to violate the expectations of common sense within that fantasy world, like maps automatically and instantly repopulating themselves with mooks for us to easily dispatch over and over, as often as we'd like to, is just nonsense, and there's no reason for it as far as I'm concerned. Where is Dr. Tyche getting all these extra goons from all of the sudden, and if he has them, why weren't they all in the map the first time? Shouldn't it take some time for him to muster more hapless henchmen for us to defeat? Again, SOME missions might have some kind of explanation for stuff like this, but not all of them all the time, as a general rule. That's just beyond sanity, and that kind of stuff I find "breaks the fourth wall" and makes you feel like a guy playing a game, not a hero saving the day, thus I feel it violates "required RPG immersion realism".
3) From the standpoint of gaining an unfair advantage over other players in the game, there's no problem. From the standpoint of RPG immersion there's the thought that maybe the game should work in such a way that you can't do mission repeat farming, because it seems highly unlikely in real life for it to actually work that way. At least to me that thought does occur. I mean, this is an RPG, it shouldn't be treated like Pac-Man where you're just concerned about getting a higher score and nothing else, and to hell with the fluff. The fluff should count for something here, I think.
For what it's worth, I think allowing people to continue to do mission repeat farming for diminishing returns as Dr. Tyche mentioned is just as unrealistic as what CoX had (because you're still restocking the maps instantly and completely as the general rule, as far as I can tell), albeit less rewarding in the swag sense, and I personally wouldn't handle it that way, if I were making the rules, but I'm not. Despite this, it sounds like it ought to cause the game to have fewer people engaging in mission repeat farming, which I'm for. That said, I'm left wondering what, if anything, they intend to do about the farming behaviors of the level capped, because Dr. Tyche never mentioned anything about that specifically.

You’ve lost me. I never said, insisted or demanded what you have claimed above. You’ve also introduced some hyperbole and mixed metaphors on realism/real-life and a gaming WRT immersion. So I’m going to leave all of that alone.

I was simply looking for a brief explanation of a perceived problem for which you proposed that level-capped toons should have their INF-earning rate throttled. You haven’t answered that yet, but no worries, I’ll stop asking. However, you've actually misunderstood the premise that you think I don't accept. Doc’s post refers to XP not INF. If it (and the rules) actually cover both than okay, but right now, as written, it does not.

Realize that there were several threads on CoX (that ran for years) that were directly related to arrest rates, INF-earning rates, and minimum mission completion times. A whole lot of folks enjoyed that type of immersion too. Issue-by-issue, nerf-by-nerf, AT-by-AT and respect-tweak-by-respec-tweak...far more folks than those who (at least on the public forums) talked about how enjoyable Mission A or Arc Z were.

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Catherine America wrote:
Catherine America wrote:

I was simply looking for a brief explanation of a perceived problem for which you proposed that level-capped toons should have their INF-earning rate throttled. You haven’t answered that yet, but no worries, I’ll stop asking.

I've answered this question for you twice with only a few sentences each time. Don't see how I could make it any more simple for you. *shrugs*

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Talking about repeating

Talking about repeating missions reminded me of something that happened to me in game one time. To set the stage, I had been playing for maybe a month or so and had a mission to rescue 4 or 5 hostages from the council. This was back during I5, so to rescue a hostage you had to defeat all the mobs in a room, as they would just run to the next spawn and wouldn't count as rescued. I had to restart the mission five times due to being mapserved (to be fair, I am not sure if it was on my end or not, I was having some internet issues at the time), two times I was one hostage away from completion. I ended up farming that mission through no fault or desire of my own. This is, of course, an outlier situation, but still something to think about when implementing an xp/inf throttling scheme.

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As I said in my first

As I said in my first response to "1)" above, if you don't accept the opinion that mission repeat farming, in and of itself, is a problem, you'll not accept any answer to the question "Where's the problem?" that I can offer you. I think it's a problem and would like to see it discouraged, the rewards for it nerfed or completely removed, and the practice itself basically abolished. I'm not going to insist that anyone else agree with me, some people might be looking forward to doing a lot of repeat mission farming in CoT when it rolls out. That doesn't bother me.

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Reply to Radiac [#30]

Reply to Radiac [#30]
"NPC contacts would react differently to you if you took their mission, told them you'd do it, then spent that time milking it for all it was worth instead of just completing it to the best of your ability."

This is were part of my disagreement with this idea comes from.
The way I interpret this is you want the NPC to react better (better rewards?) if I complete the mission faster versus more thoroughly. In other words time based rewards.
That is an opinion to which I differ as in MY opinion a NPC wanting us to stop Villian Group D would rather we arrest as many of them as we can in addition to destroying the Death Ray, rather than just destroying the device and arresting the boss. We dont want the left overs we ignored to then try and free the boss or take over and run the group themselves.
Dont just cut off the leaves but pull out the weed by the roots!!

If my interpretation of your comment is incorrect then please correct my understanding.

Now if the time in which the Death Ray is destroyed is vital to the mission then simply give the player a timer for that part of the mission and I can then spend as much time as I want rounding up the leftovers. The NPC is happy as the Death Ray was destroyed before it could be used and Im happy as I get to clear the map :)

Now if my interpretation IS correct and you want time based rewards to help with the immersion factor does this include situations where the game client crashes, my Internet drops out, I have to exit the game due to a RL issue or leave that mission to help a friend out in their mission or join a Task Force?

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Developers WANT players to

Developers WANT players to spend time in their game. Missions are almost never generated as quickly as players consume them. Missions will (and should) be repeatable and there is nothing wrong with encouraging players to keep replaying missions.

If your issue is with the reward system, this is generally taken into account when they create loot tables.

In my opinion system you're asking for would greatly curb player created content as well as create more missions that reward spending LESS time completing them. Stealthing/Speeding through missions is fine for what it is but the purpose of a combat based game is to keep you engaged in combat.

Outside of the UI and mechanics of the game, this is something Marvel Heroes gets VERY right; player downtime inside active combat zones should, again my opinion, be minimized.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Catherine America wrote:
I was simply looking for a brief explanation of a perceived problem for which you proposed that level-capped toons should have their INF-earning rate throttled. You haven’t answered that yet, but no worries, I’ll stop asking.

I've answered this question for you twice with only a few sentences each time. Don't see how I could make it any more simple for you. *shrugs*

Hello, Lothic. Thanks...but I really wanted to hear Radiac's answer. S/he being the OP and all.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

As I said in my first response to "1)" above, if you don't accept the opinion that mission repeat farming, in and of itself, is a problem, you'll not accept any answer to the question "Where's the problem?" that I can offer you. I think it's a problem and would like to see it discouraged, the rewards for it nerfed or completely removed, and the practice itself basically abolished. I'm not going to insist that anyone else agree with me, some people might be looking forward to doing a lot of repeat mission farming in CoT when it rolls out. That doesn't bother me.

So IOW if I don't think like you (at least initially) then you cannot or do not care to persuade me?
I can deal with that. I wouldn't really bother to do so either.
My mind is open about the matter FWIW.
I was just curious if you had a strong supporting argument to make.

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I'm a "he", for the public

I'm a "he", for the public record. :)

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cybermitheral wrote:
cybermitheral wrote:

Reply to Radiac [#30]
"NPC contacts would react differently to you if you took their mission, told them you'd do it, then spent that time milking it for all it was worth instead of just completing it to the best of your ability."
This is were part of my disagreement with this idea comes from.
The way I interpret this is you want the NPC to react better (better rewards?) if I complete the mission faster versus more thoroughly. In other words time based rewards.
That is an opinion to which I differ as in MY opinion a NPC wanting us to stop Villian Group D would rather we arrest as many of them as we can in addition to destroying the Death Ray, rather than just destroying the device and arresting the boss. We dont want the left overs we ignored to then try and free the boss or take over and run the group themselves.
Dont just cut off the leaves but pull out the weed by the roots!!
If my interpretation of your comment is incorrect then please correct my understanding.
Now if the time in which the Death Ray is destroyed is vital to the mission then simply give the player a timer for that part of the mission and I can then spend as much time as I want rounding up the leftovers. The NPC is happy as the Death Ray was destroyed before it could be used and Im happy as I get to clear the map :)
Now if my interpretation IS correct and you want time based rewards to help with the immersion factor does this include situations where the game client crashes, my Internet drops out, I have to exit the game due to a RL issue or leave that mission to help a friend out in their mission or join a Task Force?

In this post you describe a behavior whereby your toon actually DOES in fact COMPLETE the actual mission. I was talking about mission repeat farming, which is a thing whereby you actively avoid defusing the Death Ray on purpose. If you want to clear a map AND fulfill the mission objectives the first time through the mission, more power to you. If you're going to waste the NPC's time just cracking Skullz and not actaully trying to save the world from the Death Ray, then you probably ought to get a call from the NPC at some point where they're mad at you for sandbagging or running up the score, etc.

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A few comments (as a fan not

A few comments (as a fan not a dev), I'm not going to quote all the posts I'm reacting to.

The monkey badge was an easy 10K because of no aggro cap and unlimited number a power could hit with mob stacking, and they changed it when they put the aggro cap in, this was particularly amuusing with my stone tank who was out of granite for psi defence and immune to live monkeys, but the dead ones and their toxic damage really hurt.

You have to be careful not to penalise people who disconnect having nearly finished a mission.

Most serious farming used to be done in AE in the later days, a few missions and mob types were reduced in XP to discourage farming (high level freaks and family).

I used to farm the Unai Kemen outdoor BP mission on the map with the big hole in the ground for two reasons.

1: because people wanted the masks badge
2: because it was fun and a decent challenge with the debuffs and mix of damage types at +3x8

Not all farming was XP related, if I wanted that, it was my SS/fire brute in AE.

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Minotaur wrote:
Minotaur wrote:

The monkey badge was an easy 10K because of no aggro cap and unlimited number a power could hit with mob stacking, and they changed it when they put the aggro cap in, this was particularly amuusing with my stone tank who was out of granite for psi defence and immune to live monkeys, but the dead ones and their toxic damage really hurt.

Yes they supposedly reduced Zookeeper from 10,000 Rikti Monkies to 1,000 because of the aggro cap changes. But at 1,000 it was still tied with Reformed (1,000 Longbow) for the highest count defeat badge in the game. The fact that Zookeeper was the only defeat badge specifically for Underling level MOBs probably served to justify keeping it at that relatively large count.

Hopefully when CoT comes up with values for requirements it'll keep those kinds of factors in mind as it relates to having to farm them.

P.S. For what it's worth I think the only reason they pegged Reformed at a 1,000 Longbow (instead of the more typical 100 or 200) was that at the time that badge was introduced the only way Heroes could get it was to go to Bloody Bay and be Confused by a villain willing to help you. Fun times trying to farm that many that way in a PvP zone... And who said Matt Miller (a.k.a. Positron) didn't have a sadistic sense of humor LOL.

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My memory is fuzzy, but wasn

My memory is fuzzy, but wasn't there a badge for defeating those little tiny Gears that would spawn when you defeated an Assembler Prince?

In any event, if set at a reasonable level, I think defeat badges can still be fun without having to resort to farming for them. You could have farmed for werewolves in CoX or you could go to certain parts of Striga Island and just defeat the many, many werevolves that could be found in the one area. As long as stuff like that exists, I think the defeat badges themselves are not a problem and I think making farming less attractive (or generally unattractive, really) is still fine. I especially liked the defeat badges that were needed to get an accolade that had something riding on it, like Portal Jockey, etc. I used to go to Gordon Trench to defeat Pariah Prelates, and other parts of TV to get Sky Raider Skiffs, etc.

If you have "outdoor" areas like that were certain mobs congregate and repeatable missions like they had in Dark Astoria, or like the Hero Merit ones, etc, I think this all helps the badging a lot. Also, whatever mobs are to be found in the various Task Forces would end up getting defeated a lot too. I used the Manti TF for Paragon Protectors, or at least to get me close enough that I could just go to Eden to get the last few.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

My memory is fuzzy, but wasn't there a badge for defeating those little tiny Gears that would spawn when you defeated an Assembler Prince?

Yes, for 100 of 'em.

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That was an easy one. There

That was an easy one. There was a mission that had a pile of rubble that spawned them indefinitely, and I believe a TF had them in spades.

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[quote=Radiac

[quote=Radiac
In this post you describe a behavior whereby your toon actually DOES in fact COMPLETE the actual mission. I was talking about mission repeat farming, which is a thing whereby you actively avoid defusing the Death Ray on purpose. If you want to clear a map AND fulfill the mission objectives the first time through the mission, more power to you. If you're going to waste the NPC's time just cracking Skullz and not actaully trying to save the world from the Death Ray, then you probably ought to get a call from the NPC at some point where they're mad at you for sandbagging or running up the score, etc.

OK so I can see that I wasn't understanding the totality of the idea. I read in that sentence and prior ones that it wasn't just repeating the mission again and again and again without completing it, but that by taking my time clearing the map you also wanted to penalise characters who did that.

I remember the Battle Maiden farm from Maria Jenkins where you got Statesman as a combat NPC.
I ran that a few times on dbl XP weekends to help friends, and be helped, with XP to around level 30 (I had so many characters and had over 1.5 'columns' of characters in the 'Select Character' list already at 50. You could get from level 1-3 or 4 in the first run so it was a great way to bypass the low level content that I had done SOOOOO many times.
I'd run that on my 50 Tank at +4/x8. Was funny seeing Statesman getting stuck in the landscape and you have to go back past him to get him unstuck :)

But back to the suggestion of disallowing or penalising characters that deliberately reset a mission.
Penalising is bad as there are scenario's (already mentioned above) where you may need or be forced to leave the mission incomplete. I should not be penalised for those (RL issue forcing me to exit the game, pc/Internet crashing, etc).
Having the game disallow me could be achieved by the map "pausing" when we leave for any reason. When I jump back into the mission it continues from where I left it. This means I cant 'farm' it.
But what if I'm doing a mission and its GREAT. Its a great damn mission and not just for farming or whatever but because its a great mission and I want to share it with a friend who cant do it (alignment locked maybe, or they are too low/high level/etc).

The casual way that CoH allowed teaming was one of the BEST features of that game.

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Pengy wrote:
Pengy wrote:

Radiac wrote:
My memory is fuzzy, but wasn't there a badge for defeating those little tiny Gears that would spawn when you defeated an Assembler Prince?
Yes, for 100 of 'em.

Beamrider wrote:

That was an easy one. There was a mission that had a pile of rubble that spawned them indefinitely, and I believe a TF had them in spades.

You guys ever hear the expression "the exception that proves the rule"? ;)

Yes strictly speaking Zookeeper wasn't the only "Underling" defeat badge in CoH so I stand corrected on that. But the fact that there were only two of those out of over 100 defeat badges shows us that underling defeat badges were certainly not common and it was easy to forget one of them. I suspect if Clockwork Gears had been far more common in the game (and not just tied to a couple of fairly specific places/ways to even get them to spawn) that Gearsmasher might have been set at 500 or 1,000 defeats just like Zookeeper was.

As far as farming defeat badges goes I think CoH got it mostly right in terms of having some badges that were harder to finish than others. My mention of what heroes had to go through when Reformed was initially released to the game was probably one of the most ridiculous examples of "forced farming". To their credit the CoH Devs eventually corrected that within a few years via missions in the Rikti War Zone and hero/villain side-switching which made Longbow available to "heroes" without having to be Confused to get them.

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Not to get too off track, But

Not to get too off track, But I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Illusionist Badge. In it's original form of 500 summoned Illusionists (Phantasms and Dark Servants didn't count at the time), which would take fighting a minimum of 167 Master Illusionists. Funny thing is I was less than 20 away from finishing it the original way when it changed. I wasn't too mad about it, but I had to laugh. I'm willing to bet, however, other badgers were upset by that fact. Although realizing a bar was set too high and fixing it are a good thing, it's better to have picked a reasonable amount first before going live.

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cybermitheral wrote:
cybermitheral wrote:

The casual way that CoH allowed teaming was one of the BEST features of that game.

It absolutely was, and I'd be floored if it's not a core goal of CoT.

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cybermitheral wrote:
cybermitheral wrote:

[quote=Radiac
In this post you describe a behavior whereby your toon actually DOES in fact COMPLETE the actual mission. I was talking about mission repeat farming, which is a thing whereby you actively avoid defusing the Death Ray on purpose. If you want to clear a map AND fulfill the mission objectives the first time through the mission, more power to you. If you're going to waste the NPC's time just cracking Skullz and not actaully trying to save the world from the Death Ray, then you probably ought to get a call from the NPC at some point where they're mad at you for sandbagging or running up the score, etc.

OK so I can see that I wasn't understanding the totality of the idea. I read in that sentence and prior ones that it wasn't just repeating the mission again and again and again without completing it, but that by taking my time clearing the map you also wanted to penalise characters who did that.
I remember the Battle Maiden farm from Maria Jenkins where you got Statesman as a combat NPC.
I ran that a few times on dbl XP weekends to help friends, and be helped, with XP to around level 30 (I had so many characters and had over 1.5 'columns' of characters in the 'Select Character' list already at 50. You could get from level 1-3 or 4 in the first run so it was a great way to bypass the low level content that I had done SOOOOO many times.
I'd run that on my 50 Tank at +4/x8. Was funny seeing Statesman getting stuck in the landscape and you have to go back past him to get him unstuck :)
But back to the suggestion of disallowing or penalising characters that deliberately reset a mission.
Penalising is bad as there are scenario's (already mentioned above) where you may need or be forced to leave the mission incomplete. I should not be penalised for those (RL issue forcing me to exit the game, pc/Internet crashing, etc).
Having the game disallow me could be achieved by the map "pausing" when we leave for any reason. When I jump back into the mission it continues from where I left it. This means I cant 'farm' it.
But what if I'm doing a mission and its GREAT. Its a great damn mission and not just for farming or whatever but because its a great mission and I want to share it with a friend who cant do it (alignment locked maybe, or they are too low/high level/etc).
The casual way that CoH allowed teaming was one of the BEST features of that game.

I agree that people may get DCed, have to quit in mid-mission, etc. You'll notice that in the original post, I place no limit on the number of times you could reset a mision, only on the number of badguys you can defeat in that mission before getting your mission farm "foreclosed on" so to speak. These would be mechanics whereby a person get's a message from the NPC mission giver when they manage to defeat twice as many mobs as one would reasonably expect to have spawned in the mission, assuming maximum difficulty settings (+4/x8 in CoX for example). So this means you COULD do the mission at maximum settings twice, but then that would get you a "Mission Complete" or "Mission Failed" message and you'd be either kicked out the door or the map would simply despawn all mobs and go empty, permanently, with no reset possible, the mission having been considered "completed" at that point, either in the good way or the bad way, depending on the NPC mission giver's attitude toward the mission and/or you.

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As for badges, I Thought the

As for badges, I Thought the worst one was getting the Isolator badge as a redsider. That was the badge heroes could get in Outbreak if they stayed and defeated enough Infected, but redside you could only spawn one of them at a time, making it a very difficult badge to get, before alignment changes we're possible.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

I agree that people may get DCed, have to quit in mid-mission, etc. You'll notice that in the original post, I place no limit on the number of times you could reset a mision, only on the number of badguys you can defeat in that mission before getting your mission farm "foreclosed on" so to speak. These would be mechanics whereby a person get's a message from the NPC mission giver when they manage to defeat twice as many mobs as one would reasonably expect to have spawned in the mission, assuming maximum difficulty settings (+4/x8 in CoX for example). So this means you COULD do the mission at maximum settings twice, but then that would get you a "Mission Complete" or "Mission Failed" message and you'd be either kicked out the door or the map would simply despawn all mobs and go empty, permanently, with no reset possible, the mission having been considered "completed" at that point, either in the good way or the bad way, depending on the NPC mission giver's attitude toward the mission and/or you.

It would have been a mercy to me that day. Well, at least I got xp and inf for all my trouble.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

As for badges, I Thought the worst one was getting the Isolator badge as a redsider. That was the badge heroes could get in Outbreak if they stayed and defeated enough Infected, but redside you could only spawn one of them at a time, making it a very difficult badge to get, before alignment changes we're possible.

Not just redside, my main went thru the tutorial before badges existed so got isolator one at a time in RV

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syntaxerror37 wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:

Not to get too off track, But I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Illusionist Badge. In it's original form of 500 summoned Illusionists (Phantasms and Dark Servants didn't count at the time), which would take fighting a minimum of 167 Master Illusionists. Funny thing is I was less than 20 away from finishing it the original way when it changed. I wasn't too mad about it, but I had to laugh. I'm willing to bet, however, other badgers were upset by that fact. Although realizing a bar was set too high and fixing it are a good thing, it's better to have picked a reasonable amount first before going live.

The original Illusionist was pretty hard, but I'd probably only rate it somewhere in the top 20 or so for "hardest" badges to get.

Try overnight arena farming for the original Empath almost every night for about 8 MONTHS straight only to have its first reduction (from 1 billion to 100 million) happen only a few weeks later. Talk about a "LOL" moment - I still seriously suspect Positron kept it at 1 billion just waiting for me personally to finish farming it just to piss me off. ;)

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

As for badges, I Thought the worst one was getting the Isolator badge as a redsider. That was the badge heroes could get in Outbreak if they stayed and defeated enough Infected, but redside you could only spawn one of them at a time, making it a very difficult badge to get, before alignment changes we're possible.

Not to be overly picky but redsiders supposedly could not get Isolator via the "one spawn in RV" method. They could rack up 100 Contaminated kills but it still wouldn't "register" unless you side switched to blue. If you managed to get it in RV without sideswitching then you're supercool in my book. ;)

By that time redsiders would have had ready access to the Ouroboros initiation arc mission filled with Contaminated so they never would have had to deal with the RV spawn unless they were particualrly masochistic.

Minotaur wrote:

Not just redside, my main went thru the tutorial before badges existed so got isolator one at a time in RV

Any post-tutorial hero created before Issue 2 was in the dubious position of having the "one spawn in RV" as their only alternative to get Isolator before Ouroboros. I realize Matt Miller (a.k.a. Positron) created the sadistic scenario behind the "one spawn in RV" as a means to punish people who whined about not getting Isolator finished while they were still in the tutorial. But what was the point of punishing the people who would have GLADLY chosen to finish Isolator before leaving the tutorial if they had had the chance to do so BEFORE ISSUE 2? It was frankly idiotic to "trap" a badge in the original tutorial in the first place and that mistake was corrected when they redesigned it.

Basically I considered Mr. Miller a bit of an ass-hat over the "one spawn in RV" scenario and consider the Ouroboros initiation arc mission filled with Contaminated as his apology for it. *shrugs*

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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I don't mind moderate or even

I don't mind moderate or even high-quantity defeat badges...as long as they are treated as collectibles that offer no combat benefit to every alt - just something to get on one badging character or as account-wide badges that accumulate from the efforts of all characters. Making them character-specific and a requirement for a significant accolade-type reward amplifies the boring repetition that a player faces if they wish to play their alts at close to full potential, and thus creates demotivating pressure on the "alting as endgame" playstyle.

Does anyone really want to ponder the vast ... uh ... "population control" schemes I employed to provide every one of my 50+ "completed" alts with those accolades?
Because I sure don't.

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I just wanted to say that I

I just wanted to say that I LOVED farming. I LOVED being able to get my powers quickly and really see powersets in action for the first time, or combos of powers... I LOVED seeing everyone open their cans of WHHOOOOPPM BOOTAAAH and heals, and unload everything they had over and over on many a mob. I LOVED seeing some defender or controller run into the next mob ahead of everyone and die (sometimes) and watch the tank and defenders come into the rescue to super buff that controller out and watch them DOM THAT MOB! I think farming is way cool, and I think it should be just a playstyle, but make it cooler. I had over 120 toons I created over every powerset combo I could come up with. Even the weaker ones (they had their own attributes). Farming is awesome carnage fun. I miss you CoH. But I know that CoT will beat your misgivings.

Make farming fun, for me (8.5 year master player of CoH) I'd like to see more diversity than minion, leiu, boss. Throw in some other power levels to make it more of a challenge. Also some AI that learns players plays/attacks would be fun. Force the player to come up with another combo set... Or thwart them in the farm. Not too hard, but make players think rather than run in to 15 feet, use shield attack, footstomp, hit boss, over and over... That repetition gets boring. Although it's the carnage that makes it fun. I remember one of my tanks, Sheild SS and how much fun I had with him especially at level 50 with speed boosts on him. Was an incredibly fun tank with all that knockdown. I'm so excited, I am building up enough in finances that when this game comes out, I can take a leave of absence from work for a month, and learn it all. lol. I can't wait for nov 2015. I'm not even gaming, just working my ass off, finishing my IT degree so I can be ready for this game and take a month of vacation to play full time. I AM SO LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS GAME. SO ARE ALL MY COH FRIENDS!!!

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I have no problem with

I have no problem with building a team and plowing through a huge map full of badguys, I mean that was the game, in a nutshell, right? I just think actually completing the mission when all the mobs are down would be better, in some ways, than simply going outside and pushing the reset button. For the record, even my original post ideas, were they implemented, would not prevent you from building a big team full of friends and cutting through a map like gangbusters, you'd just have to actually complete the mission the second time through and then go do a different one instead of resetting the one you just did for the third time in a row.. Assuming there are enough story arc missions, repeatable missions, task forces, trials, outdoor public hunting areas, etc to do this for like 3-6 hours or whatever, it's basically the same experience as you had before, just with mission completion rewards and the occasional story arc getting finished off.

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Exactly. There's no reason

Exactly. There's no reason to 'farm' the same mission over and over without completing it. If you've got a good team, then sign up for a TF and take on the big challenge!

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

I think there's the assumption in some sense that a mission is intended to be a thing that will be offered to the hero, and once accepted then the hero will attempt to complete it as best he or she can, not just milk it for all the XP/loot he or she cares for ad nauseam. Call it an immersion thing or a suspension of disbelief thing or whatever. I think it's more realistic to have rules like I mentioned in my original post than not to. Without this stuff, or somethign like it, you're just restocking the mission map with infinite mooks over and over, instantly, as soon as one exits and resets. It immediately feels more "gamey" and less "role-play-y" when you allow that.
That said I'm totally in favor of repeatable missions, I just want to complete them over and over not farm them by exploiting cracks in the mechanics of how things work to controvert something that was intended to work one way, but I'm abusing it for personal gain by zagging when expected to zig. It doesn't feel very heroic to do that. That said maybe farming, in a meta sense, is a MORE immersive thing for villains to do. You can flagrantly abuse the rules as written for personal gain, which is what a villain WOULD do. I was never much of a redsider in CoX so I wouldn't be an expert on that.

The question why you would want to prevent farming is a fair one, as there are many potential players who seem to enjoy that kind of thing. The achievers and explorers in the Bartle terminology. Players who are on their umpteenth alt and have a specific build in mind may want to speed through the lower levels to reach that crucial power.
That said, there are also valid reason to severely limit the process. First of all it kiind of ruins the fun for those who are not into powerleveling. It also speeds the player base out of the lower levels and zones and packs them in the highest zones where they are wondering 'where is the endgame?' In a game that is at least as much about the story as it is about the mechanics, if not more, this is a dangerous situation, and it is yet worse for a studio with a small maintenance staff. Even giants like Bioware or EA can not reasonably keep up with player demand when they rush through new content in a matter of hours.

Not completing a mission and resetting it is a reaction to a specific method of restricting farming: lockouts. If completing a mission will prevent it from being redone for 18 hours then the farming minded player will simply not complete the mission. This does show that lockouts are a heavy handed (but easily implemented) method of limiting mission farming. The obvious way to stop the practice of non-completion is by only providing the rewards and all collected xp on succesfull completion of the mission and reporting back to the mission giver. The solution is still heavy handed and absolute but does not have an obvious loophole to get out from under it. But this approach will penalise casual players and will make challenging missions a lot less attractive (few players will appreciate spending an hour or two on a mission for no reward).

A better approach would be more subtle by implementing diminishing returns. There are several approaches possible to this, and to be effective they probably should all be used simultaneously.

First of all it is simple enough to shift xp away from kills/arrests and toward mission completion. Reduce kill xp by 75pct and on mission completion hand out an xp bonus of three times the total xp gathered while in the mission (this is tricky with open world missions though). This makes completing the mission definitely worthwhile and at the same time subtly penalises achievement rushing.

Second, implement a system where the more mission related enemies are killed/arrested within a time frame the less xp they reward. This reward diminishes extra rapidly when a large number of enemies are defeated in a very short time. This always cuts a percentage of the reward so it never goes to zero, but it will after a while be useless to continue the same mission as the reward for a different mission entirely would be much greater. Diminished rewards go up over a relatively slow real-world timeframe (implementing a soft lockout mechanism). The reason for the mass killing penalty is not so much to prevent dumpster stuffing (the game should make that impossible to begin with) but to push players away from the old hunting grounds. It also acts as a restriction on powerleveling. A hero way out of the level range for the zone will insta-kill most enemies and trigger the penalty for the entire group. If they restrict their power to prevent this they are not powerleveling and should not be penailised for helping a lower level character of a friend from playing the game as it is intended to (something that most of the traditional anti-powerleveling mechanisms tend to do).

Third, if a mission is asked repeatedly and within some hidden lockout timer, the game will start to boost enemy powers and intelligence. After all, if the mission is that easy to complete then the challenge should be upped a bit. This of course does not apply to missions where the heroes fail, as that would be a double penalty for beiing new or unlucky.
This does open the possibility for grieving though, so special care must be taken with implementing this system.

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I just reread this whole

I just reread this whole thread and it occurred to me that I might have misinterpreting what Dr. Tyche wrote. My original post was strictly about mission repeat farming (as I've defined it above) and I assumed the response by Dr. Tyche was in reference to that, meaning that any XP throttling would be in effect only when people engage in mission repeat farming. If this was intended to be in effect all the time, then I should say I'm personally against that, and I wouldn't suggest putting in an INF throttling mechanic for overall play either, just for mission repeat farming.

The problem I've been focussed on this whole time has been mission repeat farming, the subject of my original post. For what it's worth, I think my ideas (1 and 2 in the original post) would do a good job of curbing THAT, but would do nothing about powerleveling OR farming for swag in general, because people can and would still sidekick up with a level-capped toon and ride the gravy train, albeit in different missions, not the same one over and over. Similarly, any goldfarming team that wants to form and just max out the map and run up the defeats can still do so, they just need to finish the mission and move on to another one every so often.

So for the record, I'm AGAINST the practice of throttling back players' XP and INF gain rates when they're not engaging in mission repeat farming, in the general case. I'm not ruling out using it in some other specific cases, but in the general case of "I'm a guy doing missions, or TF, or whatever" I think those toons should be left alone and get the full XP and INF for doing their stuff.

I don't want to turn this into a thread about how to curb swag and/or XP gain rates (to prevent gold farming and powerleveling, respectively) so I won't go into detail about those issues any further here.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

I think it's a problem and would like to see it discouraged, the rewards for it nerfed or completely removed, and the practice itself basically abolished.

Quote:

some people might be looking forward to doing a lot of repeat mission farming in CoT when it rolls out. That doesn't bother me.

These two statements contradict one another. Considering you want the practice abolished, the idea that someone might do it clearly does bother you.

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You have no idea how many

You have no idea how many times people contradict themselves in these forums. My favorite one is where they try to push for "Realism" then turn right around and argue for fantasy "Immersion". That's what happens though when there is something that someone feels so strongly about. The end justifies the means.

I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!

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Mendicant wrote:
Mendicant wrote:

Radiac wrote:
I think it's a problem and would like to see it discouraged, the rewards for it nerfed or completely removed, and the practice itself basically abolished.

Quote:
some people might be looking forward to doing a lot of repeat mission farming in CoT when it rolls out. That doesn't bother me.

These two statements contradict one another. Considering you want the practice abolished, the idea that someone might do it clearly does bother you.

Not at all. I think mission repeat farming should be gotten rid of, and if other people were looking forward to doing a lot of it in CoT, it doesn't bother me that they'll be disappointed. If they DON'T get rid of it, then I still think it's a stupid, grindy waste of MY time, but if OTHER people feel like doing it, and the game allows them, so be it. I guess what I'm saying is, "If we can make it not exist, that's what I feel would be best for me, and to heck with the people who would complain, if it IS going to exist, I don't have a problem with other people who do it, because clearly the game designers didn't want to "go there" and take it away from them."

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oOStaticOo wrote:
oOStaticOo wrote:

You have no idea how many times people contradict themselves in these forums. My favorite one is where they try to push for "Realism" then turn right around and argue for fantasy "Immersion". That's what happens though when there is something that someone feels so strongly about. The end justifies the means.

In my mind there's no dichotomy there. Science fiction and fantasy based stories and games require the reader or player to suspend their disbelief in the very existence of things like dragons, fairies, telekinesis, space travel, time travel, heat vision, power rings, retractable adamantium claws etc. They do NOT require you to believe that your Super Hero should be able to walk outside the door of the villain's lair, wait ten seconds, then walk back in and find a fresh set of a hundred more mooks to beat on for sport and profit. Paper and pencil RPGs don't allow this, at least none I've ever DMed or played. I've never once had a DnD party seriously say to me "Okay, we go outside, reset the map, then go back in, knowing where all the traps are and defeat all the same monsters AGAIN for more treasure and XP, which should be easier because we know where they are now." Dragons? Yes. That bu11$h!T? Never.

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The view that farming,

The view that farming, particular, the treadmill type of mission repeat farming as something that is negative isn't bad in of itself unless there is mission design to give out better rewards than others that is also easily repeatable resulting in a higher roi for the effort of play (including time). Expectation is that it will happen. We do however, want to encourage players to continue through content and play different missions. There are two methods we're exploring to encourage this; achievement based end of mission rewards - that is there will be rewards for defeating spawns, but we want to provide additional ways to gain reward upon mission completion, and as already mentioned, a diminishing return of reward for completing the same mission over time.

As a player, repeating missions really doesn't do much for me personally. There are others who will look for the most efficient method for gaining whatever it is they want to gain, and that should be ok too - so long as it is within bounds of whatever metric is considered high and low for return over time. Some players don't care about seeing the next new map, or the new type of encounter, or what the next part of the story is, they just want to beat things up. And some of those players just want to beat things up in the most efficient manner possible to get the type of reward they're looking for. Our hope is to provide a game where all these types get to play, but to encourage the one type we are designing the game for. It is after all why we have a small army of writers on the composition team to create the people, places, things, how and why player characters are encountering them.


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I should probably point out

I should probably point out here that I used to do the Hero Alignment missions over and over and over again because I wanted the Hero Merits from doing them every other day, and because on my Mastermind, the rewards were pretty good. That was a system where you ended up doing like 5-6 of the same (what, 20 or so?) different missions over and over, which I have no problem with, because there you're actually completing the missions, and also there's only so much content they can make after all, so having to do the same missions once in awhile is a drawback of the game that I'm willing to live with, along with doing the same mission to help another player, even though I already did it myself, etc. But milking the same mission over and over and never actually completing it is something that I think the NPC giving you mission ought to have a reaction to one way or the other, eventually.

Going beyond my original 2 points in the OP, I think the even sterner position would have been be to never refill the mission map once it has been started by the player/team doing the mission, ever, at all. I didn't suggest that above and I'm not suggesting it here as a real possibility, just pointing out that it would be perhaps the most realistic thing to do. The fact that the maps do refill is somewhat immersion breaking, but a practice I'm willing to live with as a concession to the fact that there are limits on how much content can be made and at what rate.

All that not withstanding, what really puzzles me is the adherence people seem to have to the practice of mission repeat farming in and of itself, simply because it was something we all did (yes even me, just a little, but I did) on CoX. I mean is it that hard to just do a TF or progress through missions by completing them, or even just go outside and do some good old-fashioned street sweeping? I don't see those things as having the same sort of role playing related immersion problems, and they could be just as lucrative, in all likelihood. I mean so instead of running through the Dreck mission for the umpteenth time, maybe you just go to Crey's Folly and hunt Freaks, isn't that basically the same thing? Even if that outdoor hunt is, say, 10% less efficient in terms of Inf and XP gain rates, is that SO much to have to give up for the sake of immersiveness, and if its strictly all about the swag per minute and the amount of work you had to put in to get it, I would prefer they just make the street sweeping that much more lucrative to put it on a par with the mission repeat farming and be done with the mission repeat farming once and for all.

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Radiac, I think that this is

Radiac, I think that this is more of a problem with the "everything instanced" form of content, at least with how CoX did it, where (re)starting one mission whilst you after doing a different instanced mission would restore it to "virgin" state.

The only solution would be something similar to what most "open world" games do. Just make the mission a one off. With the exception of the *rare* "instanced" content, pretty much none of the content would be "repeatable". And if you dropped it, you could pick up the quest again. But seeing as you were going up against mobs in the open world, that would respawn anyway, there would be no real advantage of dropping/restarting the content.

The thing is, the CoX style of content allowed people to have their own private *set to their own preference* scaled content, and as a result of the "virgin restart", caused this type of behaviour in CoX.

Other games have mob farming. Sure, that happens. But at least they out in the world. And if you go with the removal of mob tagging for contributions, and a decent way of sharing loot (it can be done), it wouldn't be so hard.

It is a quandry though. How would you do it? How would you deal with players who drop missions/pick them back up later on due to quest log size limitations (ie the CoX started off with 3, then expanded to 7... Wildstar has *40* maximum that you can track) and those who drop/pick up for farming purposes? How would you tell the difference between them without punishing the casual "drop and pick up later on due to log limitations" and the "drop/pick up for farming purposes"?

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WIth multiple statements

WIth multiple statements relating to repeating missions and immersiveness, for those who repeat missions, there is no immersion. If you aren't repeating missions, no immersion is being broken. Now with the exception that there is a finite amount of content which is deployable at any given time within the game and its a basic fact that players can find ways to chew content faster than it can be developed, repeating missions at some point will probably be a given to some extent, even if it is the equivalent of radio-style missions. At some point then, 'immersion' will be broken because content will be repeatable.
Because content will be repeatable, players who don't care about story, or immersion, but want fun combat styled in the drapings of super-themed action will play the game and repeat content for rewards.

Even if streetsweeping were as rewarding as mission repeating, what it comes down to is a matter of efficiency. Know the map, the spawn points, clear the map, close out the mission, swap, reenter, repeat. This without the issue of coming head to head competing for spawn points in an open world map. Which leaves the open world map play more available for those who want to street sweep, or better yet, open for those who need to engage the open world as part of the content they are playing through.


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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Radiac, I think that this is more of a problem with the "everything instanced" form of content, at least with how CoX did it, where (re)starting one mission whilst you after doing a different instanced mission would restore it to "virgin" state.
The only solution would be something similar to what most "open world" games do. Just make the mission a one off. With the exception of the *rare* "instanced" content, pretty much none of the content would be "repeatable". And if you dropped it, you could pick up the quest again. But seeing as you were going up against mobs in the open world, that would respawn anyway, there would be no real advantage of dropping/restarting the content.
The thing is, the CoX style of content allowed people to have their own private *set to their own preference* scaled content, and as a result of the "virgin restart", caused this type of behaviour in CoX.
Other games have mob farming. Sure, that happens. But at least they out in the world. And if you go with the removal of mob tagging for contributions, and a decent way of sharing loot (it can be done), it wouldn't be so hard.
It is a quandry though. How would you do it? How would you deal with players who drop missions/pick them back up later on due to quest log size limitations (ie the CoX started off with 3, then expanded to 7... Wildstar has *40* maximum that you can track) and those who drop/pick up for farming purposes? How would you tell the difference between them without punishing the casual "drop and pick up later on due to log limitations" and the "drop/pick up for farming purposes"?

If you're talking about the original post (points 1 and 2), in that system there would be no problem with a single person dropping then picking back up a mission some time later, many many times. That system would track how many minions, lts, bosses, etc you defeated withing the mission itself, then probably give you a warning when you're getting near the "WTF point" for the NPC mission giver, then cut you off once the number of acceptable defeats has been met or exceeded. So the amount of restarting (for practical purposes you have to allow people to restart missions, real life beckons after all) is not restricted, just the number of mobs you can defeat within that particular mission on your mission docket. This would not affect other people's copies of the same mission, so you could theoretically do that same mission like 50 times, but you'd need a lot of people with that mission from that NPC.

If you're talking about the "more stern approach" I mentioned above, i.e. never restocking the missions at all, that was only mentioned as being a worse possibility, not anything I was seriously in favor of actually rolling out, again for real life considerations.

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

There are two methods we're exploring to encourage this; achievement based end of mission rewards - that is there will be rewards for defeating spawns, but we want to provide additional ways to gain reward upon mission completion, and as already mentioned, a diminishing return of reward for completing the same mission over time.

Would that be diminishing return of individual rewards over time? e.g. If there are rewards for both defeating all spawns in mission, and for defeating none, would reward be diminished if a player ran the mission twice back-to-back, meeting different criteria in either run?

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

WIth multiple statements relating to repeating missions and immersiveness, for those who repeat missions, there is no immersion. If you aren't repeating missions, no immersion is being broken. Now with the exception that there is a finite amount of content which is deployable at any given time within the game and its a basic fact that players can find ways to chew content faster than it can be developed, repeating missions at some point will probably be a given to some extent, even if it is the equivalent of radio-style missions. At some point then, 'immersion' will be broken because content will be repeatable.
Because content will be repeatable, players who don't care about story, or immersion, but want fun combat styled in the drapings of super-themed action will play the game and repeat content for rewards.
Even if streetsweeping were as rewarding as mission repeating, what it comes down to is a matter of efficiency. Know the map, the spawn points, clear the map, close out the mission, swap, reenter, repeat. This without the issue of coming head to head competing for spawn points in an open world map. Which leaves the open world map play more available for those who want to street sweep, or better yet, open for those who need to engage the open world as part of the content they are playing through.

I was never against repeating missions, as I've said, only the loopholes allowing people to repeat a mission ad nauseam without actually ever completing it. I mean, you should only be able to string an NPC mission giver along so far before they react in some way.

As for the point that people who don't care about immersion don't care if its being broken, so nobody's being affected in any meaningful way, I disagree in the sense that A) the game ought to have somewhat realistic expectations on the heroes behavior by the NPCs without obvious silly exploits like this, I mean a mission is intended to be a thing you do once and complete not milk it for all its worth forever and B) if that becomes the well-known most efficient way to do things, people are likely going to want to do it to the exclusion of all else, which makes the game itself less fun and less attractive to everyone who might be inclined to play it, I think. That sort of "we found the crack in the rules, and we're pouring free Inf out of it 24/7" behavior turns the game into a lifeless skinner box, to me. And to me the worst part is that there's no reason it needs to be there, as I've argued, because just completing repeatable missions or TFs or doing extended open world hunting is basically the same reward schedule for basically the same behavior, just with mission complete bonuses thrown in and the occasional need to relocate to a different map once in a while. In a world where those options are the new "most efficient thing", the min/maxers would figure that out and do it, so who loses? Nobody. The immersionless min/maxers will be seek out whatever is the maximum gain for the minimum pain and do it, no matter what it is, and likely complain that it's still too much pain for not enough gain anyway, so there's no reason to make the most efficient thing a broken mechanic of the game that isn't working right in the RPG sense, if you can avoid it.

Personally, I never soloed my toons beyoned the first 12 levels or so, I spent almostall of my leveling up time in TFs because of the end of TF rewards and the comaraderie of teaming up with people, almost always PUGs formed by yelling "TF forming in zone...." and taking whatever I got. I'm all about repeating content, I just like actually completing it.

To the point about street sweeping groups running afoul of each other, this was something that did happen in early CoH but was almost unheard of in CoX in the later years, because street sweeping itself was basically not done anymore, I personally missed that a lot. In Early CoH you knew where to go to find a PUG of a level you were, it was the sewers, the door from Atlas to Perez Park, the door from Steel to Boomtown, etc. you could walk into a map and see what was on tap, who was on, what the buzz was. Even if open world hunting does become very popular and this sort of thing is liable to be a problem, haven't they already basically said that there's going to be a lot of instancing of the open world itself anyway, a la Atlas Park 25, 26, 27, etc in CoX, and if so doesn't that eliminate or at least ameliorate that problem to a large extent? Or are the zones going to be THAT small that this is being discouraged from the get-go?

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I am still against this idea.

I am still against this idea. I just feel like there are things that are more important to really focus on. In the grand scheme of things I don't feel like this will be as big of a problem as it is being made out to be. I can really only think of one mission that I "farmed" and that was the Frostfire mission. Even then, I only did that a few times before I quit doing it. The majority of "Farming" missions I saw were in the AE, which I saw coming a mile away when it was first introduced. Granted I knew of the Dreck, Demon, and Battle Maiden map missions that some people farmed as well, but that was for XP and powerleveling not so much for Inf or Purple drops.

So how would you propose this "fix" if it's in the form of an AE mission, which is more like a computer generated battle simulation? There you can use the restock map formula because it's not a "real" mission.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

I was never against repeating missions, as I've said, only the loopholes allowing people to repeat a mission ad nauseam without actually ever completing it. I mean, you should only be able to string an NPC mission giver along so far before they react in some way.

The view that a "mission giver" is being strung along is only applicable to the player that views the mission giver as an entity within part of a story. For the player who is playing the game for personal achievement, such as earning currency, looking for drops, or any other reward, there is no breaking of "immersion" happening. Neither player is right or wrong in either view.

Radiac wrote:

As for the point that people who don't care about immersion don't care if its being broken, so nobody's being affected in any meaningful way, I disagree in the sense that A) the game ought to have somewhat realistic expectations on the heroes behavior by the NPCs without obvious silly exploits like this, I mean a mission is intended to be a thing you do once and complete not milk it for all its worth forever and B) if that becomes the well-known most efficient way to do things, people are likely going to want to do it to the exclusion of all else, which makes the game itself less fun and less attractive to everyone who might be inclined to play it, I think. That sort of "we found the crack in the rules, and we're pouring free Inf out of it 24/7" behavior turns the game into a lifeless skinner box, to me. And to me the worst part is that there's no reason it needs to be there, as I've argued, because just completing repeatable missions or TFs or doing extended open world hunting is basically the same reward schedule for basically the same behavior, just with mission complete bonuses thrown in and the occasional need to relocate to a different map once in a while. In a world where those options are the new "most efficient thing", the min/maxers would figure that out and do it, so who loses? Nobody. The immersionless min/maxers will be seek out whatever is the maximum gain for the minimum pain and do it, no matter what it is, and likely complain that it's still too much pain for not enough gain anyway, so there's no reason to make the most efficient thing a broken mechanic of the game that isn't working right in the RPG sense, if you can avoid it.

You've brought up quite a few points here,
A) The act if repeating content in a game designed with features that allow for repeatable content is not an exploit.

B 1)some people may find the the type of content best suited to their play style and character build and use them as a means to an end. It would be a bit misleading to say that because this is possible, everyone will play this way and no other way.

B2) just because you don't like to play this way doesn't make it either right or wrong. To some players, that is how they enjoy playing. While the game is meant to be an rpg, it doesn't have to be for everyone. We want to provide a space for both types of players while encouraging play toward how we are marking the game, one based on story. The method we are exploring is to provide rewards for defeating spawns (like xp and certain types of drops) while weighting rewards based on achievements earned within the instanced content upon completion of the content.

Repeating and completing the same mission over and again stems from a couple of possibilities: player created content, and a repeatable content system like Cityof's Flashback system (only hopefully a bit more robust). Since we plan to include both at some point in time, we have to acknowledge that there will be players that can and will repeat content. The idea the is to reduce end of mission rewards, again which will be more weighted than it was in CoH, for repeating content (regardless of how it is completed).

The notion that instanced content be exactly equitable as street sweeping is possible in the sense that mission completion rewards can be equated to a number of spawns required to defeat to earn the same reward, however they are can not be equitable in time required for return of effort. For this reason completing missions will result in a better return of effort in given sets of time.

Resetting missions, that is defeating spawns, exiting the instanced content, swapping the content to re-enter a previously entered instanced content is actually the result of a rather handy feature. It gives players a means to solve problems that may occur within an instance without the necessity of outside assistance to resolve. It also allows for players to reset a course of one or more actions that they may not be entirely pleased with the results thereof their first time through, particularly where actions can affect alignment and reputation or other decisions that have long lasting affects. Is it "realistic"? No, nor ideal when it is used to repeat content for reward. It does provide more benefits than any perceived problems it creates.

With either case, resetting or repeating instanced content, neither is an exploit as long as the rewards are earned in the method intended via design. Now if there is lootable spawns (whether its an npc or treasure cheat) that yields a higher grade reward for the effort involved to earn it is more or less the dev's fault and probably poor design.

B3) Using the term min/maxers with the phrase of free inf is inferring that min/maxers are a negative in this case. They are not, a min/maxer is a player. So long as a player is not exploiting then they are a player. Someone who abuses exploits employs hacks and so forth would be detrimental to the game. A min/maxer is not this. And so long as rewards are earned in a non exploitable manner, than the rewards aren't free, they are earned.

This is where the efficiency comes into play. Whether it is through street sweeping or using game systems to repeat instanced content, time and effort of reward are what the efficient farmer is looking for. Even if we have instanced content with weighted rewards on completion along with diminishing returns from repeating the content, there will most likely be certain builds within certain instances in which their speed and effort to defeat spawns can match the reward for completion, the same may be possible for streets weeping. What we would then have to look at is the return of reward over time with an understanding of what the upper bounds are between really fast and too fast to not be an exploit. So long as players are not in the exploit range and not exploiting, there is nothing wrong with earning rewards, whether that's repeating, resetting, or sweeping.

The root of the concern really pertains to the view of players earning rewards at a rate that devalue the in game currency and drive up the cost of items within the paler based economy of the world. Some of the methods intended to navigate this issue have been mentioned in this and other threads appropriate to the topic. We haven't mentioned all the methods we will attempt to employ either. This is in part that some are in the early stages of design, some don't have enough data to appropriately gauge the impact of, and some we may not have directly addressed or even are aware of yet. And while we want to put our best foot forward, we know that we will probably get things wrong and adjustments will be required throughout the life of the game. It's the nature of the beast.


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syntaxerror37 wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:

Not to get too off track, But I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Illusionist Badge. In it's original form of 500 summoned Illusionists (Phantasms and Dark Servants didn't count at the time), which would take fighting a minimum of 167 Master Illusionists. Funny thing is I was less than 20 away from finishing it the original way when it changed. I wasn't too mad about it, but I had to laugh. I'm willing to bet, however, other badgers were upset by that fact. Although realizing a bar was set too high and fixing it are a good thing, it's better to have picked a reasonable amount first before going live.

I didn't realize there was a change, but I remember that badge. It was a major pain, especially if you were teaming: everyone went for the kill on the Master straight away. It was a must for one of my characters though: an Illusion controller named 'Mirage. So, I just kept at it, mostly solo, well after I hit 50.

Good times.

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oOStaticOo wrote:
oOStaticOo wrote:

You have no idea how many times people contradict themselves in these forums. My favorite one is where they try to push for "Realism" then turn right around and argue for fantasy "Immersion". That's what happens though when there is something that someone feels so strongly about. The end justifies the means.

Immersion and realism are not mutually exclusive. They are not neccesarily even the same category.
Realism is the requirement that a story or game world is internally consistent. Reality is by definition (of our naturally laws) internally consistent but stories, but the term is not limited to reality.
E.g. Lord of the Rings is a realistic piece of fantasy (mostly) because the laws that govern that world are clear, obvious and never stretched. What the reader expects is possible from the first chapter is more or less the same as is possible in the last.
The superhero genre is always a bit more problematic in this regard because it is by its very nature about bending the rules of what is realistically possible in a world that is intentionally like our own. Still, a superhero story has its own internal rules that can not be deviated from, and one of them is a certain unity of theme. Another is a slow or entirely absent development of powers (heroes can do impossible things but they can not ever do more than they can already do at the start of the story for complicated story telling reasons. Heroism is mostly about overcoming impossible odds, not about the powers themselves). And abilities in both heroes and villains must be consistent and predictable. And of course, despite their super powers, both heroes and villains need to still be essentially human beings (even if they are not). We can not identify with truly alien beings. If the logic and mores is too different from humanity then we do not accept the characters as realistic (even if by their own logic they are as realistic as can get). In villains we have been trained to accept that to a degree, but villains who are evil for evil's sake are boring and rarely if ever make satisfying antagonists.

Immersion is the process where the reader or viewer of a story lets go of disbelief and accepts the story for reality for the duration. Immersion is also the quality of a story that allows the reader or viewer to do so. Because one of the biggest obstacles against reader immersing themselves in a story is a lack of realism or internal consistency, the two get frequently mixed together.

If the world created by the story is insufficiently realistic then the reader will find it near impossible to immerse him- or herself in it, but a realistic world in and of itself is not the only quality a story must have to be immersive.

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The problem I have when it

The problem I have when it comes to the "Reality vs. Immersion" argument, is that there are a lot of people that will do their best to try to push for as much "Realism" as they can possibly try to get. Then they will turn around and try to use the "Immersion" argument when it comes to something they really want that isn't "Realistic". To me that just completely irritates me to no end. Especially when some people try to push for things that are more "Immersive" than "Realistic" and the "Realistic" people get all into a tizzy about it, until it suits them not to. THAT is my problem with it. Also, I'm sorry, but I don't want a "Realistic" game. I live "Realism" all the time, when I play a game I want something to be fantastical and fun, something that doesn't always follow all the rules, I hate making something I enjoy a chore. That's not fun to me. That's why I don't care to play the Sims, Sim City, X Tycoon, X Simulator. I do enough of that in real life, why would I want to do it on a computer or console as well?

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The quotes are getting longer

The quotes are getting longer and longer, so I'm just going to keep it to general comments.

First, I'm not anti-min/maxer, but I am pro RPGer. In my opinion, the min/maxers really love taking a system and trying to break it, meaning finding the most optimal stuff, etc. Okay, so they like doing that, so let them do that. Make a game where the most optimal route through it isn't just the same boring Dreck mission over and over again like it was in CoX. Min/maxers LIKE the challenge of optimizing the system for best results, and in order to appeal to that ethos what you want to do as a designer is to give them a system that's richer and more diverse and HARDER to find the optimal route through than CoX was. CoX was not designed, originally, with the min/maxer at heart, it was designed from the point of view that people ought to make different ATs and have to team up, like playing DnD and needing different roles in the party, and people still min/maxxed the heck out of it. Handing the min/maxer a game that is more quickly and easily optimized not what they want, I feel. It's like that scene in Jurassic Park where Sam Neil says "What's this, they just hang a dead sheep from a tree to feed the t-rex? It doesn't want to be fed, it wants to hunt." Min/maxers are like T-rex, they want to hunt. Give them a game that the min/maxing is somewhat challenging and interesting, not just "here, you farm this mission, like CoX". In my opinion it's actually incumbent upon the designer not to make the game MORE easy to optimize, for the sake of the min/maxer player, but rather the opposite. Give them a challenge. ELIMINATE really efficient shortcuts, especially the ones that are immersion breaking and fly in the face of the common sense definition of the word "mission".

Second, what some people call a "play style" I call "perversion of the intended purpose of missions", and that's just how I feel. Once you call something a "mission", that word, to me, implies that there well be an objective to meet by overcoming opposition and the hero will actually, in fact, try to accomplish it, not just use it as an carte blanche ticket to beat on thugs for XP and Inf until he dings level 50 and never complete it. If you want to give people a place they can go to just beat on thugs to their heart's content, that's fine, CoX had a number of stuff like that, the Abandoned Sewers, the Crash Site, etc and it was awesome, but endless beating of thugs is the stuff of open zone street sweeping, to me, not missions. Missions are made to be completed, in my opinion.

Third, I continue to have to clarify that, in the original post, I NEVER suggested making missions non-resettable, nor am I asking for that now (I know I did mention it in passing, but please understand that I have accepted, a priori, that it is not really technically optimal). All I suggested was make some kind of cap on how many thugs you can beat up in a given mission before the contact cuts you off, the good way or the bad way, and that that cap could theoretically be something like double the number of mobs you would have to defeat if the map were totally maxxed (spawned for "x8" in CoX parlance). As far as I can tell, none of the CoX style functionality or convenience is lost there. If you have a thug stuck behind a wall, you can still go out, reset, and come back in, etc. If you're soloing at +0x1 you'd be unlikely to ever notice that this function was even there. All this does is enforce the concept of what a mission actually is for missions in the MMORPG in question.

Fourth, there's the idea that if mission repeat farming was allowed under the CoX rules, then you can't fault people for doing it, because it was not against the rules. I agree wholeheartedly with that idea, and I think my reaction to it as a designer would have been to continue to try to write better rules so that this sort of perversion of the word "mission" can't take place so much. You're right in the sense that you can't fault people for playing by the rules, but here I think you have to fault the people who wrote those rules for not making better rules in the first place, or changing them to tighten the rules up a little more moving forward. Any time you make a change to the rules, the min/maxers will go ahead and min/max for that as they see fit, as is their wont, that's what they do no matter what rules set you hand them.

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I wish I could like your post

I wish I could like your post, Tannim!

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Do Task Forces/Strike Forces

Do Task Forces/Strike Forces/Raids, or whatever they may be called in CoT, get exemptions from this rule? Does the AE/Danger Room, or whatever they call it in CoT, get exemptions? If so, then why would anybody play any of the story content if they can instead just run multiple missions in AE or keep doing the same TF over and over again? What about the people who happen to find a certain mission that they really enjoy playing? Now they can only run it a few times before they can't run it anymore? As has been mentioned before, people will find a way to farm it's the nature of the beast.

You are very passionate about your ideas, and I applaud that. However, you have to realize that while I'm sure there are many people that have the same opinion as you there are just as many people that do not. A balance has to be met. Tanim is suggesting that and I am pleased with his response. I like his ideas and can stand behind them. It's the reward that needs to be curbed, not the repeating of a mission. Grant a large reward upon completion of mission, no reward for no completion. Not saying that you won't still gain xp or inf while repeating the mission, but having a bonus at the end will encourage players to finish the mission.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

If you want to give people a place they can go to just beat on thugs to their heart's content, that's fine, CoX had a number of stuff like that, the Abandoned Sewers, the Crash Site, etc and it was awesome, but endless beating of thugs is the stuff of open zone street sweeping, to me, not missions. Missions are made to be completed, in my opinion.

I want to highlight this comment in particular because I liked mindless "beat 'em up" action every now and then. There were days when I felt bored or apathetic and just wanted to zone out for a while, so I'd take my heroes into a hazard zone and fight my way through mobs to pass the time. I might even go so far to say that it helped me refine my heroes' individual combat strategies as I became more effective at approaching and defeating mobs.

I know this isn't exactly the same as resetting missions for XP farming, but they're both repetitive activities. What about radio/paper missions that are all based on irrelevant objectives? What about missions where you're rewarded for hunting mobs? What about contacts that give repeatable missions? I know these things have been discussed in this thread, I'm just mentioning them here for comparison.

I don't really want to enter the whole debate here, but I do want to go on record to say that I hope activities such as street-sweeping don't become casualties of any proposed anti-farming measures. If I want to aimlessly beat up mobs for a couple hours without completing "real" content, I don't want to feel like I'm being punished.

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Plexius, rest assured we want

Plexius, rest assured we want to provide a game were the possibility street sweeping, or any action for the sake of it type of play is just as available as is deep into role play read every bit of lore, explore every corner of a map, search out every possible clue (and follow up on that clue) can be had. One of the fundamental understandings of designing this MMO is that there are multiple 'games' players play within the game. We look to CoH and the games played therein, from stand around rp, to action based rp, to the street sweeper, to the farmer, to the I don't care what the text says I just want to play different encounters on a map, to 1 vs 1 pvp, team pvp, ladder pvp, and more, and we want to make a game where all those types of play or games within the game are all available.


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Another possibility would be

Another possibility would be some missions where you could prevent farming without an in mission timer by saying "this is urgent, if you don't complete it in 24 hours (character in game) time, I'll have to get somebody else to do it". This would allow a little farming, but not months of it.

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Minotaur wrote:
Minotaur wrote:

Another possibility would be some missions where you could prevent farming without an in mission timer by saying "this is urgent, if you don't complete it in 24 hours (character in game) time, I'll have to get somebody else to do it". This would allow a little farming, but not months of it.

Yeah, since I felt that timed missions in CoX were a scary thing to people (what if I have to log off before I finish, unexpectedly?) I didn't go that route in the original post.

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Radiac wrote:
Radiac wrote:

Minotaur wrote:
Another possibility would be some missions where you could prevent farming without an in mission timer by saying "this is urgent, if you don't complete it in 24 hours (character in game) time, I'll have to get somebody else to do it". This would allow a little farming, but not months of it.

Yeah, since I felt that timed missions in CoX were a scary thing to people (what if I have to log off before I finish, unexpectedly?) I didn't go that route in the original post.

Actually the timers being game-time based would be a boon in general.

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