Positron threatens to delete characters that abuse MA system

[Trippy]

Abusing Mission Architect

Edit:

FOLLOW UP: Abusing Mission Architect

[Nebu]

People using the MA to avoid a pointless grind in a game where there's little to do at the endgame.  I don't see what the big deal is beyond the fact that it's making the board warriors whine. 

[Zetor]

I don't get it either... if people want to build a repetitive [but efficient] grindfest for themselves, more power to them! It's not like it affects my enjoyment of the game (other than the annoyance of having to filter powerlevel arcs).


-- Z.

[Glazius]

People using the MA to avoid a pointless grind in a game where there's little to do at the endgame.  I don't see what the big deal is beyond the fact that it's making the board warriors whine. 

Well, the same people who teamwipe to the comms officers -- and these people exist, even though comms officers are minions with a single plinky attack that had rewarded like lieutenants until the patch that accompanied this crackdown -- don't have a prayer of doing anything with their characters after they come out the other side.

You need to play at least a little at every level, in order to work out for yourself what works and what doesn't, and how to deal with the new wrinkles that come your way. Otherwise you ruin the game for yourself.

The people who can jump their characters to a crazily high level and play them to meet that level's demands don't need corridors of comms officers to level up on. (I think they're using corridors of Freakshow right now.)

[Kageru]

I don't mind farming, it can be sort of relaxing, but the XP gain from farming must not be so large it dwarfs all other forms of gameplay or it will suffocate them. And the comm officer farms were incredibly out of balance in this regard.

That said it will be very interesting to see what they do. This inevitable outcome should have been adressed during development/beta or at least faster once it became obvious it was an issue. Allowing it to go on so long (through numerous patches) and then utter random threats doesn't seem very productive to me. After all who judges the point at which a mission becomes an exploit? If they actually carry it out and start banning or delevelling characters the response should be interesting. The official forums thread following his post is already 255 pages long.

[UnSub]

From Paragon Studios' point of view, they don't want players lvling from 1 - 50 too quickly because it will impact on player longevity. There needs to be some delay, not getting from 1 - 50 in 10 hours and then going, "Is that it?". CoH/V desperately needs those new players to stay for a bit and increase the player numbers which has to be hanging around the 100k mark - if they lose too many more, maintenance mode might not be that far away (depending on how Aion and GW2 go, of course).

That said: badly handled. Positron always posts in a very blunt fashion (as did Emmert) which has allowed people to get all outraged about his post.

[Nebu]

I just don't see this having anything to do with new players and retention.  The exploit is being used by people that know the game well and want to reroll new alts to gear up.  I also think it serves as a reaffirmation that the journey from 1-50 isn't really all that fun.  1-30, sure... but 30-50 is an unimaginative grind. 

[UnSub]

If they are existing players, they should know their way out of Atlas Park, but a complaint has been an increasing number of lvl 50s appearing who don't know the basics of the game.

Plus if you are whipping it through to 50 in CoH/V, you have to know that there isn't much to do once you hit lvl 50.

[Nebu]

If they are existing players, they should know their way out of Atlas Park, but a complaint has been an increasing number of lvl 50s appearing who don't know the basics of the game.

That hasn't hurt WoW much 

I understand the reactions, but I think that they are reacting more to a forum outcry than a serious issue.  CoH is 5 years old.  People are just searching for new ways to win an old game.  The MA just allowed them a new one. 

[tazelbain]

Convert the elements of MA missions into tokens and create a Bayesian filter those tokens to weed out farm missions.  Some sort human intervention is doomed to failure without a tool to drasticly trim the amount content that needs to be reviewed.

[Xanthippe]

I just don't see this having anything to do with new players and retention.  The exploit is being used by people that know the game well and want to reroll new alts to gear up.  I also think it serves as a reaffirmation that the journey from 1-50 isn't really all that fun.  1-30, sure... but 30-50 is an unimaginative grind. 

This right here is why I don't play anymore.  I think my highest is 40.

For such an alt-tastic game, why why why is the grind so punishing?

[Sjofn]

I just don't see this having anything to do with new players and retention.  The exploit is being used by people that know the game well and want to reroll new alts to gear up.  I also think it serves as a reaffirmation that the journey from 1-50 isn't really all that fun.  1-30, sure... but 30-50 is an unimaginative grind. 

This right here is why I don't play anymore.  I think my highest is 40.

For such an alt-tastic game, why why why is the grind so punishing?

You got further than me, I think my highest is 36 or so. It's sad, because it really is an alt lover's paradise in theory, but the grind sucks the joy out.

That said, I've been thinking of giving it a whirl again. Sometimes you just need to kick a bad guy in the face.

[Nebu]

Every time I resub, I play less.  I think my most recent forray amounted to paying my $15 and playing three nights for an hour or less.  I can only take so much of: run across three zones to find a contact, then run across three more zones only to fight mobs in the same building tileset you've already done 100 times. 

[Sjofn]

I haven't played in well over a year, so I thiiiiink I would be OK with the repetition for long enough to justify the $15. Really the question is do I want to reinstall it and do all the patching - it's entirely possible I would lose interest before I finished that. 

[Murgos]

It's sort of like they don't want people to play this game.

[Lantyssa]

I haven't played in well over a year, so I thiiiiink I would be OK with the repetition for long enough to justify the $15. Really the question is do I want to reinstall it and do all the patching - it's entirely possible I would lose interest before I finished that. 

I tried playing over the free weekend.  It took me longer to log all my characters in for badges than I could actually stand playing.

[Evildrider]

I resubbed a few months back.  I logged onto my character, started a mission... about halfway through I realized why I had quit.

[Kageru]

I got further this time, though the AE certainly helped. Given most of the old-hands are all 50 if you want to group you need to have the majority of your powers. There's no point sidekicking someone who only has a small handful of their archetype powers.

Also realising the level grind (which honestly does seem much better than it used to be) is as nothing compared to the gearing grind. Some of the enhancements are very powerful but take extremely rare components or huge sums of money. The latter as is expected from a mature game which has a lot of people sitting on huge sums of cash.

[UnSub]

The IOs have really changed the game. Especially the consignment house, where you might need tens of millions of inf to buy the more useful IOs. And the devs break it with every new release of either IO recipes or pseudo-currency systems (e.g. tickets).

Because a lot of people are playing MA, they are getting tickets, not salvage. They are getting inf. Sure, they can swap tickets for salvage but I think the exchange rate is pretty poor. However, they are inf rich so they go to the consignment house to buy salvage (force of habit too)... and suddenly the price of even some common salvage items is verging on the insane.

[Trippy]

Common salvage got really expensive until people started dumping their ticket bought salvage to reap some of that money. Rares, on the other hand, have dropped dramatically in price thanks to tickets.

[Glazius]

The IOs have really changed the game. Especially the consignment house, where you might need tens of millions of inf to buy the more useful IOs. And the devs break it with every new release of either IO recipes or pseudo-currency systems (e.g. tickets).

Because a lot of people are playing MA, they are getting tickets, not salvage. They are getting inf. Sure, they can swap tickets for salvage but I think the exchange rate is pretty poor. However, they are inf rich so they go to the consignment house to buy salvage (force of habit too)... and suddenly the price of even some common salvage items is verging on the insane.

The IOs are a welcome relief from the cycle of SOmsara: buy enhancements, in 5 levels they degrade to nothing, buy enhancements again. Commons are 8 tickets for a random roll, modestly long missions are 100-200 tickets apiece.

Sets become worth looking into at about 20 for dual-factors. Single-factor basic IOs are worth it at 25 or 30.

Yes, the super-best sets are expensive and a long way off. But with people randoming on recipes, there are a lot of unused second-best sets you can pick up for a song.

There isn't a single character of mine over like 20, at least not one that I've played recently, that actually uses non-crafted enhancements. They're easy to make as long as you're willing to admit the market exists and not just autosell your salvage at the vendor for 1% of its market value.

[WindupAtheist]

Wow, who could have seen this coming? Oh yeah, fucking anyone.

[Trippy]

FOLLOW UP: Abusing Mission Architect

Still no clear indication what constitutes a "deletable" offense in MA.

[Glazius]

FOLLOW UP: Abusing Mission Architect

Still no clear indication what constitutes a "deletable" offense in MA.

Anything where you can't convince customer service it isn't a deletable offense.

Seriously, if they draw a line, people are going to go right up to the line and say "I'm not crossing you. Does this bug you? I'm not crossing you." and then complain when they accidentally take a step over because they didn't mean to, there was an earthquake.

...yeah, that's a tortured metaphor. Sorry.

[Trippy]

I understand him not wanting to draw a specific line because people will go up to but not over it but he needs to at least define in ballpark figures what he means by "so egregious". Order of magnitude is fine. I'm sure there are thousands of players that have characters that have leveled at least somewhat using "abusive" MA methods. If they have 1 or 2 characters that have done that is that "so egregious"? 10? 100? That'll give people a sense of whether or not they should be worried or not. Right now these thousands of players are still waiting in "limbo" for the other shoe to finish dropping cause Positron won't define what he means.

[UnSub]

Also, apparently it is fine to farm for badges, but farming isn't to be encouraged. Some mixed messages there.

[Glazius]

Also, apparently it is fine to farm for badges, but farming isn't to be encouraged. Some mixed messages there.

Playing an arc over and over again to get the arcs completed badge = fine.

Making a one-mission arc on the smallest possible map with allied patrols overwriting the enemies for people to play over and over again to get the arcs completed badge = not encouraged.