On Mission Architect and Farming

Apr 27

Its interesting to notice the fuss that’s being kicked up as a result of the new Mission Architect in City of Heroes.

As I mentioned on Twitter the other day, there was a big anti-farming protest on Union over the weekend, that I was lucky enough to catch. This kicked off because of the high volume of farming teams being created in Atlas Park, and the resulting constant “looking for farm team” messages in the Broadcast channel in that zone, combined with a general belief that its not playing the game properly.

The amount of XP that can be made from some of these farming missions is without a doubt obscene. Even my high-level character could gain 2 levels in just one run of a mission. People are managing to get from 1-50 in a matter of days by playing them.

However, the argument is, should they be stopped? If people want to farm their way through the game, missing out on story arcs, interesting zones and villains etc, then why not let them? They’re not hurting anyone are they?

For me, I’m not against a bit of farming now and again. I’d never use it as my main gameplaying though as its just dull and repetitive. It is however, a nice way of killing some of the grind which, as a casual player, could really bog things down. However for the players who use it as their main style of play, I just wonder what the point is. You get to 50 before you’ve blinked. You won’t have gotten a feel for the tactics of your powers, learned the history of Paragon City or encountered the many diverse villain groups that litter the game. Instead they’ve probably run through the same 2-3 missions countless times. The same zone, the same villains. Its just dull. Unless your tanks miscalculate a pull there’s no sense of strategy or achievement. They pull over a couple of groups, and everyone else just nukes the heck out of them. There’s much less demand for a varied and proper team with the benefits that different classes can bring.

I do get tired of all the fuss over it though. Take that protest. While I appreciate the sentiment, what harm are the farmers really causing? If people want to play like that, then let them. They’re off in the architect, in their own instanced missions, so they’re not griefing anyone. They’re missing out on most of the content, but that’s their choice. And it leaves the rest of the game area clear for people playing the main missions, RPing or whatever. As a long term player of the game, I know that farming has always been around (the Synapse Taskforce used to be a favourite before the devs tweaked its first missions), or alternatively havock would be caused by one group pulling all the mobs in a particular zone to create one giant group for them to nuke. If you happened to be hunting in that zone, you’d wonder where all the bad guys had gone, or if you were just wandering through at the wrong time, you’d get caught in the pull and annihilated (something the devs tried to fix by reducing the effectiveness of taunt). Now all other players have to do is avoid the AE building in Atlas Park.

I’ll agree that the constant “looking for farm” spam on broadcast is annoying though. However so is the constant “Stop spamming broadcast with farming requests” spam. Hopefully the farming requests can get filtered into their own channel or something, or they’ll calm down in a few weeks once the fuss over the Architect’s farming missions has died down, or all the power levellers have gotten bored and left now they’ve got 30 level 50 characters.

The next move from the devs should be interesting. Do they stomp on the XP from architect missions as its spoiling the game experience, or do they leave it be, and just be happy that a load of subscribers have come back? Especially with Champions Online due out soon, the competition in the Superhero -based MMO arena is about to take off.

For myself, I hope its left alone. While I may partake in the odd bit of farming in order to give certain characters who have stalled a boost, I’ll also happily hang around the AE buildings in other zones to build up my own missions. My first as I’ve mentioned before is already published, and I’ve got some ideas for my second. The power levellers and the like are always going to be around, so at least this keeps them contained and out of everyone else’s way. Not to mention netting their subscription fees which is never a bad thing

City of Heroes, Gaming, MMO

Comments

Pie Man 70

April 29th, 2009 at 8:13 AM

I was initially against farming through MA, but you know what, I agree with you. If someone’s main goal is to level up their character as fast as possible, then farm away, as you said, missing out on the Faultline story, or the one where you face Dr Vahsihishilokof, or any number of cool arcs would lessen my enjoyment of the game so I probably won’t farm when I get back online. In fact if it does stop some of the more annoying farming pracitces in game and restrict them to MA missions then its probably a good thing.

The devs coudl probably do well to allocate a farming channel (Although whether any game would so obviously openly accept farming would be interesting)

What they will have to look out ofr is people selling on accounts after power leveling characters, but the way CoH blocks off story arcs as you level up shoudl prevent this from being worthwhile.

As you say, if it means people can continue to play as normal minus annoying power levelers then surely this is a good thing
Pie Man 70

April 29th, 2009 at 8:14 AM

Oh, meant to add, if they really want to provide extra rewards for playing the game without farming, they coudl give more badges and bonuses for finishing real story arcs. Unique stuff so that those who play normally can show off to a Level 50 leveler.
Alan

April 29th, 2009 at 8:48 AM

That’s a pretty good idea. Add in exclusive costume parts for example as rewards for finishing certain story arcs. They already have some badges associated with them, so it wouldn’t be that much of a jump (getting a permanent Freakshow disguise power would be nice after that story arc where you first get it).

As I say, I don’t mind a bit of farming when I’m getting into a rut and need a bit of a boost, but last night I was happily playing through normal missions. Team of 8, and the difficulty cranked up, and we had plenty of XP coming in without farming. Reilly V1 is finally edging closer to getting Nova after nearly 5 years of play
Pie Man 70

April 30th, 2009 at 8:06 AM

I think it would make a decent balance. Costume parts and temporary or special powers would be a good bet As you said some mission arcs already have a badge associated, and some do give you some neat temporary powers at the end, I think Bob has some sort of Ice Shielding power and a magic ring that offers protection, both temporary, but both results of mission arcs. Some specials have been really handy against elite bosses at the end of arcs. Arbiter Sands was pretty surprised when I sicced some clockwork on him, likewise, that night widow Nectarine got a shock when she ambushed me and a called on a Shivan to help me out
Alan

April 30th, 2009 at 8:25 AM

Very good point. I think I’ve also got a magic ring which raises my defense buffs. Incredibly handy with a blaster. I’ve also picked up a hyper phase power which has been immensely useful for sight-seeing in high-level zones, or scouting out open maps.

If they were going to do it though, I think I’d like to see an element of randomness to it. Have certain missions give certain specific rewards as they currently do, but have a pool of powers and costume parts that are given out on a more random basis for mission completion.

Also it would seem to make sense to add badges for mission completion “Completed 50 missions, 100 missions, 1000 missions and so on”, although my only thing about that would be that I imagine the badge-hunting players probably won’t overlap with the farming-players much in terms of overall gameplay. From that point of view, something tangible like powers and costume parts might be more incentive.

What could be really cool would be a new Epic Archetype. Designed to only be unlocked once you’ve successfully got all the other mission unlocks (badges, temp powers, costume parts). It could be rare as hell, and a real status symbol. Something like that would fill the missions right up.
Pie Man 70

April 30th, 2009 at 12:22 PM

That woudl be good, except IIRC there is one badge that is damn near impossible to get. It involves taking out a certain number of infected, problem is, they only appear in the tutorial.

As for mission completion, I’d go more with story arcs, although there is a sort of feature for taht already with your souveneers. Perhaps have an option for a base of a souveneer cabinet, to show off how many story arcs you have completed.
Alan

April 30th, 2009 at 1:41 PM

The infected badge is actually easier to get these days I think. You can use the time travelling missions to head back to Outbreak.

I like the idea of being able to set something up in the superbase actually. Perhaps you should be able to unlock vanity items like a statue of yourself (nice for setting up a founding members tribute area), and the trophy cabinet idea I like as well. As you get certain accolades, they could appear in your cabinet. No idea how hard that would be to setup though.
Ken

April 30th, 2009 at 11:10 PM

Infected badge can be gotten via Ouroboros nowadays. 30 minutes tops! The impossible badges to get are Passport, Bug hunter, and the two that were part of the snaptooth missions a couple of years ago (their name escapes me). They were for killing 100 hellfrosts and some other villain type.

Most arcs can be gotten to via the “Pillar of fire and ice” which allows you to do named arcs retrospectively after you have outlevelled them.

The exclusive bonuses for doing arcs are already sort of in there – look up “atlas medallion”, “geas of the kind ones” and so on. Task force commander badge (gained for doing taskforces 1-6) gives you a costume piece of a set of shoulder pads.
Probably the easiest way to stop people farming is to reduce xp over time if redoing a mission more than twice in a week. Keep track of what missions someone has done in a week. After twice, maybe reduce xp to zero. You’re never going to stop them farming, but you can make it more time consuming for them.
How to make them play the game properly? If they only want to farm, they won’t.
Bonuses gained from number of contacts that you have completed arcs for isnt a bad idea.
Maybe permanent negative modifiers if the time taken to level from one level to the next showed that they have been power levelled.
Alan

May 1st, 2009 at 9:34 AM

I like the idea of decreasing returns on replaying the same mission, that could work well. A blanket killing of XP in the architect missions would never work, but that kind of thing would also affect normal door missions that sometimes end up skewing towards farming.

It does sound like they’ve made moves towards some of the stuff we’ve already discussed. I reckon if they ramped up the unlockable costume pieces, they’d be big wins. Although at the end of the day, as you say, people that want to just farm will farm regardless of what other carrots you offer them.

I remember the Passport badge well. That’s the truck at Pocket D isn’t it?

I spent ages trying to figure out how to get to those coordinates up until I ended up staring out a window having just realised where that damn truck was
Ken

May 1st, 2009 at 10:42 AM

Passport was given for a while on transferring a character between servers. It was discontinued afaik.
Alan

May 1st, 2009 at 10:58 AM

Ah, its the trucker badge I was thinking of.

Presumably I’ve got the Passport badge then. Or at least, Reilly V1 should have.
Ken

May 1st, 2009 at 11:56 AM

If I could nab badges – I would .
Bug hunter’s the worst – only 3 people on union have it and 2 have quit (maybe due to bugs).
Alan

May 5th, 2009 at 9:23 AM

Must check and see what the bug hunter badge is

Bit of an odd weekend for me. I was doing a bit of farming, but quickly grew tired of the 30+ minutes it takes while people join, drop out, start the mission, decide the mission isn’t dropping the maximum xp per kill, quit, reform the team etc, etc. It ends up a complete faff. I did end up running my own farm team in frustration over the above to try and get things moving, but largely while its a nice way of getting a character out of a rut, its also a painful experience.

Spent yesterday just running missions with my various low-level alts. Less profitable, sure, but a heck of a lot more enjoyable.
Pie Man 70

May 6th, 2009 at 4:56 AM

Due to my Gnat like attention span I ran a lot of alts, and I have to say that sometimes I enjoyed taking bob out on on eof the longer higher level missions, but it was fin to run around with multiple alts in one session. Play 30 mins as a tank, another 30 as a blaster, another 30 as a defender, bit of villany. It just mixed thinsg up a little.
Alan

May 6th, 2009 at 8:21 AM

I must admit, I’ve been doing the same over the weekend, bouncing between my main blasters, my scrapper, my controller and my warshade. Its pretty fun and helps you underline the differences in the playstyle for each archetype.

Reilly2040's Blog