While I’m still avoiding pickup groups for the Mission Architect, there’s been some movement on this furore.

Firstly there’s been a followup post on the forums from the devs.  The follow-up makes it clearer I think, that when they’re talking about punishing people, they’re really targetting the people who have:

  • Deliberately created missions that use exploits in the game, rather than those that played them.
  • Those that heavily abused the exploitative MA missions (probably your people that got characters from 1-50 in no time, and then did it several times.  The really heavy abusers).  

There’s also a lot more focus on the fact that its the exploits they’re angry with.  They may not be pleased about the farming (I don’t know), but its the specific exploiting and “cheating” that they’re more interested in.

This to me seems much more balanced than the original post, and seems like an understandable move from the developers. 

Secondly, there’s also a patch gone live that looks to address some of the exploits that have been used.  I think specifically the issue with the out-of-proportion XP for Rikti Comms Officers has been addressed, although there’s a few more things in there as well, including restructuring the Architect badges.

Finally  I’ve also noticed a lot of players are now being more considerate regarding the broadcast channel.   While there’s still some “looking for farm team” messages going on, quite a few players are now opting to hang out in the MA and just use the local channel, which to me makes a lot more sense. 

Unfortunately, as I’ve said, the whole thing has still made me a bit wary towards pickup groups and the MA.  I’m still seeing broadcast messages about farming teams and the like, but for now I think I’d rather play more interesting missions.  To this end I’ll probably end up soloing some missions from my Supergroup and that are recommended online.   Either that, or I’ll use it just to create missions for fun.

Its just a pity that this maybe wasn’t as well handled as it could’ve been, and resulted in a lot of heated discussion on the forums.   Although I was admit, I found some of the conversations regarding farming vs exploiting quite interesting, with some interesting pro-farming points raised.

Its not been one of the shining moments in the CoH community.  But it’ll probably quickly become a footnote and laughed at.  I remember when Enhancement Diversification was coming out and there was all kinds of flames flying all over the place on the forums, but once it was in place, the players accepted it and moved on.  Its still significant enough that it gets talked about from time to time, but no one’s really angry about it anymore.   After all, it is just a game :)