Pandora's Box

Five years into CoX's anniversary date, I have done the unthinkable. I have walked into a 'farm.'

And quite admired it, if not 'enjoyed' it.

How did the personal slippery slope happen? Well, it starts with my DB brute sucking fumes on endurance before stamina, making him unenjoyable to have to heave air between every spawn => fueling a growing desire to hit level 20 and stamina.

As usual, regular contacts with story arc missions intersperse a great deal of needless bouncing from place to place - here I am in Cap, and some idiot wants me to go all the way to Port Oakes, and then report back to him in Cap, and "Oh, by the way, the next mission door is in Mercy Island. Sorry, I know you're too low level for an Ouroboros portal still, but I gotta rub it in, and use up your temp travel power, y'know!"

This disrupts my personal sense / inbuilt 'clock' of xp efficiency. And like any good brute, I start eyeing the even-con street spawns which are conveniently placed a lot nearer each other, with lots of versimilitude and immersion as they scream in terror or fury as I jump into them and disrupt their protest/evil ritual/funky mechanical communion, etc.

This is all very well and fun, but I still run into the sucking fumes on end problem - coupled with the depressing fact that some idiot halved debt in missions, essentially penalizing dying when street sweeping (and I do die, thanks to the lack of end problem, plus not matured defences.)

It also strikes me that certain mob factions give more xp than others. (Nothing new, right?)

We have also established from long long ago that outdoor maps have more highly packed dense spawns and cut down travel time between spawn encounters because you simply aren't running into potted plant traps and dead ends placed for the hell of it, not to mention cave walls.

It then occurs to me: Well, MA is there. Why don't I look up a faction that is easy to kill for my level range (because we've also established that higher level ranges are buffer to take account for increasing hero powers) and gives higher than normal xp? On an outdoor map?

Said faction happens to be Longbow, and Longbow Nullifiers in particular, by virtue of them being lieutenants. Solo, on rugged, and voila, look, I have forced many lts to spawn, plus a few stray 3 minion groups.

I find such a map, on a brightly lit Atlas Park, and I rather enjoy the simulation of me being a villain deep striking into City Hall territory and wreaking havoc. EXCEPT the illusion is brutally stomped into the ground by the terrible borken "B movie" Inglish the hero bosses are using. "ITS $NAME. GET THAM!" "i need halp" "i sense a darkness over Paragon..."

Before I know it, I'm in tears from too much laughter, the fourth wall smashed to rubble, and I can only just enjoy my xp and ticket count going up.

Somewhere through my second run through of this, my soul is shuddering and it occurs to me that I could do a perfectly more straight-faced immersive version of this. Set up patrols, ambushes, boss spawns, destructible objects, depending on what the map allows, and create the sense of a mayhem mission in MA. (Conveniently, the xp rate is also just as good, of course...If not better, the achievement-efficiency seeker whispers inside me.)

After all, what is the difference between running around and resetting a portal corp dimensional anchor mission and flamebroiling heaps of warwolves/council, etc. and whatever MA generates... except possibly a question of scale?

So then I wonder what the Rikti Comm farms are like, from a technical perspective. How do they set up these spawns? Is it just a question of them throwing in that one mob into a custom group or what?

And what the hell, we all know the Comm Officers are due for a nerf, so I decide to take a solo visit to the highest starred (999+ !) meow farms to check things out.

See, that's the other thing I don't like about farms. Putting up with other people. Dealing with the idiots who take shortcuts as due proccess. Being thrown into an online version of Progress Quest (whatever you do, your numbers are going up, afk or not as you please.)

The allure of being able to attain a high xp efficiency rate alone, when I choose, is a darkly attractive thing indeed. After all, I am happily guilty of venturing solo into repetitive PvP zone missions to farm Arachnos/Longbow maps because the xp/time ratio skyrockets. I have done the same thing for Borea missions until I can't stand it any more. (Fortunately, my tolerance for repetition is generally quite low and I start seeking novelty.)

So I was quite pleasantly surprised to see good grammar in this Rikti farm (You're pretending to fight off a simulated Rikti Comm Officer invasion) and a fiendish cleverness in providing passive allies that don't fight, but generate the big forcefield. Stack a bunch of them together, and voila, soft capped defence. Couple that with the Rikti Comm Officers, which are patently giving way too much xp because they're almost double that of Longbow Nullifiers...

Phew. Impressive. In an evil kind of way.

I can see why some people have decided to exploit the hell out of this before it gets nerfed. Not even I can resist one playthrough in order not to 'waste' the ticket bonus at mission complete.

It also makes me uncomfortable/sad/puzzled too. All at the same time. Because how are the devs supposed to 'fix'/nerf this without stomping on the wonderful options that MA provides?

If you limit the number of allies following you around, or force them to be participants that can die - that ruins other perfectly good mission arcs that I've played. Speeding Through Time makes use of heaps of NPC kins to hilarious fire impy effect, which do take away from xp. Others need passive NPCs set on follow for storyline reasons, and so on. (Though perhaps you can have their powers not affect the PC, then.)

Forcing all custom groups to include minion, lts and bosses would be also quite bad, I think. The joy of custom groups is to be able to control spawn sizes and so on, and setting it all to the standard dynamic spawn rate makes it very vanilla. (It also ruins my own arc somewhat, so I wouldn't be too pleased with that either.)

Of course, that's not going to stop the farmers either. They are going to find the next loophole, the next mob that gives more xp, the next advanced goal or blend of custom/standard mobs that gives the next highest xp/time rate.

So where exactly do we draw the line?

How far do we stomp on general creativity and limit the overall novelty in the MA, in order to try and retard the progress of the efficiency experts and achievement-seekers for whom finding such maximal xp/time spots IS the game?

An RPG is inherently repetitive. It is about killing lots of enemies in order to get lots of xp in order to gain lots of levels and moar funky powers/loot/gear/ULTIMATE COSMIC POWAH.

To disguise it, we use words and storytelling to create the illusion that you're another person doing something heroic/villainous/adventurous, etc.

(And if you're really lucky, more than the illusion of choice but actual tactical / moral choice too.)

Such trappings make things fun for the average player. (Or if I'm not average, then a subset of players who play these things then. It is the novelty of the 'content' and the 'story' that makes them keep coming back, otherwise it gets too 'repetitive', goes the complaint.)

MA's originality and customizable options keep that repetitiveness at bay.

But will it end up getting crippled because of the OTHER subset of players, who are perfectly willing to put up with repetitiveness for a sense of achievement/progress in their numbers and colored bars?

And what about players who straddle both playstyles? Do they lose out completely if both sides get nerfed/fixed? Will they get more frustrated and quit if both playstyles are retarded to the point of gimpiness... or will they gorge themselves to the point of gluttony given what they want, and then grow bored and quit, saying there's nothing else but the same old thing to do?

(Even WITH the presence of options, they may not be smart/clever enough to switch, because they only see the big numbers and like status quo - Even with so many farms out there, only one or two gets played over and over, I hear. It's a safe, established 'brand.')

Puzzles with no easy answers.