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Death of the Foundry
hoenshell
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 2 Arc User
I have posted on this topic so many times in the last few months... looks like it took the first few big farms to hit for people to see what the Foundry is REALLY about for most players.
Anyway, reposting something from COH... Ye Olde Historye ofe COHe Farme Storye Arce*
Let me tell you a story about farming in City of Heroes. Note that the chronology may not be 100% accurate and I may be leaving some stuff out -- but all the stuff below happened at one point. I leave the drawing of any NW foundry parallels to the reader. Don't worry if you don't get some of the COH-specific slang... the point should be clear regardless.
Back in beta and shortly after launch, there were the stock mob farms. Family and Freakshow were enemy groups that didn't have any dangerous abilities, so the farmers would set up missions with maps that allowed for a LOT of spawns to be herded together, and just ran those. These were pretty vanilla, and comparable to running some 'farmy' official content (such as the Television story arc). But this period was pretty short, as farmers discovered the wonders of custom enemy groups.
First came boss farms: boss-only enemy groups without any meaningful attacks or with very pronounced weak points. At one point Rikti comm officer farms were all the rage, too -- these guys were LT level, but were basically pushovers... so you'd have custom enemy groups consisting of nothing but them. These were very lucrative, as you'd get a ton more xp from killing a boss than a lt and a lot more xp from killing a lt than a minion, and these bosses (or LTs) were clumped together for easy AOEability. Paragon reacted by nerfing xp from custom enemy groups unless they had one spawn of each type (boss, lt, minion).
Then came the friendly mob farms: lots of friendly mobs scattered on the map set to follow the player that didn't have attacks (and thus couldn't steal xp/tickets from the player), but a whole lot of player-buffing skills (kinetics defenders were typical for this). This was pretty popular for a time, and it was effective at powerlevelling. So Paragon required all custom mobs to have a basic attack, and only allowed the FIRST ally mob from each map to cast any abilities other than the basic attack. While this nerfed this specific kind of farm, it also nerfed quite a few legitimate story arcs that had you fighting as part of a team (such as Teen Phalanx Forever, one of the best storyarcs IMO)
Somewhere along the road came another targeted nerf: cutting xp from custom enemies unless they had a certain amount of powers. The formula was pretty convoluted, but basically you had to use their 'hard' presets for best effect (except for some special cases). This eliminated a lot of unoptimized farms, but left the optimized ones (or the ones using stock mobs) untouched. Also, Paragon occasionally nerfed the xp of special mob groups.. let me tell you how great it felt when I realized that the Hydra enemies I was using for a custom story arc (they fit the story) were only giving 50% of the xp of a normal mob because everyone was farming Hydras in Perez Park circa 2006 or whatever.
Somewhat parallel to this, some farmers were making custom farms that were tailored to a specific build. Fire farms and CEBR (claws/elec brute) farms were the most common, where the damage types done by the enemies were the ones that the powersets were most effective against, and the mobs themselves were weak to the build's primary damage type. These were HUGE, and there was no easy way to handle this without severely nerfing the powersets themselves... so Paragon basically admitted defeat at this point. Even at the end of COH's life, fire farms and CEBR farms were definitely a thing... they covered most of the browser, and made up most of the "Hall of Fame" (story arcs with 1k+ plays and 5-star averages).
Ambush versions of fire and CEBR farms were also super-popular. Basically you'd set up chained ambushes to spawn lots and lots and lots of enemies on the player... which would be easily defeated without the player having to move from the entrance, or (in some cases) even just killing themselves on the player's damage shields. This was kind of reminiscent of the old 'gather every single mob on the map into a burn patch' Tanker farms of 2004-2005. Many farms used patrols instead, which had the same effect on certain maps (and would continue working even if ambushes were nerfed)
Paragon also tried the exact same thing Cryptic seems to be trying now: banning and removing farms. This was (as expected) useless, as farmers just disguised their farms as legit content ('meow' was a keyword to search for them, for instance).
Summary (TLDR)
During the entire life of the COH MA, there were ALWAYS farms. They were ALWAYS at the top, no matter what Paragon tried. Sure, after a patch there was a day or two when the previous farms were broken, but the authors just came up with new farms. This is basically an unwinnable cat-and-mouse game. If you take drastic measures like removing all rewards from player-created content altogether or severely limiting the editor's capabilities, you can 'win'... but in my POV, that cost is not worth it. What you need to do is let the farmers farm, let the RPers RP, let the story authors make stories, let the challenge / hack-and-slash people make their challenge maps. We're All In This Together (tm).
Bonus part, not mentioned above: the brief period between I14 and I15 (I think?) where MA badges (click x items, free y hostages, get z ratings, etcetera) were still a thing. There were thousands of storyarcs dedicated to getting the badges and nothing else. Just like farming arcs, they crowded out almost everything else from the browser, so Paragon made the decision to remove 95% of those badges (and just leave the trivially-achievable ones). Note that NW has very similar achievements, so it's very possible we'll see something like this here -- especially since the foundry achievements actually have material rewards.
---Script taken from another player.
THE POINT: You will ALWAYS have to keep updating 2 things: Class Balance and Farming, even though it will NEVER be perfect. The only thing super nerfing the foundry did was super HAMSTER off a load of hardworking, story-line oriented foundry creators. Let farmers farm, let RP's Roleplay, let PvPers PVP.
Anyway, reposting something from COH... Ye Olde Historye ofe COHe Farme Storye Arce*
Let me tell you a story about farming in City of Heroes. Note that the chronology may not be 100% accurate and I may be leaving some stuff out -- but all the stuff below happened at one point. I leave the drawing of any NW foundry parallels to the reader. Don't worry if you don't get some of the COH-specific slang... the point should be clear regardless.
Back in beta and shortly after launch, there were the stock mob farms. Family and Freakshow were enemy groups that didn't have any dangerous abilities, so the farmers would set up missions with maps that allowed for a LOT of spawns to be herded together, and just ran those. These were pretty vanilla, and comparable to running some 'farmy' official content (such as the Television story arc). But this period was pretty short, as farmers discovered the wonders of custom enemy groups.
First came boss farms: boss-only enemy groups without any meaningful attacks or with very pronounced weak points. At one point Rikti comm officer farms were all the rage, too -- these guys were LT level, but were basically pushovers... so you'd have custom enemy groups consisting of nothing but them. These were very lucrative, as you'd get a ton more xp from killing a boss than a lt and a lot more xp from killing a lt than a minion, and these bosses (or LTs) were clumped together for easy AOEability. Paragon reacted by nerfing xp from custom enemy groups unless they had one spawn of each type (boss, lt, minion).
Then came the friendly mob farms: lots of friendly mobs scattered on the map set to follow the player that didn't have attacks (and thus couldn't steal xp/tickets from the player), but a whole lot of player-buffing skills (kinetics defenders were typical for this). This was pretty popular for a time, and it was effective at powerlevelling. So Paragon required all custom mobs to have a basic attack, and only allowed the FIRST ally mob from each map to cast any abilities other than the basic attack. While this nerfed this specific kind of farm, it also nerfed quite a few legitimate story arcs that had you fighting as part of a team (such as Teen Phalanx Forever, one of the best storyarcs IMO)
Somewhere along the road came another targeted nerf: cutting xp from custom enemies unless they had a certain amount of powers. The formula was pretty convoluted, but basically you had to use their 'hard' presets for best effect (except for some special cases). This eliminated a lot of unoptimized farms, but left the optimized ones (or the ones using stock mobs) untouched. Also, Paragon occasionally nerfed the xp of special mob groups.. let me tell you how great it felt when I realized that the Hydra enemies I was using for a custom story arc (they fit the story) were only giving 50% of the xp of a normal mob because everyone was farming Hydras in Perez Park circa 2006 or whatever.
Somewhat parallel to this, some farmers were making custom farms that were tailored to a specific build. Fire farms and CEBR (claws/elec brute) farms were the most common, where the damage types done by the enemies were the ones that the powersets were most effective against, and the mobs themselves were weak to the build's primary damage type. These were HUGE, and there was no easy way to handle this without severely nerfing the powersets themselves... so Paragon basically admitted defeat at this point. Even at the end of COH's life, fire farms and CEBR farms were definitely a thing... they covered most of the browser, and made up most of the "Hall of Fame" (story arcs with 1k+ plays and 5-star averages).
Ambush versions of fire and CEBR farms were also super-popular. Basically you'd set up chained ambushes to spawn lots and lots and lots of enemies on the player... which would be easily defeated without the player having to move from the entrance, or (in some cases) even just killing themselves on the player's damage shields. This was kind of reminiscent of the old 'gather every single mob on the map into a burn patch' Tanker farms of 2004-2005. Many farms used patrols instead, which had the same effect on certain maps (and would continue working even if ambushes were nerfed)
Paragon also tried the exact same thing Cryptic seems to be trying now: banning and removing farms. This was (as expected) useless, as farmers just disguised their farms as legit content ('meow' was a keyword to search for them, for instance).
Summary (TLDR)
During the entire life of the COH MA, there were ALWAYS farms. They were ALWAYS at the top, no matter what Paragon tried. Sure, after a patch there was a day or two when the previous farms were broken, but the authors just came up with new farms. This is basically an unwinnable cat-and-mouse game. If you take drastic measures like removing all rewards from player-created content altogether or severely limiting the editor's capabilities, you can 'win'... but in my POV, that cost is not worth it. What you need to do is let the farmers farm, let the RPers RP, let the story authors make stories, let the challenge / hack-and-slash people make their challenge maps. We're All In This Together (tm).
Bonus part, not mentioned above: the brief period between I14 and I15 (I think?) where MA badges (click x items, free y hostages, get z ratings, etcetera) were still a thing. There were thousands of storyarcs dedicated to getting the badges and nothing else. Just like farming arcs, they crowded out almost everything else from the browser, so Paragon made the decision to remove 95% of those badges (and just leave the trivially-achievable ones). Note that NW has very similar achievements, so it's very possible we'll see something like this here -- especially since the foundry achievements actually have material rewards.
---Script taken from another player.
THE POINT: You will ALWAYS have to keep updating 2 things: Class Balance and Farming, even though it will NEVER be perfect. The only thing super nerfing the foundry did was super HAMSTER off a load of hardworking, story-line oriented foundry creators. Let farmers farm, let RP's Roleplay, let PvPers PVP.
Post edited by hoenshell on
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Comments
First Point- In CoH the mobs scaled to the party size. A single player entering the mission arc would only generate between 1-3 mobs. A full team would pull out around 6-18 mobs per group. No such scaling system in the foundry.
Second Point- There are no bosses in the Foundry as yet and when Cryptic does add them, if they do, I'm pretty sure they will form some kinda of catch to keep it restricted in xp gain. Remember, Paragon didn't initially set up CoH it was Cryptic and their engine.
Third Point- From the statement of is only going to affect those authors that want to make farms. Those of us that want legitimate story and exploration campaigns have no problem with banning or deleting farms.
In fact, since the quests have to be reviewed prior to being released live, a lot of creators test new quests daily. Personally, if I jump into a farm the first thing I'm gonna do is get out. The second is I'm gonna report it as bad content to other authors, and third is that I'm gonna look for those authors and make sure to avoid their work in the future. Creating a farm is not a proper quest and is not WAI by the system it is designed for. Come on you know the word I want to use, that's all it is.