what else is there to say - everybody in the game stays in one building, making travel powers and game exploration worthless... nice job devs

account cancelled

Though I don't know if the game is done, it's different, way different, I agree people just sit in Atlas AE building now, there is no community there just lag. Also it's near impossible to find an 8 man group out side of peek times to do anything but grind player made farm missions. On the topic of farming, I don't see the point, but thats me, if your are a gamer who likes it try CoH, there are are farms that will take you from level 1 to 18 in an hour, and you can now top out a charater in a couple of days. I'm not cancelling my account yet, bought four game cards for $20, but once those are done if this hasn't passed I won't be reupping.

I haven't made up my mind yet. Still got my account, mainly due to the time I've invested in the game, well over 4 years now.  The mission architect hasn't made the game 'trash' though, it's the players who are abusing it that are causing the problems...as usual.

Originally posted by Mentat

what else is there to say - everybody in the game stays in one building, making travel powers and game exploration worthless... nice job devs

 

account cancelled

Thats odd, I find people playing all over the place. Maybe you should have checked out some of the global channels for the server you were on.

Oh well, don't let the door hit you......you should know the rest.

I'm suprised to still see these doomsday "OMG farming killed the game account cancel now" threads popping up. Ever since the announcement that farmers would have their characters deleted I'm seeing MUCH less farming going on, almost none at all. Perhaps even less than there was BEFORE the AE.

I see people finally going back to doing the same stuff they were doing before, which is actually not really a good thing in my opinion. People are back to sitting in Atlas park chatting or running the shortest and easiest TFs they can find. Which for me means the game is BORING again, like the whole issue 14 update never even happened at all.

I'm probably going to cancel my account when my current game cards run out. Not because I think the game is bad or because I think issue 14 "ruined" it. But just because I've done pretty much all there is to do in this game. When the new expansion pack comes out (next year maybe?) I'll probably give the game another chance.

Set aside my obvious distaste for the another said issue.

I was around for the launch of this AE and I found it utterly dull players set up their own missions and then played it on their own without trying other people's.

I saw zones become sucked dry of players which ended up in the vacuum bag of the AE buildings. 

Ah, so now that players can architect their own missions- people just those to farm xp. Nice.... I take it you must go to this Atlas AE building in order to tryout the player missions. Yeah will be tough to find the good ones if there is a sea of farm missions.

Haha nice. Man I would try this expansion if it were not for other issues that i had with the game that caused me to depart

Originally posted by PatchDay

Ah, so now that players can architect their own missions- people just those to farm xp. Nice.... I take it you must go to this Atlas AE building in order to tryout the player missions. Yeah will be tough to find the good ones if there is a sea of farm missions.

 

Haha nice. Man I would try this expansion if it were not for other issues that i had with the game that caused me to depart

There are multiple global channels to help you find AE teams that are not farming.

There is a forum on the official website where people can list thier story arc for others to try out.

There are also a few SG/VGs that are themed around leveling in AE only. Through actual missions, not farms.

Yes some people used it to make farms and they have taken steps to eliminate that. There will always be people making more farms, but as long as people report the farms they find the farmers will eventually run out of MA slots.

I don't feel like it's bad now, but I do feel like it's not getting any better.

One of the problems they have is that they want to give players this feeling of options, yet they very strictly want to control what you actually do with it. The result is a very complex web of mays and may-nots, esoteric rules with overrides, special exceptions, and details you either have to know or not care about. The result is that it gets harder and harder to track the math and make optimized calculations, and anyone who tries without hours to spend will eventually give up and become a "ooh, pretty colors" player. Which I'm 100% sure is the goal. The problem is that leaving is also a problem.

The other side of that is they're catering to a narrower niche of the playerbase. On the surface it's not bad to be giving active players what they want and not chasing hypothetical ones. However, when they spend a year adding costumes and text and stories, all layered over the same old gameplay, I feel like "hey, great for the roleplayers, but how about those of us who like games?"

In the end you can't force users to switch what they care about. I've enjoyed being a min/maxer since before I knew the term. I find it challenging to come up with new optimizations for new scenarios. But instead of creating new situations, they spend time excluding my options (e.g. making IOs not work in powers where you'd think they would, or boosts have special overlaid rules that reduce their effect from what they claim). Heck, I made an Architect mission just for fun - not a farm or anything - and it ended up being unpublished with some changes. I don't even know why, and I don't care to try to figure it out.

I just feel like I spend more time fighting devs than I do enemies. :(

Originally posted by Colonial

Set aside my obvious distaste for the another said issue.

I was around for the launch of this AE and I found it utterly dull players set up their own missions and then played it on their own without trying other people's.

I saw zones become sucked dry of players which ended up in the vacuum bag of the AE buildings. 

That was my experience, exactly.

I didn't know about AE, but return to CoH periodically (it's still my favourite mmo). I resubbed 5 days before AE was released. The vacuum bag effect was startling.

I really do still love this game even though it long ago became dull and repetitive to me. And while the devs have made some smart decisions, on the whole the game's been going in a bad direction for a long time.

First year after release, this was a seriously fun game. But I can't name a single update that has really improved the game experience for me, and more than a few that have made it worse.

Inventions made it better.

Tweaking and nerfing and disallowing inventions over the next several issues made it worse.