317 réponses à ce sujet

[mybudgee]

I agree, but OP 4got one thing about Corporations; $$$

[samb]

 Farmers actively threaten BW's revenue and that is why "farmers" are targeted. Why use real money when in game credits are so easy with the following combination?  Your goal to seperate the "game for fun" and the "farmers" is admirable but doomed to fail. Mainly because money is involved. 

Your friend is right of course OP, the cycle will never end. People will always search for that one way toga in the advantage. But I don't think BW is naive enough to think they can officially "beat" farmers. All they can do is keep them off-balance with weekly "balance" changes. They change the landscape a bit to make the players sit and think "would this work?" and then they spend time trying it out. Before they come to conclusions the next weeks' changes come in and all that research was wasted. BW is trying to stay ahead of the learning curve set by min/maxing players by changing the rules constantly. Even a buff is a distraction, designed to make you wonder if the buff makes things viable (usually not) and tempt you to waste your time respecting or promoting. 

Its all about the money. Period. If you want to be heard then speak with your actions and stop playing/paying. That sends the clearest message. 

[Loscakes]

Good read. I completely agree with everything, but it's a waste of time to apply logic to Bioware. They want less farming so people buy more packs and seem to be oblivious to the fact that it will never stop. Everyone who is sick of all the nerfs should pledge to never buy packs. Speak with your wallet, as they say.

[billy the squid]

Yep, I agree. As one of those nasty people who used farming to get the weapons I want before playing regular matches.

I used the Geth Infiltrator with the Black Widow first, then the Krysae, then the GPS. Nerfing the sniper damage succeded in doing nothing (I actually stopped using the Krysae, before the nerfs, because it was actually so God damn boring.) I simply moved to shtguns. Although I disagree, that the Tac cloak nerf wasn't necessary 8 second of cloak was waaaay to much for the damage build. I don't think it required nerfing the Sniper damage so much though.

Anyway. I'm now pulling in 100k+ points with a Shadow vs Cerberus, fairly easy, so weapons aren't even an issue now.

I did hate the Geth buffs, but again. Nothing changed. Now you just equip a demolisher with a Harrier, infinite ammo and grenades. And grenade spam. if you have more than one on the team, it's tech explosions every few seconds.

Essentially buffing enemies and nerfing weapons and powers, doesn't really do anything. Every level has a farming area. Every class has a combination that can be used to farm. If it gets nerfed. Well, you just move on to the next one and start all over again. If you include a Random store, it encourages that sort of behaviour. I'm not spending my money on packs which don't assure me that I get what I want, so I farm, to get the credits instead. Then play the game when I have what I wanted.

[SeaSquared]

 I agree, there have been and still are multiple examples of a setup I used outside of farming being nerfed to prevent it's use in farming.

Ironically those changes mean now I will only ever use them to farm.

The most recent example that applies to me is smash. Smash is difficult to use in a non-farming way already, while I haven't tested yet I doubt I will ever use my Pheonix for anything other that spamming through a chocke-point wall now.

[Samerandomscreennameidontcareabout]

Awesome post. I suppport this thread.

[St3v3H]

Very nice post, I totally agree

[Kai Peng]

Totally Agree with OP - Hope that BW takes notice.

[Raphamon]

@TC:
I completely agree with you. One thing you should mention though is that not only did the latest "fix" not sort out any of the many glitches this game's multiplayer has but it actually made the game even more glitchy by introducing even more frequent lag, latency, sync and performance issues. When a previous version of the game ran better than the new version then you know something is wrong. ME3 multiplayer performed 10 times better before this latest multiplayer fix. The developers are supposed to make the game run better with updates, not worse.

Modifié par Raphamon, 03 août 2012 - 12:29 .

[vGriMz]

I don't use OOC information IC'ly.

[BongMong]

Just to add my tuppence worth; Firstly I don't care if people want to farm. Obviously it is annoying if Farmers do it in pub matches and kick folk who don't have the ideal load out, but then Leets do the same thing. As long as they do it in private matches then what's the beef? Secondly, if you want good weapons and can't afford to spend money on packs daily, then you have to farm. Mainly because if you don't get the new-release good weapons very quickly they'll be nerfed to bits before you see them playing normally for credits.

Nerfing like this is the reason people feel they must farm.

[steverw1975]

samb wrote...

 Farmers actively threaten BW's revenue and that is why "farmers" are targeted. Why use real money when in game credits are so easy with the following combination?  Your goal to seperate the "game for fun" and the "farmers" is admirable but doomed to fail. Mainly because money is involved. 

Your friend is right of course OP, the cycle will never end. People will always search for that one way toga in the advantage. But I don't think BW is naive enough to think they can officially "beat" farmers. All they can do is keep them off-balance with weekly "balance" changes. They change the landscape a bit to make the players sit and think "would this work?" and then they spend time trying it out. Before they come to conclusions the next weeks' changes come in and all that research was wasted. BW is trying to stay ahead of the learning curve set by min/maxing players by changing the rules constantly. Even a buff is a distraction, designed to make you wonder if the buff makes things viable (usually not) and tempt you to waste your time respecting or promoting. 

Its all about the money. Period. If you want to be heard then speak with your actions and stop playing/paying. That sends the clearest message. 

Hate to break it to you or Bioware, but I'm never buying packs with real money. Why? Because I already paid enough when I bought the game new. I might pay for major new sp dlcs (already got from ashes and the me2 dlcs), but I will not pay for tools to aid me in current gameplay. I'll get what I can get through gameplay, and that's it. If they set the game up so that I couldn't keep up with people paying for advancement rather than playing for it, and that kept me from keeping up in gameplay, then I'd be gone. Simple as that.

At this point, you might ask, "well, if bioware can't continue to sell you anything with mp, then why would they care if you quit?" If that's the case, I'd respond that they would probably like to sell me more games in the future. If I don't like the way they do their mp, then I'm really not likely to buy any of their games in which mp is a serious component. Also, if I stick around and keep playing me3, even in mp form, I'm more likely to buy those sp dlcs I mentioned.

All of this is just a long way of saying that if I farm I'm not costing Bioware any revenue. The same is probably true of most players. Either they're not willing to spend real money on equipment packs, or they're only willing to pay just so much. there's probably not a large percentage of players willing to continuously spend large amounts of money to keep buying packs. So, if all of these changes were designed simply to limit farming (and thereby get people to spend more real money buying packs), then they're likely wasting their time for the most part.

[MP-Ryan]

I think a lot of people would consider paying actually money for upgrades if it wasn't this ridiculous RNG system. As it stands, until it's no longer random upgrades and ALL the bugs are fixed (especially the Vanguard glitch), I will not be paying for anything in multiplayer. Singleplayer DLC with content, sure, but this system is akin to a really broken casino in multiplayer.

[x SHIRO x]

JaimasOfRaxis wrote...

Look, I've learned from the last couple of weeks that there is one, overpowering reason for nerfs in this game: that it has gotten too easy to farm a setup of a certain level/enemy setup and ergo allow players to get so-called "easy credits." Whilst FBWGG is the best-known example, it's far from the only one. In each case, the biggest and most obvious nerfs are mostly applied not out of genuine balance concerns, but rather to deal with characters and players farming with certain setups for the aforementioned "easy credits":

* The Quarian Female Infiltrator was among the first targets, since Sabotage and poor enemy coding meant that farming Geth on gold was comparatively easy. Sabotage has been fixed and re-fixed a half-a-dozen or so times now, and only now properly can be considered a good ability again.

* FBWGG was the most common farming setup (and still is). Geth got their infamously-awful mega-buff that resulted in Geth Rocket Machinegunners, stunproof Hunters that shoot whilst flying, and Pyros that shoot through walls, but it didn't stop farmers one bit.

* Geth Infiltrator was the most common "power" class used to farm due to versatility; Geth Hunter Mode got toned down, followed by all Infiltrators getting a blanket nerf to Tactical Cloak (a "fix," mind you, which can be argued accomplished little - DPS builds continued to go DPS, and support infiltrators got screwed with a 25% shorter duration, and, as most Infiltrators ran damage, the key offending builds continued to dominate).

* Missile Glitch and its fix. Nothing else need be said.

* Krysae was nerfed as it was the most common "power" weapon used to farm Platinum (indeed, the first players to Solo platinum did so with Krysae Infiltrators. Hell, the first players to beat Platinum were Krysae Infiltrators).

* Stomps on Gold and Platinum were specifically in response to players reliably clearing those difficulties.

* Typhoon was cut down in effectiveness twice consecutively, along with the main class that used it. The result is a gun that is only viable on the Destroyer and became utterly pointless on the other power-light and cooldown-immune classes that could cram it on, such as Quarian Engineer, Krogan Soldier/Sentinel, Demolisher, Human/BF3 Soldier, and so on.

* Smash was nerfed specifically due to players spamming it on Firebase Glacier for Platinum runs (source: Bioware Staff).

I appreciate that this is being done with the interest in trying to keep some level of control over rampant farming, but the simple fact is that - Krysae nerfs aside - the bulk of these hit the community infinitely harder than it did the actual Farmers. More to the point, these nerfs have not done anything to curb farming whatsoever. On top of this, we are now entering a metagame wherein balance fixes are being performed around the farmers, and not the actual playerbase, and that, to put it simply, is lunacy. Does anyone here honestly think that players who were farming Glacier with Smash are really that plussed that Smash got nerf-batted in response to their antics? No, they'll mutter a bit, and go looking for some other way to endlessly farm easy credits to max out their manifests.

The sad thing is that this has been going on for months, and explains literally every questionable balance decision that has been made in regards to this game.

Let us journey back to the early days of ME3, where Sabotage was widely considered the easiest way to farm Gold. When the Female Quarian Infiltrator's ability was nerfed, this did not dissuade players from using the Quarian Infiltrator to farm, since she was still fairly effective if used right, but her use tapered off in favor of other Infiltrators.

Geth remained popular, however, for farmers, because they did not have the bullsquid that was instant kills, nor did they throw psychic invisible grenades that wipe parties out and have perfect accuracy. What resulted was teams of veteran players farming Gold using whatever tactics they could find: Clustering on Firebase Glacier, bunkerstorm on Firebase Ghost, the desks at Firebase White. Later, the Geth were buffed dramatically (and many would argue game-breakingly) specifically in response to players farming them on Gold.

The point is that this is endless carrot-and-stick chasing. Players are going to farm - so long as this game uses this enfuriatingly, widely-documented-as-poorly-designed store system with all of its infinitely complained-about problems, people are going to actively seek out the most efficient, utilitarian way to secure easy credits and get things unlocked. This is human nature at its finest, and it's a testament to ME3's enjoyability that the game has endured despite this. I understand that slowing this down, at least, is a priority, since players getting credits the proper way means less people purchasing magic space points, but in the end, there's a very basic question to ask about these fixes:

Who is suffering more when a weapon or ability is made less-viable, the Farmers, or the actual Players?

The answer is abundantly clear: It's the players. From the newbie who, against all odds, gets a shiny ouchie-bang-splat ultra rare in his very first Premium Spectre Pack - only to find that weapon considerably less shiny once the weekly balance fix gives it a righteous kick in the scrote, to the veterans who are farting around on Silver with a few friends, it is the bulk of the playerbase, and, most assuredly, not the Farmers, who form the lifeblood of this game, and who, ultimately, will suffer the most when a weapon, ability, or class is nerfed into oblivion. This is not to say that occasionally, fixes are not necessary - The Missile Glitch fix was a long time coming, and I challenge anyone to tell me that the Krysae was anything but a godlessly powerful rape-cannon when it was first released.

A friend of mine (who happens to be amongst the highest-ranked N7 players in the world) once chimed in and said that this current cycle of basing fixes on weakening farming methodologies, no matter how much it nerfs and destroys, will never, ever, at any point in time, be successful. His reasoning is both logical and concise - not only will the playerbase continue to find methods that work to reliably gain easy credits, but there are literally over a dozen relatively obscure setups that are more than capable of reliably handling any difficulty or situation and which, due to their obscurity, are as likely to be nerfed as Commander Sheperd is to die of natural causes. More than this, team skill will always be a factor - players who can coordinatre and work well with others will always find ways to make it through, even if they have to fight naked and armed with the projectile weapon equivalent of nerf bats, and they will find a way to reliably extract credits doing so.

This cycle of fixes focused on Farming methodologies, rather than actual need, has got to stop. If a build or the like is overpowered, by all means, deal with it - but nerfing things into oblivion specifically because they were effective at things has got to cease - especially because, all-too-often, these so-called fixes are poorly-implemented and break more than they fix.

A good example is the Typhoon - once an excellent weapon for literally ALL power-light and cooldown-immune classes, like the Krogan Soldier/Sentinel, Quarian Engineer, and more, it is now pretty much only remotely viable on the N7 Destroyer. This is extremely bad design and totally counter-intuitive. After the last "fix," no one was clamoring for the Typhoon to be made less-efficient than the Phaeston on several classes.

There are other, infinitely more pressing things that need to be worked on, that are a dozen times more important and pressing to this game reaching its full potential than a bunch of pissants farming Platinum due to Glacier's horrible map design (something not the players' fault no less). The game is plagued with underpowered, dead-end gear, weapons, and class options, and the bulk of the playerbase would love nothing more than bringing these to the point where they're actually viable. Fixing bugs and improving class viability should be a huge priority, and there is a giant stack of them to fix, but it hasn't been done yet (as much due to QA testing as anything else, but the last "fix" didn't improve any of the bugs on-record for months either, so frankly, the point still stands).

Focus on the players. Not the farmers. The farmers aren't the ones who are getting hurt by handling the metagame this way.

Very well put^

[Old Books]

samb wrote...

 Farmers actively threaten BW's revenue and that is why "farmers" are targeted. Why use real money when in game credits are so easy with the following combination?  Your goal to seperate the "game for fun" and the "farmers" is admirable but doomed to fail. Mainly because money is involved. 

Your friend is right of course OP, the cycle will never end. People will always search for that one way toga in the advantage. But I don't think BW is naive enough to think they can officially "beat" farmers. All they can do is keep them off-balance with weekly "balance" changes. They change the landscape a bit to make the players sit and think "would this work?" and then they spend time trying it out. Before they come to conclusions the next weeks' changes come in and all that research was wasted. BW is trying to stay ahead of the learning curve set by min/maxing players by changing the rules constantly. Even a buff is a distraction, designed to make you wonder if the buff makes things viable (usually not) and tempt you to waste your time respecting or promoting. 

Its all about the money. Period. If you want to be heard then speak with your actions and stop playing/paying. That sends the clearest message. 

This. Great post OP but samb sums it up here. BW aren't interested in balance but the revenue. Farming means people aren't using real money to get PSPs.

Modifié par Old Books, 03 août 2012 - 01:17 .

[icecoldkilla78]

depends on what you consider farming. i play mostly on gold vs geth and cerburus and rotate the maps around. is that considered farming? the enemies are tougher now but that made the game more fun. i used to actally get sleepy on FBWGG before they buff the geth so i was happy about that. i wasnt a big krysae fan so i didnt mind the nerfs on those. i wish i could actually get a typhoon to see how much it sucks (that seems to be the consenus now).

[Oz not Ozzy]

I never really thought about it that way, OP. But... now you mention it I have to say I agree 100%. I can understand how Bioware/EA have come to the conclusion that they need to address the problem of farmers in order to maintain profit from their micro-transactions, however, I believe this to be based on the false assumption that the 'farmers' are ever going to spend real money to just to be 'trolled' with yet more level IV comsumables.

Just for one example, I tend to build up a significant chunk of credits and spend them all in one go. It's a method that has served me well to date (as one look at my manifest will tell you), but I still have a few URs to max out as well as all of the Earth gears bar one. Yesterday I bought around 18 PSPs one after the other, in which I obtained one level in a rare gear, 2 common character trainings, 5 cobra missiles (bringing them to 255 - in line with Medigel, Ops and Clips which I had already maxed with Recruit packs) and the rest was nothing but silver and gold consumables.

Does this encourage me to spend real money in the store?

Absolutely not... Quite the reverse, in fact!

Do the 'balance changes' discourage me from playing in such away to maximise my credit earning?

Again, no... but they have already succeeded in discouraging me from playing at least two classes I was previously having great fun playing.

Right now, I think I can safely say that the only thing that would actually encourage me to spend any real money in the ME3 MP store would be as a 'thank you' for fixing the 'features' that are hampering my enjoyment of the game, stuff like invisble walls, floating yo-yo vanguards, energy drain not replenishing shields reliably, banshee/phantom magnet hands/swords, marauders with infinite clips, invincible hunters, stun-locking geth prime snipers, rocket troopers firing missiles out their rear end.... the list goes on.

These are the things that farmers will just shrug, and move on to the next tactic that helps them bypass the problems and profit, but that will (sooner or later) encourage the players with genuine love for the game to move on to something else.

TL:DR version:
Farmers gonna farm, no matter what you do to discourage them. Messing it up for the rest of the player base and not fixing the horrendous glitches that have been there since day one is what's really eating into the profit margin.

Modifié par Oz not Ozzy, 03 août 2012 - 01:46 .

[Dendio1]

FBWGG is still untouched. if the devs really wanted to make it un-farmable they would have

[steverw1975]

These are the things that farmers will just shrug, and move on to the next tactic that helps them bypass the problems and profit, but that will (sooner or later) encourage the players with genuine love for the game to move on to something else.

TL:DR version:
Farmers gonna farm, no matter what you do to discourage them. Messing it up for the rest of the player base and not fixing the horrendous glitches that have been there since day one is what's really eating into the profit margin.

Ok, this crosses a line in my book. It's bad enough when people pull an attitude and look down their noses at other players as if they're somehow elite, but acting like you're one of the select few that actually appreciates the game is a bit much. Really, do you think people who farm do it just to farm? Did you ever think that maybe they do it to earn credits so they can get characters/weapons/gear/equipment that they can use to do more in a game they enjoy playing? If anything, I'd say that people who spend a lot of time farming perhaps love the game too much. You don't spend that kind of time grinding for gear if you don't care about the game.

[Chobbly]

Dendio1 wrote...

FBWGG is still untouched. if the devs really wanted to make it un-farmable they would have

I don't know, if FBWGG is such an issue maybe the map should be dropped/replaced with something else. It could even be written into a weekend Operation in some way, so ppl didn't think as much that they were 'losing' something. Better to do that I suppose than nerf classes/powers/weapons, making them weaker everywhere else (Smash, I'm looking at you).

[steverw1975]

Chobbly wrote...

Dendio1 wrote...

FBWGG is still untouched. if the devs really wanted to make it un-farmable they would have

I don't know, if FBWGG is such an issue maybe the map should be dropped/replaced with something else. It could even be written into a weekend Operation in some way, so ppl didn't think as much that they were 'losing' something. Better to do that I suppose than nerf classes/powers/weapons, making them weaker everywhere else (Smash, I'm looking at you).

Others have suggested the same thing, but there's a problem with that. Pretty much every map has an area that could be used to farm. FBW is simply the favorite for many. Farming isn't going anywhere, plain and simple. No matter what changes are made, someone is always going to find a way to farm...and it won't be too long after that until anyone who wants to knows how.

[JaimasOfRaxis]

FBWGG is still untouched.

FBWGG gets a lot of flak for what it is, but people seem to religiously forget that FBWGG is a symptom and not the disease: FBW is a map with specific funnel-points that lends itself well to farming simply due to how the AI works, and Geth for all their overpowered "I can shoot you when launched into the air by OneTrueShot's Lift Grenade" crap, are about as tactically-intelligent as a box of rocks.

It's worth noting that the former problem - FBW's design, which is designed specifically to encourage close-quarters combat - is something that the Devs have tried to fix with the newer maps - Vancouver and Jade have extremely little "Hard" cover, Condor and Goddess have kill-points that are specifically designed to be taken by enemies, rather than players, and Hydra and Rio both have way too many locations that enemies can funnel through.

This is why almost none of the new maps have terrain you can grab over (for example).

[LeandroBraz]

I won't read this wall, but I got it, you are saying all the balance decisions is being affected by farmers. Bioware already told that they have ways to filter the farming stuffs, getting info without it being counted, so no, the balance change is not being affected by farming, at least not in the level you are trying to show in your wall.

[LeandroBraz]

Dendio1 wrote...

FBWGG is still untouched. if the devs really wanted to make it un-farmable they would have

They don't want, they already said that. 

[Chobbly]

LeandroBraz wrote...

Dendio1 wrote...

FBWGG is still untouched. if the devs really wanted to make it un-farmable they would have

They don't want, they already said that. 

So why fiddle with Smash then, from what I've heard that says it was because of farming?