So before the Devs nerf farming …
Tyger-Tyger, 6th Level Scraper, up to 22 in three missions.
Kwai Havok, 7th Level Scrapper, up to 15 in two missions (but Level Pacted with Copper Mountain, so I was doing it for Margie’s sake).
And, honestly, I don’t feel any need to do any other farming with them. The goal was to get past those awkward pre-Travel (and pre-Stamina) days.
I feel like I can take it from there.
Especially since 90% of the PUGgy sorts are busy … at AE, farming. Making it darned difficult to get up a team, even on Freedom or Virtue.
Wow, that slope is awfully slippery, isn’t it?
I last played COX about a year and a half ago, but I logged in again today, as part of the free welcome back weekend.
Virtually every message in the chat channel was for a farming team. I had high hopes for the user content, but this isn’t the game I remember. Unfortunately, my superhero fantasies will have to wait till Champions Online is released.
It is a huge amount of channel traffic. A great reason (plus the inter-zone nature) for the Architect Channel that’s coming out in I15.
That said, Aler, there’s a lot of new content that’s come out in the last year and a half that’s worth playing. Heck, the richness of the CoX experience is as much because of the power set variations as the content, and that continues to grow.
There is non-farm content out on MA (try the Dev Choice missions, if nothing else). The trick, of course, is finding someone who is interested in something other than farming. They do exist out there. Heck, for most of my alts, that’s me.
It makes me wonder if the game shouldn’t be reengineered so that Stamina and travel issues at low levels are addressed. After all, waiting for the Endurance bar to refill isn’t exactly fun, and there really isn’t any good reason for it other than just a time sink (something MMO players have decreasing patience with).
Champions Online is taking an interesting tact with this with their “inverse Endurance”. Using your smaller attacks to build up to the big hitters. The downside: you can’t use your big hitters right away. The upside: no downtime.
CO isn’t a CoX killer, though. Now DCUO, that just might be. It remains to be seen, though.
Frankly, the AE farms will end soon. It’ll be a tale to tell like farming Winterlords back in the day.
Meanwhile, I and another ROer managed to get a group together to try on the sewer for fast levelling (usually good for at least level 8 in @1/2 hour), but the others had no idea what they were doing. *sigh* Very frustrating.
@Daemodand: The travel issues have been largely dealth with through temp (safeguard) powers. The endurance issues remain — I’d like to see some way around that. I like endurance as a limiting factor, but it shouldn’t be something that is a bigger enemy than the, um, enemies.
The CO approach to this sounds interesting. I need to read more about it.
So, everyone seems to be saying that CO is not a CoX-killer. I’m wondering why people say that. Honestly, not seeing as much appeal in the DCUO stuff I’ve seen.
@Arty: I suspect both the charm will pall (one can only go on so many “meow” missions before, um, boredom sets in) and the Devs will fix the biggest holes that let it be “abused.”
You’re correct that the Sewers serve as a way to level up to 7-8 faster than normal missions — though the risk factor is always there a lot more than AE farms. Moreover, the death spiral lurks around every corner or team member needing to leave.
But my experience is that half the Sewer mish people usually don’t know what they’re doing, and the distribution of that half varies widely.
Some notes on CO combat: http://www.massively.com/2009/05/04/massively-hands-on-combat-in-champions-online/