I'm pretty sure they'd only banhammer really blatant and ridiculous cases.
There's naturally a lot of folks who are unhappy that the criteria for your characters going poof is...nebulous at best. What's the line? Is this gonna be retroactive or not?
And that's fair, I think - it's the sort of statement that makes folks nervous. It's a big threat, and the uncertainty hits many people. After all, many folks have at least been on a farm by this point, and this is the kind of visceral threat that conjures worst-case scenarios. Pushes all the emotional buttons too. My character! Mine! You're not taking it away! BAD NCsoft! Bad!
On the other hand, I see why the devs might not want to be too clear about that threat - I mean, they certainly don't wanna say...okay, it's fine if you powerlevel up to this point, but after that, no! Precise guidelines would be sorta silly here, and counterproductive.
I really doubt they'll go around hammering the crap out of most players; that'd be silly and a good way to alienate most folks. Also bear in mind that the vast majority of players do not read the forums. Indeed the changes pushed out in today's patch came as a shock to many people.
I suspect we're safe on that front.
As for blatant farming missions, well - I'm not in favour of farming as such, but I recognize why people like it. 's entirely possible to still make vast and difficult XP-crunching maps - like Terr's Roman thing, for instance - without them also being obviously banhammer material. I can think of a few ways off the top of my head.
Also bear in mind - the primary concern here is abuse of exploits, and MA missions becoming all about the quick rewards instead of storyline. One can always make a mission both resonably profitable and amusing, story-wise. The two are not mutually exclusive.
EDIT: As an aside, today's patch is massive - 38 mb, I think. Probably because there were a whole lot of MA tweaks, and it ain't just nerfin' the comm officers either. The power breakdown for standard/hard/extreme difficulty on critters has been tightened up to address the ZOMG CUSTOM CRITTERS ARE OVERPOWAHED problem, for instance.
-- Acyl
There's naturally a lot of folks who are unhappy that the criteria for your characters going poof is...nebulous at best. What's the line? Is this gonna be retroactive or not?
And that's fair, I think - it's the sort of statement that makes folks nervous. It's a big threat, and the uncertainty hits many people. After all, many folks have at least been on a farm by this point, and this is the kind of visceral threat that conjures worst-case scenarios. Pushes all the emotional buttons too. My character! Mine! You're not taking it away! BAD NCsoft! Bad!
On the other hand, I see why the devs might not want to be too clear about that threat - I mean, they certainly don't wanna say...okay, it's fine if you powerlevel up to this point, but after that, no! Precise guidelines would be sorta silly here, and counterproductive.
I really doubt they'll go around hammering the crap out of most players; that'd be silly and a good way to alienate most folks. Also bear in mind that the vast majority of players do not read the forums. Indeed the changes pushed out in today's patch came as a shock to many people.
I suspect we're safe on that front.
As for blatant farming missions, well - I'm not in favour of farming as such, but I recognize why people like it. 's entirely possible to still make vast and difficult XP-crunching maps - like Terr's Roman thing, for instance - without them also being obviously banhammer material. I can think of a few ways off the top of my head.
Also bear in mind - the primary concern here is abuse of exploits, and MA missions becoming all about the quick rewards instead of storyline. One can always make a mission both resonably profitable and amusing, story-wise. The two are not mutually exclusive.
EDIT: As an aside, today's patch is massive - 38 mb, I think. Probably because there were a whole lot of MA tweaks, and it ain't just nerfin' the comm officers either. The power breakdown for standard/hard/extreme difficulty on critters has been tightened up to address the ZOMG CUSTOM CRITTERS ARE OVERPOWAHED problem, for instance.
-- Acyl