AE baby experiences that made you shake your head.

[doc7924]

I didn't mind AE babies that much - but these two things always made me laugh -

A level 50 tank outside in Atlas broadcasting - "How do I get to Steel Canyon?"

Doing a real TF (I forget which) one of the people on the team, who we knew was an lvl 50 AE baby cause he bragged about it, wanted to change toons so he sends a team chat "I want to change toons, be right back." and before one of us could send a tell saying this isn't an AE Task Force and if you quit you cant get back in, he was gone. Then he started sending private tells to me and some others to invite him back, and we had to tell him we can't. LOL

[Minotaur]

My favourite was a low 40s level FF defender. It turned out he had a load of friends who'd PLd him to that level and he'd never actually played the game before this group. His build was a classic, no ally bubbles and every repel in the book. He was knocking badguys all over the place which made aggro handling awkward. He kept repelling stuff away from him, and it was then turning round and blowing him up. We tried to explain but he wasn't having it, caused one teamwipe then we booted him.

[SerialBeggar]

I had a single character on Freedom that I made when the Devs put a call out for a live server stress test.  I think it was in prep for COH:Freedom and a badge was given to everyone who logged into Freedom that night(?).  It was supposed to be a throw away character, but it turned out that the powersets I chosen were pretty decent (Fire/Mental Manip Blaster, first time with Mental Manip for me), so I ended up playing it. 

One day I happen across a recruitment for the Positron TF-part 1 , so I join up.  There was a level 40-ish team member that I was immediately wary of based on his chat.  During the second mission, he ramped up his whining about how low the XP was and started to trying to talk the team into doing AE instead.  After the mission, while the team leader went to talk to Positron, this guy goes to the AE building and actually got 2 other team mates to go along!  It was obvious that he didn't know how a real TF operated because the twit didn't even quit the team.  Eventually, the rest of us got tired of trying to change their minds and kicked them.  Since we had just started, we broke up and reformed to recruit new people.

[Greyfairer]

Ok, someone help me out.  Despite logging 100's of hours on this game, I have no idea what AE babies are, or what the AE  building is.  I gather it is some way of power leveling, but not sure.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Ok, someone help me out.  Despite logging 100's of hours on this game, I have no idea what AE babies are, or what the AE  building is.  I gather it is some way of power leveling, but not sure.

AE: A way for players to create game missions. Has been abused for powerleveling.
AE Babies: People who ONLY ever used AE to powerlevel  their toons without learning jack about the rest of the game, let alone getting a decent grasp of their character's playstyle or getting anything approaching a proper build.

[Aggelakis]

AE was also called MA (Mission Architect).

NOTE: Not all people who used MA to farm or powerlevel were AE babies. "AE baby" is a specific result/mindset of a relatively small (but very active so seemed much larger) userbase of the MA.

[Minotaur]

Has anybody found the AE babies vids again. It looks like they disappeared when Xtranormal was taken over, and I can't see them anywhere else.

[Blondeshell]

Has anybody found the AE babies vids again. It looks like they disappeared when Xtranormal was taken over, and I can't see them anywhere else.

I poked Mental Maden about that very thing yesterday. The Web Archive has pages for each video (Part 1, Part 2), but the video links are broken.

[Burnt Toast]

The AE Baby craze was...like most things in the CoH community... exaggerated. Most people who used AE to PL their toons had already been playing the game for years and made toons based off their builds created in Mids. I encountered way more veterans who snubbed their noses at PLing with poor builds and play styles than AE Babies in my 8 years in CoH


I enjoyed the Freedom server for it's min/max community of PLers

[Mistress Urd]

Well there was the one AE bug with the MMs that was so broken. I knew something was odd when I saw 6 Rikti War Zones.

[TriNitroToluene]

I met several AE babies during it's heyday.  It was always a little entertaining trying to explain how to get to Creys' Folly from Atlas Park, to someone who had never explored any of the city.

Luckily for them, the teams I usually ran with were pretty low key and didn't get upset with the newbies.  It was pretty fun to hang out with some of the new guys and give them a chance to show their stuff.  Sometimes with hilarious results.  I found that if you helped them along to get a feel for the game, that they really appreciative and enjoyed it even more.

[Thunder Glove]

I could never remember how to get to Cray's Folly, either, but I didn't use AE - I blame that on being a Redside Baby.

[doc7924]

I could never remember how to get to Cray's Folly, either, but I didn't use AE - I blame that on being a Redside Baby.

In some ways I really miss the old way the zones were set up.

In my day if you had to go to Founders you had to go to Talos and take the long way to the entrance.

Or if you needed to change from Yellow to Green line you had to actually run (or fly or teleport or...) within a zone that had both to get there.

None of this baby stuff where every two steps there was a way to get to another zone.

And don't get me started on Mission Transporter.......

[MWRuger]

In some ways I really miss the old way the zones were set up.

In my day if you had to go to Founders you had to go to Talos and take the long way to the entrance.

Or if you needed to change from Yellow to Green line you had to actually run (or fly or teleport or...) within a zone that had both to get there.

None of this baby stuff where every two steps there was a way to get to another zone.

And don't get me started on Mission Transporter.......

This is what made SG bases so freakin' awesome. You could get nearly anywhere with a well designed and equipped base.

[GamingGlen]

I thought it was stupid how the train stations weren't connected when I started playing about i7 (or so).  I welcomed the change to the train destinations and the addition of the station to Founders' Falls.

An SG base with zone transporters was great; that was my priority with a new base or when I got editing privileges.

I didn't like the mission transporter in an immersive sense.  It was fine for getting through any TFs faster that I had already done (on another character); but in general I did not use it while soloing.

[MWRuger]

I used the mission teleport whenever I had to go to Boomtown for anything, especially Synapse TF door mission.

[ag88t88]

The only AE "Baby" I ever met, wasn't really incompetent as I recall, I just remember being on a mid 40s team and one of our team mates kept being like. "Ohh wow this is so cool."  and other things like "whoa, did you see that guy?"  etc.  And in general just kept acting like some one who was brand new to the game. The thing is when I checked his badges he had the 3 month vet badge, he was level 44-45 in that range so it seemed like it shouldn't be brand new to him anymore.

So when some one asked about it, ( I wasn't the only one who noticed, I just didn't care enough to mention it)  he confessed that he'd been playing the game for months, but had only a couple days earlier realized that the game had more than the AE building in Atlas Park.  The guy seemed to literally think for the first couple months that the point of the game was the Mission Architect.   

Now that one made me wanna face-palm, and made me scratch my head a bit.   I may have also suggested on the forums that the AE building be taken out of the low level zones for that reason, but I'm pretty sure no one liked that idea because AP and Mercy were hubs at that point with a lot of stuff in one place so people apparently wanted those buildings to stay.

But yeah, several months in the game before he realized there was stuff to do outside of AE, that one killed me. 

[doc7924]

The only AE "Baby" I ever met, wasn't really incompetent as I recall, I just remember being on a mid 40s team and one of our team mates kept being like. "Ohh wow this is so cool."  and other things like "whoa, did you see that guy?"  etc.  And in general just kept acting like some one who was brand new to the game. The thing is when I checked his badges he had the 3 month vet badge, he was level 44-45 in that range so it seemed like it shouldn't be brand new to him anymore.

So when some one asked about it, ( I wasn't the only one who noticed, I just didn't care enough to mention it)  he confessed that he'd been playing the game for months, but had only a couple days earlier realized that the game had more than the AE building in Atlas Park.  The guy seemed to literally think for the first couple months that the point of the game was the Mission Architect.   

Now that one made me wanna face-palm, and made me scratch my head a bit.   I may have also suggested on the forums that the AE building be taken out of the low level zones for that reason, but I'm pretty sure no one liked that idea because AP and Mercy were hubs at that point with a lot of stuff in one place so people apparently wanted those buildings to stay.

But yeah, several months in the game before he realized there was stuff to do outside of AE, that one killed me.

I always thought they should have restricted access to the MA buildings for an account until like level 10 - this way you at least have to do some stuff outside to get a feel for the game and the city and the whole experience.
I had no problem with people who played the game proper and used MA to get a good start on new toons without grinding all the levels again.
I just didn't like people, like in this example - who thought the whole game experience was inside that building.

But the problem with that is people who would have bought the MA Edition and it wouldn't be fair to say "Well you paid money for this new game feature, but you cant use it until you are ready, sorry."

[Thirty-Seven]

I enjoyed the Freedom server for it's min/max community of PLers

In my experience anyway, most min/maxers were annoying to play with.  They tended to speed run every TF until it was no longer fun, skip anything that wasn't "rewarding enough" and smack talk anyone who built for fun over performance.

[Battlechimp]

I always thought they should have restricted access to the MA buildings for an account until like level 10 - this way you at least have to do some stuff outside to get a feel for the game and the city and the whole experience.
I had no problem with people who played the game proper and used MA to get a good start on new toons without grinding all the levels again.
I just didn't like people, like in this example - who thought the whole game experience was inside that building.

But the problem with that is people who would have bought the MA Edition and it wouldn't be fair to say "Well you paid money for this new game feature, but you cant use it until you are ready, sorry."

You know, I'd be perfectly happy if they'd have done this. For the new people they at least would have had to do a couple story arcs or a bit of street sweeping.  Just to get a feel for the game and a least learn about the trams :-)   then if you knew what you were doing a couple runs of dfb and you'd be high enough to use the MA.

But even DFB gave us proplems. Remember one guy around lvl 15 asking when he'd be able to use all his powers or even his travel power, because every time he did a "mission" everything but his first few powers got greyed out

And to stay slightly n topic... teamed with a level 40ish character, he got separated from the group and kept going "Hey, where did you guys go?"  Rest of group "check your map" him "How do I do that?"

But some of them did learn and listened when advice was given.  Remember teaming with one fire blaster, mid 30s, he didn't really understand how some powers worked within a team dynamic. Namely Rain of Fire.  Tank would get a spawn taunted and fully agro'd then...RAIN OF FIRE, things would scatter, people would die, tank kept yelling at him tostop doing that. Blaster got annoyed with being told what to do, kept doing it, wash, repeat.  After a few times I sent the fire blaster a tell to explain why the tank was getting annoyed, his response was "oh... I didn't know that" things went went much better. Then we recruited a controller on our next mission, I sent the blaster another tell going "pay attention to the controller, when he let's loose with his aoe immobilize, go nuts" and he did and had a blast... no pun intended

We started chatting and he confessed he'd just been soloing AE farms and never really teamed with anyone with the exception of a few farmers. He kept asking questions about other mechanics and game play. So they weren't all a total loss :-)