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 :-)

[doc7924]

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.

I was on one TF one time with maybe 4 or 5 people from the same SG and all they did for the whole TF was rattle off their numbers - how much damage they did, DOT they did, defense numbers, it got real annoying after an hour or so.

I played for fun - I tried to make some decent builds using IO sets and whatnot of course, but I never obsessed over it like many people did.

[Aggelakis]

I was/am a huge number cruncher - unashamed min/maxer - but never had enough time or wish to put it to use. I played with builds in Mids all the time. I spent a bazillion hours editing Paragon Wiki. But most of that was done when I couldn't open the game, so my play time was ridiculously low. So I was forced to be super casual, although it wasn't a big deal. I knew the game inside and out, but I didn't care to "win" anything...I wanted to have fun, so most of my play time was spent on *playing* instead of twinking (playing....or chatting! CoH was a chat room with an interactive 3D interface for a while, some months I almost didn't ever *play* even if I spent 30 minutes or an hour or three hours in game).

[blacksly]

Eh, I was a min/maxer, and several others in the Legion on Liberty also seemed to be like that. But everyone was welcoming of new players, concept builds, etc... I'd say that the "elitist" style of min-maxers was greatly in the minority. CoH seemed like the game where, if your build showed that you were a noob, you'd get advice for how to improve the build, rather than a derogatory comment and then a kick from the team.

[ag88t88]

Eh, I was a min/maxer, and several others in the Legion on Liberty also seemed to be like that. But everyone was welcoming of new players, concept builds, etc... I'd say that the "elitist" style of min-maxers was greatly in the minority. CoH seemed like the game where, if your build showed that you were a noob, you'd get advice for how to improve the build, rather than a derogatory comment and then a kick from the team.

I tend to agree.  I played exclusively on Virtue, I ran into a number of people who were huge min-maxers, could do some really interesting stuff with their builds and had some epic toons for sure, but I don't recall ever being on a team where I was chastised for not having the right build, the right powers, the right enhancements etc.  I had a couple of toons that I adored that I put a LOT of time into building, but even then I wasn't necessarily hard core min\maxing, I was mostly just chasing a couple of key stats, like my AR blaster having just insane damage.  Most of my builds were made around concept, character or even just me saying "damn you know I never did try that powerset and it looks fun, what kind of character would use Stone armor?"

Even still, most people never seemed to care, even the ones who were really into their builds.  I also found most people didn't even bother me about my build, even when I played characters that were a little gimped because I was still learning their powers or what ever. I think the vast majority of "advice" I got was when I asked for it, and then I'd get a ton of very helpful advice, and a few debates over the true utility of certain powers, but yeah.  I was never harassed, never made to feel like I wasn't doing it right because I didn't min-max or what ever.   I know some people like that were out there, but I think they were a small minority. 

I do remember one time I was kicked off a team in a really weird manner by a crazy over the top guy, but that had nothing to do with min-maxing and apparently something to do with his odd little SG, but that is another story. 

[LaughingAlex]

Not so much an AE baby experience but a classic noob experience.  Met someone who was a 4 year veteran(had the vet badges) who thought healing was the be-all-end-all and that defenders should do nothing but heal, even claimed debuffs and buffs were tirtiary to healing.  Yeah, I left the team pronto.

[General Idiot]

The one that always stuck in my mind was when I got asked by someone in their 20s to help out with a cape mission, which kinda raised eyebrows right there since the cape mission wasn't that hard. So I get there and he's absolutely amazed that I can actually kill things without assistance, which confused me so I asked and it turned out he didn't know what enhancements were or how to use them. Strangely enough, he got a lot more effective once I took him over to a store and explained things.

[MWRuger]

I had a buddy like that who was amazed that my blaster could not only jump into pointblank range but proceed to one shot everyone but the boss.

I explained about set bonuses. He was happy-ish.

[Mistress Urd]

Just for laughs, I went and soloed a corruptor to 50 during one of those "broken" underling farms, just to see how long it would take. 6 hours, but lets not forget AE wasn't the only source of Mega XP mistakes in the game.

Ah, I recall one winter event where Kings Row saw huge numbers of people farming Winter Lords. 

[Minotaur]

Just for laughs, I went and soloed a corruptor to 50 during one of those "broken" underling farms, just to see how long it would take. 6 hours, but lets not forget AE wasn't the only source of Mega XP mistakes in the game.

Ah, I recall one winter event where Kings Row saw huge numbers of people farming Winter Lords.

A friend of mine was on an all blaster team for thet WL event, he went up many levels in a few minutes, apparently 8x aim/BU/snipe with no ED was enough to basically one shot a WL.

And 6 hours 1-50 could be done without any exploits in AE.

[MWRuger]

A friend of mine was on an all blaster team for thet WL event, he went up many levels in a few minutes, apparently 8x aim/BU/snipe with no ED was enough to basically one shot a WL.

And 6 hours 1-50 could be done without any exploits in AE.

You know, I have heard that many times but never experienced it myself. I have another friend who had level 50 tank he loved to play. He was pretty good at PVP apparently. Anyway, he wanted to PL me when I first started playing the game. I tried for a few levels and it was boring. Apparently, he meant for me to stand there while he cleared the map.

Last time I was PL'ed by another player.

I did use the monkey farms to get all my alts to 21 pre-inherent fitness though.

[kgiesing]

[Minotaur]

You know, I have heard that many times but never experienced it myself. I have another friend who had level 50 tank he loved to play. He was pretty good at PVP apparently. Anyway, he wanted to PL me when I first started playing the game. I tried for a few levels and it was boring. Apparently, he meant for me to stand there while he cleared the map.

Last time I was PL'ed by another player.

I did use the monkey farms to get all my alts to 21 pre-inherent fitness though.

I used to dual box, I created a monster SS/fire brute with 90% fire resist and 34% fire def (a purple away from softcap) then added barrier. 3 groups of +4x8 was not an issue. Anybody attempting to help me however got almost immediately pancaked. I could PL one of my own toons 1-50 in 6 hours, but usually didn't. PLing it to mid 20s in a few minutes however I often did, and I was far from the best at it.

I will say that before I did this I got 72 characters to 50 without PLing, so had learned my craft.

[MWRuger]

I used to dual box, I created a monster SS/fire brute with 90% fire resist and 34% fire def (a purple away from softcap) then added barrier. 3 groups of +4x8 was not an issue. Anybody attempting to help me however got almost immediately pancaked. I could PL one of my own toons 1-50 in 6 hours, but usually didn't. PLing it to mid 20s in a few minutes however I often did, and I was far from the best at it.

I will say that before I did this I got 72 characters to 50 without PLing, so had learned my craft.

Don't doubt your credentials a bit. I remember you well from the market forum.

I dual boxed as well. I would take by level 50 blaster in the Council Empire map, kill for shards and park my other character at the gate until he got to 21. The main reason I did this was I would create an interesting character and then fit a powerset to them. That meant that I had a few guys with the same sets.

I don't really see that as an exploit, because it doesn't rely on a bug to level. But yeah, it is PL'ing for sure.

[Mistress Urd]

Yep, and the old Warrior farms with Statesman.

[JaguarX]

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.

yup

[Minotaur]

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.

This doesn't tally with my experience on Victory, we had a community that were happy on for example an ITF to crank the difficulty up, not mind a few lowbies coming along and kill almost everything, this took 45-50 minutes usually. It was not normally difficult to find good people for any TF you wanted to run.

[Fridgy Daiere]

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.

Not so much my experience on Guardian, either.  While we did have a couple of semi-jerk min/maxing control freaks (I'm lookin' at you, CM! *wink*), most folks in the server global channel knew who they were and either joined or avoided as the situation dictated.    Most of the folks I played with rolled their toons first with a concept or back-story in mind, THEN min/maxed the crap outta them in Mids'.  I didn't see a lot of smack talk unless it was in jest between friends.  Of course, then it was pretty over-the-top! 

Of course, we might simply have had an extremely helpful, friendly server.

[MWRuger]

This doesn't tally with my experience on Victory, we had a community that were happy on for example an ITF to crank the difficulty up, not mind a few lowbies coming along and kill almost everything, this took 45-50 minutes usually. It was not normally difficult to find good people for any TF you wanted to run.

This happened on Liberty as well. I only had a few toons that were fully slotted, not even min/maxed, No one ever said boo to me. But I have to say I played late at night on a low pop server. Pretty much the guys who running then all knew how to play and knew each other more or less. So maybe that was it.

I was never the toughest one there but because I soloed so much, I didn't need much looking after. So even If I didn't bring a monster to the party, no one had to babysit either.

I was also hampered by the fact that I never wanted to lead, I have a high stress job where I have to decide things all day. When I played I wanted someone else to do that.

[Harpospoke]

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

That's my impression too.   I also played on Freedom and all the stories I heard on the forums were not encountered by me in the game.  You would think Freedom was a place where you couldn't put a decent team together from reading the forums.   It was incredibly easy for me to put together a team.  It was my regular routine.

And the "AE baby" thing....at that point in the life of the game...how many new players were we really getting?   I think some people just assumed any player who made a mistake was a new player who had never left the AE building.

[MWRuger]

Some of those stories do have the smell of urban legend to them.

What is the tram?

How do I get to King's Row?

I never heard them myself, nobody I ever knew heard them, just they heard about it from somebody else or from the videos.

[Aggelakis]

I taught someone who had been playing for two days how to get out of Atlas Park at level 30-something, and showed them how to get enhancements from something other than the ticket vendor and Wentworth's. Kinda disconcerting, tbh. Level 33 or something in two days of being a newb? Ouch. Talk about darkening the rest of the game in terms of leveling speed. They were complaining in broadcast about the limited scope of the game, which is what turned me on to helping them.

Happily, they turned into a real player (versus "Atlas AE only player") shortly after my tour, and ended up having a blast with the game for a long time. Lost track of them a few months before the shutdown notice.

[Thirty-Seven]

I had a similar experience, Agge, but with less encouraging results.

There was someone who was asking a few questions in AP broadcast about what else there is to do, and I figured out they were in AE, and somewhere in the 30s too, IIRC.

It just so happened I was gonna set up a TF or soemthing in that level range so I invited them along.  The character played pretty well, but as a melee AT that wasn't a Tank, there wasn't as much latitude to mess up too bad.  So, we played through the TF and I answered a ton of questions throughout about powers, slotting, enemy groups, lore, EVERYTHING.  I really thought that I had a convert on my hands and was going to /gfriend them and let them know about other things I might be doing when they asked somethign to the effect of "What's the quickest way back to AP?  I wanna get more levels on this guy, those missions were too slow."

/e facepalm

[Minotaur]

Some of those stories do have the smell of urban legend to them.

What is the tram?

How do I get to King's Row?

I never heard them myself, nobody I ever knew heard them, just they heard about it from somebody else or from the videos.

I heard both of these or variants of them, but was more likely to be higher level zones than KR, happened after the lowbie sewer trial as well as AE.

[Thirty-Seven]

I literally had to explain to someone step by step how to get to the Train station in AP because they had no idea where it was or how to use it.  I tried to explain using the map but they claimed it wasn't working.  (There was a bug where the icons would turn off, I tried to instruct them how to turn them back on: no dice.) They were trying to get to the mission I set where you have to board a train to get there.  They ended up in 8 different zones and each time the whole team is trying to help them get to the mish.  Eventually we gave up because if they couldn't do that, was there a point for them to "help" when they finally got there?

For the record, we were doing Maria Jenkins' arc IIRC...

[MWRuger]

When I started playing I was basically dropped in the game after the tutorial and knew nothing. The Tram? Yeah I see it. So What? Leveling? What's that?

I had basically hit level 5 before someone took pity and showed me a few of the ropes. I never forgot that help and I tried to pass it on, as did all of you.

I never met an AE baby, probably because I seldom formed teams just lead them. I hope i would be as patient.

[r00tb0ySlim]

I ran into a couple of AE babies in RV....talk about funny!!  I guess they wanted to try pvp'n their new 50's and after a few trips to the hosp broadcast was filled with pvp build advice