BH 3-3 boss a wimp again!

volst

Boogiepanda - Raging Tide wrote: »

I'm gonna invest in GBA now.

But it's all about the 3DS now...

DrunkWizard - Lost City

nintendo sucks .-. ps2 ftw

Mictain - Dreamweaver

frankieraye wrote: »

Hey guys, so we got the official word back from China--


It turns out that an old data file was used in the latest patch, which reverted the boss AI to how it used to be before the TT difficulty was increased.

This change was not intended, and we've been informed that leaving it as is would cause other in-game problems down the road especially having to do with large-scale in-game events.

For this reason, we're going to have to revert back to the more difficult TT soon, possibly next maintenance.

Believe me, we understand that the overwhelming sentiment is that the players prefer the easier TT, but we are not willing to compromise the stability of the entire game for TT to stay the way it is. Add to this the fact that we're going to be having some major additional new content soon (to be announced shortly!), we just don't think it's a smart risk to take.

The devs know that you guys prefer TT the way it used to be, so we'll see if they can come up with a different solution to make everyone happy.

Thanks guys

Seriously guys, I'm shocked Franky has to spell it out. I'm sure some of you out there have at least an inkling of programming knowledge. Keeping in mind it's all speculation (as diving into the code of PWI is a big no-no), say they changed several other things along with TT in that patch....like...I don't know...if fashion were visible or changing the defense values of bosses. Maybe even affecting the code that affects the Bounty Hunter (as he has a habit of disappearing randomly).

If we keep the old patch, things are bound to mess up. When the Bounty Hunter is given a plethora of variable names in the code, and things are changed in updates for whatever reason, then when the new code tries to talk to the old code to get information, we get errors. Those errors normally result in large glitches in gameplay.

That's just in gameplay mind you. For all we know, server information could of been included in that patch. I'm sure not many people would be happy if they were trailing through Nirvana or FC, and then all of a sudden they got DCed from the server because of an error that was caused by an outdated patch communicating with up-to-date client.

It sucks that TT has to go back, I feel the same way. I chose to just go with my mold 89 top instead of getting TT90 because it was easier, and while I'm defending them on this point I'm not exactly thrilled with the way PWE has been conducting themselves lately either. The fact remains though, the game is still playable. One part may be messed up, no one is forcing you to pay anything. Your entry into the game is free of charge, and despite the awesome graphics compared to a lot of MMOs out there, and the overall scale of the game...it's still free to play. Don't even get started on cash players...for anyone to PLAY the game, it's free. So sit back, and let them do what they need to.

b:tired -End Nerd Rant/Rage-

Aquatice - Lost City

When will next maintenance be? b:cry

Kupuntu - Sanctuary

Actually, it shouldn't conflict with anything. Both AI policies and stats are stored in a file (in two files actually) but they'd have to manually edit both after every new patch.

Unless some other game files got changed, which is possible.

Knownase - Heavens Tear

All I know is, I'm aim to farm loads of TTs this weekend......endlessly....b:laugh


Nom nom nom moneys....

b:avoid

Myralis - Sanctuary

Yeah thanks for making TT-farming impossible for average geared people again.
And hiding it behind some economical reasoning. What did we expect...

Lets wait another year for a compensation, like with DQs. Yay.

Royal_Burden - Harshlands

Only me who see the one simple solution to this?
Leave TT as it is now and never update the game again xD

Kthxbye.

Flare - Heavens Tear

Hm..surprisingly I don't oppose changing it back. On 3-1, I believe that it was already overfarmed and shouldn't be changed back to high difficulty, but 3-2 and 3-3 is a different story... Harder bhs I don't like but easy 3-2 3-3 is going to destroy the game with OP 5.0 tanks(not the fail squishy ones like most of the server) with a cleric going around soloing squad mode bosses for TT99 gold mats and making 40-100m a day...thats like +12 within a week if lucky lmao well, only 3-1 doesn't make sense in changing it back to high difficulty. GBA were only 300-400k before the high difficultly, which isn't a game breaking coin amount to farm., and GBS isn't game breaking because its not an endgame mat.b:surrender

Michael_Dark - Lost City

Mictain - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I'm sure some of you out there have at least an inkling of programming knowledge. Keeping in mind it's all speculation (as diving into the code of PWI is a big no-no), say they changed several other things along with TT in that patch....like...I don't know...if fashion were visible or changing the defense values of bosses. Maybe even affecting the code that affects the Bounty Hunter (as he has a habit of disappearing randomly).

This is actually a common occurrence with corporate software... someone in the development team support group forgot to refresh their code base to the latest version while working on a bug/glitch fix and submitted old code to be patched. Easily correctable and it will be.

You can explore the PWI game files as much as you want. You can even extract graphics or information out of them... look at all the people who posted pictures of the newer rank gear as well as pwdatabase. You're just not allowed to MODIFY any of them.

If we keep the old patch, things are bound to mess up. When the Bounty Hunter is given a plethora of variable names in the code, and things are changed in updates for whatever reason, then when the new code tries to talk to the old code to get information, we get errors. Those errors normally result in large glitches in gameplay.

And, as pretty much proven by licensee's of this product, they can pick and choose which patches to apply or disregard with little consequence. PWI is owned by PWE so we get all patches regardless of whether or not PWI would wish to include them or not. They have no choice in this matter which has been made obvious a number of times, including TW and DQ nerf as well as TT difficulty changes... PWI has their hands tied. It's not their fault.

That's just in gameplay mind you. For all we know, server information could of been included in that patch. I'm sure not many people would be happy if they were trailing through Nirvana or FC, and then all of a sudden they got DCed from the server because of an error that was caused by an outdated patch communicating with up-to-date client.

I'm fairly certain any time they patch the client, they need to patch the server as well. The complete game consists of both and unlike many non-mmo games a large portion of this game is actually server side.

Mendolin - Sanctuary

the only thing i am sad about, even though i am one of the ones that farms TT 3-3 (the harder one they are going back to).... i am still dissapointed that it just makes the rich richer

i liked the ideas of making a 3-4 or something for a compromise

VlLKASS - Sanctuary

Meh just tanked 3-3 b:sad My charm. But woot b:victory Print & Illusion.

3-4 would be nice b:chuckle But I don't mind rolling through 3-3 either

Kitamura - Lost City

b:pleasedb:laughb:chuckle

Katzyn - Sanctuary

Michael_Dark - Lost City wrote: »

Wow... how... clueless.

This is actually a common occurrence with corporate software... someone in the development team support group forgot to refresh their code base to the latest version while working on a bug/glitch fix and submitted old code to be patched. Easily correctable and it will be.

You can explore the PWI game files as much as you want. You can even extract graphics or information out of them... look at all the people who posted pictures of the newer rank gear as well as pwdatabase. You're just not allowed to MODIFY any of them.

And, as pretty much proven by licensee's of this product, they can pick and choose which patches to apply or disregard with little consequence. PWI is owned by PWE so we get all patches regardless of whether or not PWI would wish to include them or not. They have no choice in this matter which has been made obvious a number of times, including TW and DQ nerf as well as TT difficulty changes... PWI has their hands tied. It's not their fault.

I think you mistook what Mictain was saying...or maybe you quoted the wrong person, because essenially, he's just explaining to the people who are so up-in-arms about "what could it possibly hurt to leave things as-is?" WHY they can't leave the old files as is, and why they have to change things back to the "current", though hated, way.

I'm glad Mictain said it, because he put it much better than I would have, lol.

Sucks, but I completely understand. I just hope the devs will finally realize SOON how upsetting the GBA boss, at least, is to us, and will decide to change their minds after all and make it more easily farmable for the lower levels again.

Michael_Dark - Lost City

Mendolin - Sanctuary wrote: »

the only thing i am sad about, even though i am one of the ones that farms TT 3-3 (the harder one they are going back to).... i am still dissapointed that it just makes the rich richer

i liked the ideas of making a 3-4 or something for a compromise

Making 3-3 harder was pretty much the last thing that made me stop playing regularly. Sure it's doable, but it's not really farmable in the harder instance. It's too costly and when something good drops, you need to split it with too many people to make it worthwhile.

The only thing that increasing the difficulty really did for a lot of people was remove content from end-gamers without replacing it with anything. After what, 500+ Nirvana runs,

I like challenge as much as the next person, but I don't expect to have to stock up on apo and defense charms like I'm going to a factor TW for one 3-3 run.

And... hi Mendy. b:cute

Katzyn - Sanctuary wrote: »

I think you mistook what Mictain was saying...or maybe you quoted the wrong person, because essenially, he's just explaining to the people who are so up-in-arms about "what could it possibly hurt to leave things as-is?" WHY they can't leave the old files as is, and why they have to change things back to the "current", though hated, way.

I'm glad Mictain said it, because he put it much better than I would have, lol.

Sucks, but I completely understand. I just hope the devs will finally realize SOON how upsetting the GBA boss, at least, is to us, and will decide to change their minds after all and make it more easily farmable for the lower levels again.

No, I understood what he said, I just didn't edit his quote... I was just correcting his mistakes. I didn't say I either agreed or disagreed. Just fixing his misconceptions. I'll go back and edit the quote better. xP

Alphae - Lost City

Michael_Dark - Lost City wrote: »

I like challenge as much as the next person, but I don't expect to have to stock up on apo and defense charms like I'm going to a factor TW for one 3-3 run.

qft

Katzyn - Sanctuary

Michael_Dark - Lost City wrote: »

No, I understood what he said, I just didn't edit his quote... I was just correcting his mistakes. I didn't say I either agreed or disagreed. Just fixing his misconceptions. I'll go back and edit the quote better. xP

Oh, okay. Seemed like you were disagreeing with him, what with the whole "how clueless" bit at the beginning. =P

Solandri - Heavens Tear

Mictain - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Seriously guys, I'm shocked Franky has to spell it out. I'm sure some of you out there have at least an inkling of programming knowledge. Keeping in mind it's all speculation (as diving into the code of PWI is a big no-no), say they changed several other things along with TT in that patch....like...I don't know...if fashion were visible or changing the defense values of bosses. Maybe even affecting the code that affects the Bounty Hunter (as he has a habit of disappearing randomly).

It's a crappy way to write code. Game mechanics (formula for calculating stuff) belong in code. Data values (mob hp, defense and attack values, skills used, etc) belong in a config file that the server loads when the game code is executed. That way you can tweak those data values easily to come up with something that works well without having to recompile the entire code base every time.

It also allows for better customization in different markets. Thus avoiding problems like how rep is a lot harder to obtain in PWI than in other versions, creating more demand for certain types of gear here (mainly TT), causing problems here when PWC decides they want to make TT harder figuring it's no big deal for their players since "the stuff from there is optional anyway".

You can code the config loader so it has a certain set of default values (change only what you want), and does min/max checking of the numbers it gets from the config file to prevent egregious errors. But changing the exact values themselves shouldn't require a recompile. That they're stuck with this problem until it's fixed in China is indicative of poor design choices and coding practices.

Olbaze - Sanctuary

Michael_Dark - Lost City wrote: »

Making 3-3 harder was pretty much the last thing that made me stop playing regularly. Sure it's doable, but it's not really farmable in the harder instance. It's too costly and when something good drops, you need to split it with too many people to make it worthwhile.

The only thing that increasing the difficulty really did for a lot of people was remove content from end-gamers without replacing it with anything. After what, 500+ Nirvana runs,

I like challenge as much as the next person, but I don't expect to have to stock up on apo and defense charms like I'm going to a factor TW for one 3-3 run.

My guess is that they reasoned that the TW pay attracts the highest level people, especially the 5 APS characters. Now, if a faction gets hundreds of millions of income weekly, they sure as hell can gear and organize farming squads, which might lead to them being the primary source of 3-3 mats in the market, causing the gap between them and the others to widen even more.

I wouldn't know how they spend the money they get from the lands, but I doubt that it all goes into gearing farming squads. Especially since those factions usually already have really high minimum for even being acceptable for applying to the faction.

So basically, this is what I think happened:
1. At first, they intended the anniversary packs to be special, but they were such a huge hit that they decided to make them regular.
2. Regular packs made 5 APS available to people, which allowed them to farm high-level instances easily for massive profits.
3. To counter the issue of 5 APS squads farming instances and potentially making a few higher-end factions even more dominant than they already were, they tweaked the TTs. After all, tweaking the APS by placing a cap on it or taking packs out would both end in a huge loss of revenue for PWE, possibly even killing the game in the process.

Basically, the way I see it is that the difficulty tweak for TT3-x was done exactly to try to prevent people from farming the instance for profit. Though then again, it seems like now you cannot even complete it consistently unless you already have the gear you should be doing the instances for.

Michael_Dark - Lost City

Olbaze - Sanctuary wrote: »

So basically, this is what I think happened:
1. At first, they intended the anniversary packs to be special, but they were such a huge hit that they decided to make them regular.
2. Regular packs made 5 APS available to people, which allowed them to farm high-level instances easily for massive profits.
3. To counter the issue of 5 APS squads farming instances and potentially making a few higher-end factions even more dominant than they already were, they tweaked the TTs. After all, tweaking the APS by placing a cap on it or taking packs out would both end in a huge loss of revenue for PWE, possibly even killing the game in the process.

Basically, the way I see it is that the difficulty tweak for TT3-x was done exactly to try to prevent people from farming the instance for profit. Though then again, it seems like now you cannot even complete it consistently unless you already have the gear you should be doing the instances for.

Agreed, but you missed a point... increasing the difficulty as well as removing TW pay makes it far more difficult for high level players to farm mats or make money.

The people who farmed 3-3 for mats to sell are much less able to make money with the new TT. The people buying those mats got a deal, those mats sold for far less than they would cost to chip. Making those mats mostly unavailable makes the people who can no longer farm as well as those who needs those mats to spend real money. They're paying more for the mats now and some of the people who used to farm will be more likely to casually cash shop to exist in game. That's a win-win for PWI, but not for the free players.

Eoria - Harshlands

From a few pages back...

Okeano - Harshlands wrote: »

So did my first 3-3 today (yeah I know). I was glad to try the "easy" version. We (BM, Barb, Cleric) failed at Steelation so invited a couple of ppl that know what they are doing. We still failing right now... he keeps f***ing running around it's like impossible for Cleric to keep max range to avoid sleep. After all this, he might not even drop. It's going to change back to harder mode to prevent 5 APS farming? I'm 4 APS on BM and still can't do sht against this. We need this to be harder?

The easy way to do 3-2/3-3 is to have an archer or a sin with bow tanking it. Melee tanks should not be used on any bosses past Snakey. Just makes it 10x harder than it needs to be. Especially for the clerics. That's not to say melee can't DD though. Just take off some of your interval gear if you're going to DD.

LenieClarke - Heavens Tear

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

It's a crappy way to write code. Game mechanics (formula for calculating stuff) belong in code. Data values (mob hp, defense and attack values, skills used, etc) belong in a config file that the server loads when the game code is executed. That way you can tweak those data values easily to come up with something that works well without having to recompile the entire code base every time.

yeah, well, if the PW code base was sensibly written, some of the odd UI bugs we saw way back in patch 390 should have been flat out impossible. such as, one single checkbox out of a dialog box full of them suddenly shifting out of alignment and greying itself out (falsely, at that) while all the others remained unaffected. i was boggling at how that could have even in theory happened for days after it was finally fixed.

even now, the way the item linking works --- and fails to work, more to the point --- implies to me that they aren't using much if any object orientation in their UI code. can't for the life of me figure out why, since GUIs are pretty much the place OO design belongs best, complete with class trees and inheritance and all the rest. the "shift-click this to enter an item link into the currently active chat" should've been an add-on to some high-up parent class of all "inventory/bank/suchlike slot" instances, but it can't work that way, or it wouldn't be failing in the ways it does fail.

crunchycat

frankieraye wrote: »

Hey guys, so we got the official word back from China--


It turns out that an old data file was used in the latest patch, which reverted the boss AI to how it used to be before the TT difficulty was increased.

This change was not intended, and we've been informed that leaving it as is would cause other in-game problems down the road especially having to do with large-scale in-game events.

For this reason, we're going to have to revert back to the more difficult TT soon, possibly next maintenance.

Believe me, we understand that the overwhelming sentiment is that the players prefer the easier TT, but we are not willing to compromise the stability of the entire game for TT to stay the way it is. Add to this the fact that we're going to be having some major additional new content soon (to be announced shortly!), we just don't think it's a smart risk to take.

The devs know that you guys prefer TT the way it used to be, so we'll see if they can come up with a different solution to make everyone happy.

Thanks guys

I am sure the Devs can simply fix TT the correct way. Rather than jack it up again, ask them to correct it for the next patch.

Kupuntu - Sanctuary

crunchycat wrote: »

I am sure the Devs can simply fix TT the correct way. Rather than jack it up again, ask them to correct it for the next patch.

Yeah, you'd need to change two files and it would be back to normal. But they'd have to do it every time after the new patch comes if it only changed here. Which means, no it won't happen at all.

Olbaze - Sanctuary

Michael_Dark - Lost City wrote: »

Agreed, but you missed a point... increasing the difficulty as well as removing TW pay makes it far more difficult for high level players to farm mats or make money.

The people who farmed 3-3 for mats to sell are much less able to make money with the new TT. The people buying those mats got a deal, those mats sold for far less than they would cost to chip. Making those mats mostly unavailable makes the people who can no longer farm as well as those who needs those mats to spend real money. They're paying more for the mats now and some of the people who used to farm will be more likely to casually cash shop to exist in game. That's a win-win for PWI, but not for the free players.

Well, the whole thing with packs providing good gear was bad. It changed the whole view on endgame gear, and now it's gotten ridiculous. For example, you have people picking cultis just for the possibility of someday being able to hit at 5 APS. Not to mention the 4-5 APS Nirvana/3-3 squads.

So not only did the packs make the richer even more ridiculously powerful, it also made it much harder for non-cash shoppers to do much. Of course, you can hyper your way to 100 or whatever and then realize that you're 200,000,000 coins short from being accepted to do regular Nirvana runs.

Really, they should've done a much better job at tweaking the difficulties. Just because people were farming the living **** out of 3-3 hardly warrants making all 3-x TTs harder. Really, they could've just stuck with making 3-3 a bit harder, or done something that would make it harder for the 5 APS people to farm the **** out of it.

But then again, the constant pack spam is what gave birth to the situation in the first place.

Michael_Dark - Lost City

Olbaze - Sanctuary wrote: »

Well, the whole thing with packs providing good gear was bad. It changed the whole view on endgame gear, and now it's gotten ridiculous. For example, you have people picking cultis just for the possibility of someday being able to hit at 5 APS. Not to mention the 4-5 APS Nirvana/3-3 squads.

I've always said that the gear from packs was a bad idea. The tokens themselves are good.

So not only did the packs make the richer even more ridiculously powerful, it also made it much harder for non-cash shoppers to do much. Of course, you can hyper your way to 100 or whatever and then realize that you're 200,000,000 coins short from being accepted to do regular Nirvana runs.

And it's all the people who BH and hyper their way to 100 that's also part of the problem. Get to 100 and you have **** gear, nobody is to blame but you. People level up too quickly to farm their gear now. I had farmed my Lunar neck and got it shortly before I hit 95. Most people don't take the time to farm their own gear.

Really, they should've done a much better job at tweaking the difficulties. Just because people were farming the living **** out of 3-3 hardly warrants making all 3-x TTs harder. Really, they could've just stuck with making 3-3 a bit harder, or done something that would make it harder for the 5 APS people to farm the **** out of it.

It really has little to do with 5aps. It has far more to do with people needing to spend real cash.

Lulznotwar - Lost City

I agree with Michael for the most part. TT has become rediculously hard to farm for average geared people, and this nerf really screwed 90% of the player base because the top 10% can still farm it further widening the income/money gap between those and the rest.

And to combat this some turned to cash shopping thus we all end up screwed in the long run unless we either had lots of coin before hand, can spend ages merching, or Cash shop.

Need i mention other free to play games that have cash shops yet actually work because they are mostly balanced?

Combat Arms for one,
********* even, their F2P is unaffected by P2P stuff

PWE need to take a hard look at their current business model, but none of the mods are willing to even take a look At the game from our perspective, such as when the TT change first occured Frankie and the others were very reluctant to even try it with average rated gears.

Olbaze - Sanctuary

Michael_Dark - Lost City wrote: »

And it's all the people who BH and hyper their way to 100 that's also part of the problem. Get to 100 and you have **** gear, nobody is to blame but you. People level up too quickly to farm their gear now. I had farmed my Lunar neck and got it shortly before I hit 95. Most people don't take the time to farm their own gear.

I'd say a lot of those people who hurry to 100 have seen the rewards for BH100 or heard of the amounts of profit some people are making via Nirvana and have been enchanted. Or they're just ordinarily dumb.

Regenbogen - Lost City

ever watched this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9bs5dsROGM

Izabeau - Sanctuary

With the TT's going back to the um, screwed up version soon - it once again becomes a simple matter of --

Those who can easily do the TT (those who already have their gears and/or those who have spent insane amounts of rl money) will monopolize this.
Again- leaving the middle class players at a standstill.

And before those few of you who say that it's easily doable start in - check your own damn gears before you type one word (or the gears of the "friends" you can't seem to do anything without)
Enough said.

Now I have nothing against those higher lvls with great gears doing the TT's to help others when they themselves don't need it BUT as was pointed out before, it's admittedly being done not for that reason but for self gain - and tons of it.
Greed (with the help of PW and a certain percentage of it's players) is the reason the economy is what it is.
It's never going to get better because of it. Only worse.

Way to go PW, continue to help and enable those who really don't need it, and push the ones who could use the lift up - further down in the dirt.