Community Update [June]

sparkiesoft

Here is this month's community Update. As you can see, I'm leaving things in from last month that are still being worked on:

DQ Rewards

Yes, yes I know this is a heavy topic. That said, I've been working with the team on how to best go about creating something similar, and will have more details as they come in. Saying that, we absolutely do plan on bringing this back in some way, shape, or form.

Events

PvP Tournament: http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1693871

Silver Charms & the Event Boutique: This is still being worked on, and I will post updates as I get them. For more information on this, check out this thread: http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1692331

New Arc Update: Some changes were made to how you access the menu systems. This blog will tell you more: http://www.arcgames.com/en/arc-news/detail/5007153-new-changes-coming-to-arc!

Can't Update Arc? Go into your Arc Directory and run your ArcRepair.exe
This should fix the issue.

That's all I have for now, but if anything changes, or anything new comes, I'll be sure to update, and add to this thread.

Zheii - Archosaur

Thanks for the update! Hopefully we'll see the return of Silver Charms and DQ points soon because honestly the wait for things that we should of had ages ago is getting quite old quite fast.

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands

May I ask where you (or your team) are on the avatar issue on the forum? It's going on for months, there's no update on that some players are waiting for answers about it.

KrittyCat - Dreamweaver

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands wrote: »

May I ask where you (or your team) are on the avatar issue on the forum? It's going on for months, there's no update on that some players are waiting for answers about it.

That avatar issue has been going on since they switched over to the iteration of Arc previous to it actually being named Arc. Ever since they made the names under the avatars click to a social community profile, there have been multitudes of issues with avatars displaying incorrectly, and/or switching without the knowledge of the account owner.

I personally think that the whole social switch-over should have waited if they weren't sure it was going to be the final iteration, as it has now broken various parts of the forum for over a year.

On another note: Can the fact that you're looking into the link formatting change be put into the community update? It might not matter to anyone but forum users, but I think it would be wise to mention that you're at least looking into the possibility.

Mosz - Heavens Tear

sparkiesoft wrote: »

DQ Rewards

Events

PvP Tournament: http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1693871

Silver Charms & the Event Boutique

DQ rewards:so not a single new piece of information since "it will happen"....in november?

pvp tourney..good effort, even if its a bit of a mess someone is trying and listening..good on ya there

silver charms..it was stated theyll be perma in the "next build" yet no definition if that means next in game update(patch/client version) or some form of boutique build that comes around once a year...?

Jarkhen - Archosaur

Mosz - Heavens Tear wrote: »

DQ rewards:so not a single new piece of information since "it will happen"....in november?

pvp tourney..good effort, even if its a bit of a mess someone is trying and listening..good on ya there

silver charms..it was stated theyll be perma in the "next build" yet no definition if that means next in game update(patch/client version) or some form of boutique build that comes around once a year...?

"build" basically equates to "patch" in this context, for those of you unaware.

seitori

sparkiesoft wrote: »

Here is this month's community Update. As you can see, I'm leaving things in from last month that are still being worked on:

DQ Rewards

Yes, yes I know this is a heavy topic. That said, I've been working with the team on how to best go about creating something similar, and will have more details as they come in. Saying that, we absolutely do plan on bringing this back in some way, shape, or form.

Events

PvP Tournament: http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1693871

Silver Charms & the Event Boutique: This is still being worked on, and I will post updates as I get them. For more information on this, check out this thread: http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1692331

That's all I have for now, but if anything changes, or anything new comes, I'll be sure to update, and add to this thread.

Sparkie...

Is there some sort of 'arc code' that can be whipped up by you guys, for a 'Silver charm' (say a once every few days /or/ a week (per use) code) that you guys can come up with, that can be used by people to tide them over until the 'silver charms' have been restored back into the event Boutique???

Seems like a reasonable thing to do, under the current circumstances.... b:thanks

((Who knows, that may even help drive down the costs for the charms in the 'cat shops' since you guys still haven't started a Charm sale in the boutique and the charm merchants are being Uberly Userous & Greedy lately / now a days (I'm just glad I got some gold still in the boutique for a charm or 2, rather then pay their extortionary costs))

eraldus

sparkiesoft wrote: »

Here is this month's community Update. As you can see, I'm leaving things in from last month that are still being worked on:

DQ Rewards

Yes, yes I know this is a heavy topic. That said, I've been working with the team on how to best go about creating something similar, and will have more details as they come in. Saying that, we absolutely do plan on bringing this back in some way, shape, or form.

Events

So nice to see that your CTRL C/CTRL V is working properly...

Guess I should keep myself retired untill you guys get your act together, because you're been pushing this issue for months already.

Meh, I guess I should've known better to expect this from a lousy company such as this anyways...

FooFooKity - Heavens Tear

DQ point rewards was put in when selling price of DQs was set to 1 coin as some sort of compensation for this. China had a bot problem that we didnt have here at least then we didnt, but since the auto cultivtation (bot) was put in we now have the same problem....hmm didnt think that one through did ya. Since these DQ rewards was our compensation they shouldnt have been removed until you had something to replace it...again didnt think that one through. So for months and months there is no way to get new event gold unless you want to pay...that is unless you are lucky enough to win some during one weekly event....again with the no thinking...Please in the future before you want to "fix" something..try thinking it through first... or better yet, if its NOT broken DONT try to fix it.

KrittyCat - Dreamweaver

FooFooKity - Heavens Tear wrote: »

DQ point rewards was put in when selling price of DQs was set to 1 coin as some sort of compensation for this. China had a bot problem that we didnt have here at least then we didnt, but since the auto cultivtation (bot) was put in we now have the same problem....hmm didnt think that one through did ya. Since these DQ rewards was our compensation they shouldnt have been removed until you had something to replace it...again didnt think that one through. So for months and months there is no way to get new event gold unless you want to pay...that is unless you are lucky enough to win some during one weekly event....again with the no thinking...Please in the future before you want to "fix" something..try thinking it through first... or better yet, if its NOT broken DONT try to fix it.

To be fair to PWE (which is hard to do, I know), Beijing made the call on the DQ Rewards. That meant that PWE itself didn't really have that much time to come up with an alternative method of reparations for the travesty of blanket punishment that we, the US players, were subjected to when Beijing decided to address their bot issues (and whooooo boy, did they ever have issues).

Also, egads. I have posted more on the forums in the past day than I had in a loooooooong time. I REFUSE TO BE SUCKED BACK IN!b:angry

eraldus

FooFooKity - Heavens Tear wrote: »

DQ point rewards was put in when selling price of DQs was set to 1 coin as some sort of compensation for this. China had a bot problem that we didnt have here at least then we didnt, but since the auto cultivtation (bot) was put in we now have the same problem....hmm didnt think that one through did ya. Since these DQ rewards was our compensation they shouldnt have been removed until you had something to replace it...again didnt think that one through. So for months and months there is no way to get new event gold unless you want to pay...that is unless you are lucky enough to win some during one weekly event....again with the no thinking...Please in the future before you want to "fix" something..try thinking it through first... or better yet, if its NOT broken DONT try to fix it.

PWCN's logic: "To counter botting, we'll reduce DQ prices on NPCs, so that people won't abuse it, but we'll put an in-built timeless bot system so that you can farm DQs while being AFK"

Flawless logic is flawless...

FooFooKity - Heavens Tear

eraldus wrote: »

PWCN's logic: "To counter botting, we'll reduce DQ prices on NPCs, so that people won't abuse it, but we'll put an in-built timeless bot system so that you can farm DQs while being AFK"

Flawless logic is flawless...

My point exactly...absolutely NO thought at all was put into these decisions. They need to get a clue about this game before they go making changes to it..b:surrender i dont honestly think any of them have ever even logged into the game to see what damage their "fixing" things is doing. Want to stop botting? Have ACTIVE GMs that actually log in and target botters. Want to stop gold sellers selling off site gold? Have ACTIVE GM's that actually log in and ban accts that are spamming these sites. Dont punish the masses for the deeds of a few..be active, take action, be seen and yes this statement is directed at the ellusive GMs of this game. You have/had these powers for a reason to stop botters,gold sellers, violators of ToS and you stood by and did NOTHING and for this the entire population of PW is being punished for your lack of action. So now we get to "wait" until the powers that be come up with yet another "solution" to fix the ongoing problem.
What PW needs is ACTIVE Gms instead of another "fix".b:surrender

opkossy

eraldus wrote: »

PWCN's logic: "To counter botting, we'll reduce DQ prices on NPCs, so that people won't abuse it, but we'll put an in-built timeless bot system so that you can farm DQs while being AFK"

Flawless logic is flawless...

You're ignoring circumstances.

First China did a blanket nerf to discourage botting.
That didn't work so they directly killed the low level stuff that was easy to bot, nerfed some instance drops, and so on.
That STILL didn't work so they nerfed everything but the top-end DQs.
That ALSO didn't work so they said "**** it we'll put in an official bot since nerfing **** isn't working."

It's less them attempting to combat bots and being stupid and more... them giving up on combating bots entirely. And as China shoved it in the game, PWI is stuck with it unless we can get the devs to create a totally separate client for just PWI... which isn't likely.

So guy above me, this one isn't on the GMs here. Even though I do agree that they should have more ingame presence and actually enforce the ToS.

Zanryu - Lothranis

OPKossy wrote: »

You're ignoring circumstances.

First China did a blanket nerf to discourage botting.
That didn't work so they directly killed the low level stuff that was easy to bot, nerfed some instance drops, and so on.
That STILL didn't work so they nerfed everything but the top-end DQs.
That ALSO didn't work so they said "**** it we'll put in an official bot since nerfing **** isn't working."

It's less them attempting to combat bots and being stupid and more... them giving up on combating bots entirely. And as China shoved it in the game, PWI is stuck with it unless we can get the devs to create a totally separate client for just PWI... which isn't likely.

So guy above me, this one isn't on the GMs here. Even though I do agree that they should have more ingame presence and actually enforce the ToS.

*puts Zanryu in the corner for misbehaving*

Evryn - Morai

Mosz - Heavens Tear wrote: »

DQ rewards:so not a single new piece of information since "it will happen"....in november?

In all honesty... they did leave the old DQ system on for 3 months past when it was supposed to be closed too. I reckon a lot of players, myself included, generated a ton of eventgold from DQ items. I reckon this is the dilemma that PWE is now faced with: How to balance out a crapton of DQ items being sold by autoculti farmers against still wanting to actually keep packs and/or charms from the cash boutique appealing too.

Possible solutions:
- DQ points awarded from completing Dragon Quests (the ones you need DQ items for). These have randomized visiting points and a kill and/or pay quest, and require you to fight a slightly tougher mob at the end. Take a while to do, too. The current rewards for these don't make them worthwhile.
- DQ items to 1 coin, the lot of them. Botting will be less appealing then. PW China didn't follow through, and power creep now makes farming the highest tier DQ items easy as pie.
- DQ items can either be sold, or turned in to an NPC (DQ Directors?) for points. If you turn them in, you only get points, no cash (this still favors farmers though)
- DQ items as previous, but limit the amount of points players can earn per day to make endless grinding less rewarding.

Annalyse - Heavens Tear

I just have one question.

Why can't you put the silver charms back into the event boutique as "temporary" and just leave them there until the next build?

Previously you were able to put them in and remove them without even needing a maintenance; that suggests that it can't be a very difficult thing to do. I have a hard time understanding why you removed the "temporary" ones in the first place when you are apparently so eager to fix things for the upset players.

Jaabg - Sanctuary

Sparkie, if you can also add to your monthly update on what is happening regarding PQ 3 being fixed, that would be appreciated. Only reason why it is important, like the cube neck (endgame gear), pq 3 rings are endgame pieces that can be farmed, but at present things are wonky there.

Mosz - Heavens Tear

FooFooKity - Heavens Tear wrote: »

.that is unless you are lucky enough to win some during one weekly event....again with the no thinking...Please in the future before you want to "fix" something..try thinking it through first... or better yet, if its NOT broken DONT try to fix it.

two events, and the DQ system was broken, the old DQ point system sometimes wouldnt update for a over a week and sometimes it lost huge amounts of vendored items, it surely generated hundreds of tickets for the GMs

Desdi - Sanctuary

Annalyse - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I just have one question.

Why can't you put the silver charms back into the event boutique as "temporary" and just leave them there until the next build?

Previously you were able to put them in and remove them without even needing a maintenance; that suggests that it can't be a very difficult thing to do. I have a hard time understanding why you removed the "temporary" ones in the first place when you are apparently so eager to fix things for the upset players.

I have the same question. I am a little confused by this @_@

LadyDagger - Morai

eraldus wrote: »

PWCN's logic: "To counter botting, we'll reduce DQ prices on NPCs, so that people won't abuse it, but we'll put an in-built timeless bot system so that you can farm DQs while being AFK"

Flawless logic is flawless...

If you can't beat them, join them

eraldus

OPKossy wrote: »

You're ignoring circumstances.

First China did a blanket nerf to discourage botting.
That didn't work so they directly killed the low level stuff that was easy to bot, nerfed some instance drops, and so on.
That STILL didn't work so they nerfed everything but the top-end DQs.
That ALSO didn't work so they said "**** it we'll put in an official bot since nerfing **** isn't working."

It's less them attempting to combat bots and being stupid and more... them giving up on combating bots entirely. And as China shoved it in the game, PWI is stuck with it unless we can get the devs to create a totally separate client for just PWI... which isn't likely.

So guy above me, this one isn't on the GMs here. Even though I do agree that they should have more ingame presence and actually enforce the ToS.

True, but still doesn't change the fact that I got a point.

Plus why didn't they just put the DQ prices back to where they where before? DQs used to give you 20% more coin (if I recall) for NPCing them, but no, they've kept the lower lvl DQs at 1 coin and the lvl70 or 80 DQs (not sure too and CBA to check it right now) at the same price since the price drop.

Mayfly - Dreamweaver

DQ81+ are the ones that are still worth more than 1 coin each.

Xainou - Sanctuary

The lack of no DQ and random dyes with no ETA makes this game even more unattractive now

Miugre - Heavens Tear

eraldus wrote: »

True, but still doesn't change the fact that I got a point.

Plus why didn't they just put the DQ prices back to where they where before? DQs used to give you 20% more coin (if I recall) for NPCing them, but no, they've kept the lower lvl DQs at 1 coin and the lvl70 or 80 DQs (not sure too and CBA to check it right now) at the same price since the price drop.

I'm going to have to agree with this, Kossy. If they took down the DQ values to discourage botting, what's the point of them anymore now that botting is built-in? There's so many things in this game that do need to be nerfed... yet the only major nerf they ever did is no longer relevant.



My polite request to Sparkie for this month: Could you participate in the discussions a little more? You do well, when you do post, but sometimes follow-up questions need to be addressed directly rather than making a new thread that addresses the whole issue from a top-down perspective. For sake of example:

DQ Rewards

Yes, yes I know this is a heavy topic. That said, I've been working with the team on how to best go about creating something similar, and will have more details as they come in. Saying that, we absolutely do plan on bringing this back in some way, shape, or form.

This is really too much generalization. If you're going to make one blanket post to address a large issue, that post needs to demonstrate the depth to which you understand that issue. Right now, all I'm getting from you is "the community wants a new DQ system." You could've gleaned that much from skimming any given page of last month's community update.

We had a big thread calling for DQ replacement suggestions a while back. And while I'll admit to having never posted in it or read it thoroughly, I'm kind of interested in what were the most prominent suggestions the community came up with. Is there nothing in that thread that you could tell us is being considered? Maybe put up a few of the most popular options and involve us in the discussion of which ones are most beneficial, most feasible, etc.?

What we're getting is "we know there's an issue." What we need to hear is:
"We know there's an issue.
Here are some of the most prominent thoughts we've compiled on it.
This one sounds great, but the programming involved is more than wanmei might be willing to do.
This other one may not be ideal, but it has a more realistic change of being implemented.
Let's discuss these options further."

Discussions here don't have to be inherently chaotic, you know. If you gather up the biggest points and refocus the discussion through them every so often, you actually go further with those discussions. More often, what happens around here is that we all debate one short, generalized post and the debate splits off in a dozen different directions with no one tying them together. I mean, the mods are great, but they're volunteers, so they don't command the attention that you do as the CM.

I realize that's what you're trying to do with these monthly discussions, so don't think I'm not glad for that. I just think you need to flesh them out and guide them a little more. Just some constructive criticism.

bannokmak

You guys still believe that DQ system will be back? b:chuckle

I don't believe whatever they said b:chuckle

ovenusarmanio

I'm glad the dq are one coin now that the bot has been introduced for everyone. It's caused bad inflation on all the servers, as there aren't enough coin sinks to handle the amount of coin coming into the server. Look at China's prices for things. That's largely to do with the inflation from the bots. If the coin price goes back up, the bots need to go. And they really ought to consider restricting the bots. >>

Miugre - Heavens Tear

oVenusArmanio wrote: »

I'm glad the dq are one coin now that the bot has been introduced for everyone. It's caused bad inflation on all the servers, as there aren't enough coin sinks to handle the amount of coin coming into the server. Look at China's prices for things. That's largely to do with the inflation from the bots. If the coin price goes back up, the bots need to go. And they really ought to consider restricting the bots. >>

No argument here. Actually, that's another topic of discussion that we need to address directly with wanmei: why do we "get everything that China does" when we clearly have a number of differences between our versions? It just sounds like a cop-out every time.

ovenusarmanio

Miugre - Heavens Tear wrote: »

No argument here. Actually, that's another topic of discussion that we need to address directly with wanmei: why do we "get everything that China does" when we clearly have a number of differences between our versions? It just sounds like a cop-out every time.

China tries to provide a more or less uniform experience across it's multitude of different products, like McDonalds does. There are some localization differences however, like the forges. I think core features though, which unfortunately the bot now is, are the same on each version, eventually. One of the main reason our core gameplay style is so different there is because of the localized cash shop, rather than the actual content itself. Although some versions of the game get their content faster than other versions. We're one of the faster versions if the complaints from other people that wander in here from to time to time are to believed, actually. So there are plenty of guys who wait even longer for patches than we do.

As for fixes, international copyright law dictates what PWI can and can't do. At the end of the day, perfect world is the intellectual property of the folks in Beijing and they can do whatever they want with it. And the other versions just have to accept it. It's very annoying to deal with but that's one of the dangers of playing a game whose publisher and developers are not only different companies, and not only on different continents, but have very different types of primary markets.

Miugre - Heavens Tear

oVenusArmanio wrote: »

China tries to provide a more or less uniform experience across it's multitude of different products, like McDonalds does. There are some localization differences however, like the forges. I think core features though, which unfortunately the bot now is, are the same on each version, eventually. One of the main reason our core gameplay style is so different there is because of the localized cash shop, rather than the actual content itself.

Two words: Frost. Hypering.

Also the prevalence of R9, but I would agree that particular one falls to PWE and the cash shop.

oVenusArmanio wrote: »

As for fixes, international copyright law dictates what PWI can and can't do. At the end of the day, perfect world is the intellectual property of the folks in Beijing and they can do whatever they want with it. And the other versions just have to accept it. It's very annoying to deal with but that's one of the dangers of playing a game whose publisher and developers are not only different companies, and not only on different continents, but have very different types of primary markets.

Who makes the call doesn't change the fact that sometimes a call needs to be made. Practically speaking, it just means that it's ten times harder to get an answer out of them and half the time they grossly misunderstand the question anyway.

ovenusarmanio

Miugre - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Two words: Frost. Hypering.

Also the prevalence of R9, but I would agree that particular one falls to PWE and the cash shop.


Who makes the call doesn't change the fact that sometimes a call needs to be made. Practically speaking, it just means that it's ten times harder to get an answer out of them and half the time they grossly misunderstand the question anyway.

Frost Hypering is turned on and off by China. I dunno why/how PWE managed to convince them to let us have that different but that was long, long ago. And the key component of it, frost itself, is available to all versions so it's really much closer to what's going on with the forges than what's going on with the bots.

It doesn't change the fact that sometimes a call has to be made, but sometimes those calls won't be made in our favor despite the fact that are making calls based on customer demands. Like the bots are something that plagued not just the Chinese version, but MANY versions of PW. Every once in a while used to get people from those versions coming here to complain about their versions and thinking PWI was going to be amazing because it didn't have that issue. If 9/10 of your storefronts/publishers are having an issue with that problem, you'd take measures like the ones China was taking.

Knowing that doesn't do anything to help US though. Because again, our version did not have that issue. That's why PWE doing what it can with stuff it can control and ask for, like web content, is so very important. The DQ problem is not PWE's fault. The lack of a replacement system through Arc is. This should have entered planning the moment they decided the DQ points system wasn't stable enough to run on the arc platform, not after the community caused an uproar. The dialogue should have been opened then and there.

Servetje - Morai

Bot's are in every MMO game a manace. I did play plenty of other mmo games and this game got a good anti ****/cheat/scam system.

But the problem I had before in other mmo's that bots where made by 3rd party Chinese ingame gold selling sites. They invade a server with few 100/10.000 bots and spamming the world chat/private chat and whatever chat is available. There is really no possible human way to stopping them. If a game developer wanted to stop them they can do that for a day and the Chinese gold selling sites counteracted that blockage and continue wrecking havoc on a ingame economy.

Really I think players in PWI are blessed that this server is fairly clean, but many are oblivious and not well known in the player scams etc.

Example like the fake websites you have to enter your id's to steal your accounts. This type of scam it's so obvious but so many players felt into the honey trap sadly.