I believe that the exploits was people only going to 2 or 3 sector blocks, dropping and then going again to the same 2 or 3. That was definitely a problem that needed addressing.
If the exploit was people running it multiple times, even fully, then the event was poorly designed and the working as intended version would be almost useless.
As is, with the 4 hour cooldown, i don't see the point of running it even once any more.
If you weren't exploiting the event, the change wouldn't be that big of a deal.
...Wait- thats mewmasters line.
:cool:
that was about using the mail System for storage. There were people actually do the event like it was intended and this affects them unfairly. Granted, I have never done tour of the universe, but still.
there were some that were doing the entire thing and still able to do it multiple times. i never did it, but Cryptic does need to stop nerfing stuff without telling us.
and this qq tell us before you make changes so we can exploit it even more before you do.
And would telling you in the patch notes the night before made ANY difference??
to me yes, i never did the tour anyway. I think it is just stupid that they are trying to cry "we forgot" when it was obvious they were not going to tell anyone in the first place.
I think the exploit was the mission warping, but they may not have been able to close just that small but obvoiusly exploitable 'feature', so they grenaded the entire event.
"Bug out and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure"
If you weren't exploiting the event, the change wouldn't be that big of a deal.
...Wait- thats mewmasters line.
:cool:
I haven't run the tour seriously for well over a year, there are better ways of earning EC at the moment but only the truly dense will not realise that this is just the thin end of the wedge. If we let them get away with this then they won't think twice about the next nerf and it may just be something you care about next time!
To be fair, Cryptics 'hand grenade' fix was a bit extreme, but they did manage to close all exploits in one, big BOOM.
if you have been here long enough you would know that its par for the course(pun intended) that they do a super nerf to hell - then roll the nerf back a bit and say they are making a compromise - and are listening to feedback.
then they will just quit working on STO or close it down.
Possible, but the alternative is put up and shut up and let them do as they like, which i guess is a valid course of action if you subscribe to the "no one's forcing you to play" mentality. And you can totally see it that way.
I'm f2p (truth be told, i'd put some money into it (or i would have, before this happened) if i could do it physically; the online transactions thing just isn't for me), so i know my complaints don't get any weight, pissed as i am about it notwithstanding.
That said, it's all about how much you're willing to put up with before you think losing this game is an acceptable risk. After a while, if this goes on, i'm afraid they might consider fun to be another exploit they need to nerf. Whether they haven't gotten around to it yet, i guess is a matter of opinion.
Cryptic you have seen how unpopular your latest Stealth Nerf was, do not insult us further by continuing to claim it was omitted by accident you tried a stealth nerf and it failed! Besides the trolls this is NOT! something that the community wants and we want it reversed! and a Guarantee that you will refrain from stealth nerf's in the future. Hilarious how you remember to mention the utterly pointless Capitalisation of the corvette but omit this, yeah right.
This situation is going to start costing you money Cryptic, we are not as gullible as you think!
i find it amusing when i see titles that say a broad range of people ...where exactly did you get your statics that "the customer base" was demanding this ? ... i don't recall making any such demand
Possible, but the alternative is put up and shut up and let them do as they like, which i guess is a valid course of action if you subscribe to the "no one's forcing you to play" mentality. And you can totally see it that way.
I'm f2p (truth be told, i'd put some money into it (or i would have, before this happened) if i could do it physically; the online transactions thing just isn't for me), so i know my complaints don't get any weight, pissed as i am about it notwithstanding.
That said, it's all about how much you're willing to put up with before you think losing this game is an acceptable risk. After a while, if this goes on, i'm afraid they might consider fun to be another exploit they need to nerf. Whether they haven't gotten around to it yet, i guess it's a matter of opinion.
I agree we should not let them get away with it, but people are going to pay no matter what, a few people not buying anything is not going to matter to them. We need to find a better way to get there attention.
...Please keep feedback constructive in this thread so that I may pass it along for consideration...
I have to say I didn't use the Tour the Universe that much, mostly because incompatibility timing my available play time with the event availability... But when I did run it, I did it for the fun of trying to see how many complete circuits I could make in the hour. That was part of what made it a race! I also enjoyed the skills needed to shave off ever second possible to get as far as you could on each loop in as little time as possible.
Being forced to one go-'round takes away that fun.
I will also be disappointed to see loss of EC and CXP (especially Trade and Exploration) that was granted by multiple trips/hour.
Two suggestion:
Increase the rewards.
Before this change I could could complete 2-4 circuits in the hour, earning 700-1.4M EC, 800-1,600 Exp CXP, 660-1,220 Trade CXP, 80-106 Rec CXP, and 60-120 Dev CXP. Since I will no longer be able to run this multiple times, please increase the values for the single run I can do.
Make it a Daily.
With the Event jumping around different timeslots (often while I'm at work or asleep at night), I can't usually be on for it but at most a couple-three times a week anyway. Why not just go ahead, slap a 20hr CD on it, and make it something we can run once per day. This would actually be a huge improvement for me.
Anyway, I'm sad to see this mission change, especially due to friggin' exploiters. >shakes head< I'm also thankful for Brandon's feedback, that it wasn't intentionally a stealth update, and that the patch notes have been updated.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
i find it amusing when i see titles that say a broad range of people ...where exactly did you get your statics that "the customer base" was demanding this ? ... i don't recall making any such demand
that was about using the mail System for storage. There were people actually do the event like it was intended and this affects them unfairly. Granted, I have never done tour of the universe, but still.
NO, No difference. Different only in your mind. Both the tour and mail system have been in place and virtually unchanged since release, and participants in both systems have been using it the same way since day 1.
...Only the definition of 'exploit' has changed since release.
I personally hope they do not fix it. It was an exploit that need to be fixed . The tour should only be run once and run the way it was intended to be run.
As well as i disagree with the "demand" that cryptic must give notice first all that does is give exploiter a chance to work harder.
this example is extreme but its the same as calling a drug house before you raid it .
NO, No difference. Different only in your mind. Both the tour and mail system have been in place and virtually unchanged since release, and participants in both systems have been using it the same way since day 1.
...Only the definition of 'exploit' has changed since release.
all they needed to do was make the pay-off one big one at the end. It would have gotten rid of the "exploit" and still allowed people who were doing it legitimately to get it.
Why do you care? you were one of the ones USING the mail as storage.
I agree we should not let them get away with it, but people are going to pay no matter what, a few people not buying anything is not going to matter to them. We need to find a better way to get there attention.
Well, certainly, but if there's a louder voice to the people in those chairs at PWE than the costumer's wallets, i'd sure like to know. In the end, i don't think angry customers are that big a deal to them up to the point they stop paying.
I know it's a gamble thing, and i know i've barely a say in it - if any, and maybe it's just me being shortsighted, but like i said, if there's a better way of speaking to money than with money, i'd certainly like to know about it.
But you're right, of course. There's no way everyone playing this game is seriously going to stop the cashflow dry. At least not until some seriously major widespread indignation, and i don't really think we're there yet. That why it's so ingenious to just take things away by degrees.
Therefore we should know what this exploit was exaclty.
I assume it is something with cancel the mission and restart it.
If the exploit works like this, then it should be enough to do not allow to cancel the mission, or to allow canceling and add a coodown of 1h it is cancelled.
That's a fair question. If you watch the bonuses click off as you complete sectors, you'll notice that the first few don't provide bonuses. I think the original idea was to encourage people to go farther and farther, ultimately completing all blocks. BUT, as new sectors were added to the game, those new sectors were given flat bonuses instead of getting added to the chain of progressive bonuses. Thus, players who figured that out could run just the new sectors, not bother with the progressive run, and get a predictable short run bonus.
Yes, the exploit came into play by the fact that this was an event rather than a daily mission. Since even slow ships could possibly do more than one lap, an unlimited number of laps was allowed. As faster ships (like the borg engines, Macos, etc) were introduced, the possibility of 3, 4 or even 5 full laps became possible. On the short route this translated to 7-12 laps for the well crafted ship.
Additional speed exploits like Diplomatic Immunity and Raiding party added to the event, both giving 25% more speed as well.
-=-=-=-=-
One thing that was brought up earlier was "why 4 hours on a 1 hour event?"
It sounds to me like they're contemplating removing Tour as a scheduled event and making it a daily with a short cool down. Players who have all day to do it, can get up to 8 laps per day in with a 4 hour cool down. Fast ships will help marginally, but, yes, probably better to DOFF and run slow (especially with the new doff window / sector warp bug that got recently introduced). I would imagine that most players interested in EC would run Tour immediately upon logging in, play a while and run one more on logging out.
Such a move would greatly benefit people with multiple toons. EC farming would become a matter of characters. The current exploit takes 7 minutes to run (right?). Call it 8 to include time to switch characters/accounts. This exploit is still active. Exploitive players could now earn 6Mec EVERY FOUR HOURS. All you would need is to open 8 accounts, or add enough character slots for 30 toons.
all they needed to do was make the pay-off one big one at the end. It would have gotten rid of the "exploit" and still allowed people who were doing it legitimately to get it.
Why do you care? you were one of the ones USING the mail as storage.
Here's a tip, when providing feedback, speak for yourself. Don't try to claim you know what ALL of the playerbase wants, cause guess what, we don't all think just one way about anything.
<edit> I think the change sucks, but since I didn't exploit the Tour event I'm fine with the change.
Here's a tip, when providing feedback, speak for yourself. Don't try to claim you know what ALL of the playerbase wants, cause guess what, we don't all think just one way about anything.
all they needed to do was make the pay-off one big one at the end. It would have gotten rid of the "exploit" and still allowed people who were doing it legitimately to get it.
Why do you care? you were one of the ones USING the mail as storage.
This reminds me of my job...I work with different groups and so often hear:
I swear, Cryptic had better reverse this ASAP before the entire Exchange crashes. Truly, Cryptic's greed overrules their foresight.
I really doubt the exchange will crash from losing the ability to Tour the Universe more than once/4 hours. If it hits you that critically, then find another way to make money, while still having fun.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
butcher suspect, "What'd you hit me with?"
Temperance Brennan, "A building"
I care because the change affected everyone. Just like this change- affects everyone who does the tour whether the run the full course the 'right way' or partials with the missions jumps, we ALL got to feel the effects of the nerf.
...Eventually they'll change something that YOU care about, and I'll be there to watch the pain.
Muahahahha.
Exactly my point, the Mail did not affect people who were using it as a mail system. this affects everyone who was doing it.
I swear, Cryptic had better reverse this ASAP before the entire Exchange crashes. Truly, Cryptic's greed overrules their foresight.
That's ironic. Because if the Exchange actually crashes from this, that would only prove that the amount of EC coming in from the Tour was a real problem.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
Comments
I believe that the exploits was people only going to 2 or 3 sector blocks, dropping and then going again to the same 2 or 3. That was definitely a problem that needed addressing.
If the exploit was people running it multiple times, even fully, then the event was poorly designed and the working as intended version would be almost useless.
As is, with the 4 hour cooldown, i don't see the point of running it even once any more.
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
Your not alone I was in game earlier and zone chat was all qq about it LOL it was quite amusing right up there with
You need to make dil easier to get ...Stop charging zen for everything...
and this qq tell us before you make changes so we can exploit it even more before you do.
to me yes, i never did the tour anyway. I think it is just stupid that they are trying to cry "we forgot" when it was obvious they were not going to tell anyone in the first place.
"Bug out and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure"
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
I haven't run the tour seriously for well over a year, there are better ways of earning EC at the moment but only the truly dense will not realise that this is just the thin end of the wedge. If we let them get away with this then they won't think twice about the next nerf and it may just be something you care about next time!
Trolling but a good one XD Touche
XD I am an old hand, I know exactly what I am doing!
We can change this people we just have to hit them where they hurt and that is in their pocket!
if you have been here long enough you would know that its par for the course(pun intended) that they do a super nerf to hell - then roll the nerf back a bit and say they are making a compromise - and are listening to feedback.
Possible, but the alternative is put up and shut up and let them do as they like, which i guess is a valid course of action if you subscribe to the "no one's forcing you to play" mentality. And you can totally see it that way.
I'm f2p (truth be told, i'd put some money into it (or i would have, before this happened) if i could do it physically; the online transactions thing just isn't for me), so i know my complaints don't get any weight, pissed as i am about it notwithstanding.
That said, it's all about how much you're willing to put up with before you think losing this game is an acceptable risk. After a while, if this goes on, i'm afraid they might consider fun to be another exploit they need to nerf. Whether they haven't gotten around to it yet, i guess is a matter of opinion.
You'll have to excuse me while I go laugh hysterically at the amount of naivete expressed here.
i find it amusing when i see titles that say a broad range of people ...where exactly did you get your statics that "the customer base" was demanding this ? ... i don't recall making any such demand
I agree we should not let them get away with it, but people are going to pay no matter what, a few people not buying anything is not going to matter to them. We need to find a better way to get there attention.
Being forced to one go-'round takes away that fun.
I will also be disappointed to see loss of EC and CXP (especially Trade and Exploration) that was granted by multiple trips/hour.
Two suggestion:
Make it a Daily.
Anyway, I'm sad to see this mission change, especially due to friggin' exploiters. >shakes head< I'm also thankful for Brandon's feedback, that it wasn't intentionally a stealth update, and that the patch notes have been updated.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Ditto... /10chars
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
NO, No difference. Different only in your mind. Both the tour and mail system have been in place and virtually unchanged since release, and participants in both systems have been using it the same way since day 1.
...Only the definition of 'exploit' has changed since release.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
As well as i disagree with the "demand" that cryptic must give notice first all that does is give exploiter a chance to work harder.
this example is extreme but its the same as calling a drug house before you raid it .
all they needed to do was make the pay-off one big one at the end. It would have gotten rid of the "exploit" and still allowed people who were doing it legitimately to get it.
Why do you care? you were one of the ones USING the mail as storage.
Well, certainly, but if there's a louder voice to the people in those chairs at PWE than the costumer's wallets, i'd sure like to know. In the end, i don't think angry customers are that big a deal to them up to the point they stop paying.
I know it's a gamble thing, and i know i've barely a say in it - if any, and maybe it's just me being shortsighted, but like i said, if there's a better way of speaking to money than with money, i'd certainly like to know about it.
But you're right, of course. There's no way everyone playing this game is seriously going to stop the cashflow dry. At least not until some seriously major widespread indignation, and i don't really think we're there yet. That why it's so ingenious to just take things away by degrees.
That's a fair question. If you watch the bonuses click off as you complete sectors, you'll notice that the first few don't provide bonuses. I think the original idea was to encourage people to go farther and farther, ultimately completing all blocks. BUT, as new sectors were added to the game, those new sectors were given flat bonuses instead of getting added to the chain of progressive bonuses. Thus, players who figured that out could run just the new sectors, not bother with the progressive run, and get a predictable short run bonus.
Yes, the exploit came into play by the fact that this was an event rather than a daily mission. Since even slow ships could possibly do more than one lap, an unlimited number of laps was allowed. As faster ships (like the borg engines, Macos, etc) were introduced, the possibility of 3, 4 or even 5 full laps became possible. On the short route this translated to 7-12 laps for the well crafted ship.
Additional speed exploits like Diplomatic Immunity and Raiding party added to the event, both giving 25% more speed as well.
-=-=-=-=-
One thing that was brought up earlier was "why 4 hours on a 1 hour event?"
It sounds to me like they're contemplating removing Tour as a scheduled event and making it a daily with a short cool down. Players who have all day to do it, can get up to 8 laps per day in with a 4 hour cool down. Fast ships will help marginally, but, yes, probably better to DOFF and run slow (especially with the new doff window / sector warp bug that got recently introduced). I would imagine that most players interested in EC would run Tour immediately upon logging in, play a while and run one more on logging out.
Such a move would greatly benefit people with multiple toons. EC farming would become a matter of characters. The current exploit takes 7 minutes to run (right?). Call it 8 to include time to switch characters/accounts. This exploit is still active. Exploitive players could now earn 6Mec EVERY FOUR HOURS. All you would need is to open 8 accounts, or add enough character slots for 30 toons.
<edit> I think the change sucks, but since I didn't exploit the Tour event I'm fine with the change.
..better ?
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
This reminds me of my job...I work with different groups and so often hear:
"We've always done it this way."
It's really tough for me not to reply:
"Congratulations, you've always been wrong."
I really doubt the exchange will crash from losing the ability to Tour the Universe more than once/4 hours. If it hits you that critically, then find another way to make money, while still having fun.
butcher suspect, "What'd you hit me with?"
Temperance Brennan, "A building"
Exactly my point, the Mail did not affect people who were using it as a mail system. this affects everyone who was doing it.
It's SOP - standard operating proceedure - do a super nerf - then scale it back a bit - "we listened to your feedback"
then wait for the classic reponses from players showering praise on them for listening.
I will laugh at the predicability if it happens AGAIN!!
Wait... are you down the hall from me? I swore I heard a transwarp sound on my way for coffee
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
It's NP anymore- fleet lost a contributor, I lost millions in unreturned property, game lost a player and potential purchaser.
Everybody wins.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
That's ironic. Because if the Exchange actually crashes from this, that would only prove that the amount of EC coming in from the Tour was a real problem.