CBS absolutely does not own the game. They own the IP, and they license that IP to Cryptic. Cryptic owns the game, and runs it. Perfect World Entertainment, their parent company, has to report these assets and licensing costs in their yearly financial statements; go read them if you want to verify what I've said.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
This, is the goal, of narrheehaw It's mission, to destroy new worlds and civilizations
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] And to boldly ruin, what no one has ruined before.
What else is new. Cryptic always releases Seasons or Expansions that have some major problems that are eventually fixed or made tolerable either due to bugs or bad design choices. There is a reason why some people wait a few weeks after a season or expansion to start playing that content.
Still hoping for a bug, but my hopes are dwindling, fast. If it were an obvious bug, they would have said so by now.
There is no way that any game company would release content that intentionally removes levels from players. Although, it is possible that Cryptic tried to release code that attempted to "fix" specialization levels to those who used the Tau Dewa Exploit, but it targetted more players than it should.
How is the truth small minded and shallow? I'm simply stating facts. You all seem to have a very over inflated sense of self importance when it comes to STO.
What you think is or is not an exploit does not matter. You can disagree and argue about it until you're blue in the face. It doesn't matter. You do not own the game. Cryptic does. That's not at all difficult to grasp.
Then again, some people who like to think of themselves as "intelligent" are so smart, they're stupid.
I don't know who "you all" is, but I'm just me. And I can't imagine how you can make a judgment of my sense of self-importance, so I'd advise that you just steer clear about making statements of which you have no knowledge so that we can keep the discussion civil.
You are stating facts, but they are irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Some disagreements between players and developers are simply one-sided, and that's fine.
In this case, the term "exploitative behavior" has a negative connotation that does not accurately reflect the actions of the players to whom it was implied. I have presented my case for this elsewhere for those who choose to avail themselves of it.
I maintain that Cryptic's use of the word "exploit" is unfair and inaccurate, again for reasons that I have detailed elsewhere.
Simple statements like "it's an exploit because Cryptic says it is" represent a failure to understand the nature of player behaviour and reckon that with developer expectations. The definition of "exploitative" is what this is all about, and the players complaining treat "exploits" pretty seriously, as that word is colloquially used among gamers as very similar to cheating, something that players were not doing.
Were players behaving outside of Cryptic's expectations? Hard to say. Were they receiving rewards beyond Cryptic's expectations? Yes. Were they cheating? I argue, no. Were they gaming the system? Yes, but we all try to game the system when we look for legitimate paths to improve ourselves faster. They thought they had found a legitimate path to faster leveling. How were they to know it was unintended?
Without knowledge that the rewards were unintended, I maintain that it is unreasonable to classify these players' behaviour as cheating, and as such, describing the behaviour as "exploitative" is unnecessarily inflammatory and unfairly pejorative.
Cryptic has every right to enforce their rules in their games. But statements that suggest that these players were "exploiting" or cheating are unjust.
Cryptic's big failure here is not shutting down Tau Dewa, and it's not even failing to catch this unintended progression path. Their big failure is in describing players who thought they were availing themselves of a legitimate gameplay experience as "exploiters" or cheater. The word "exploitative" was unnecessarily pejorative. They could have stated the facts better and avoided the resentment we've seen today.
I don't know who "you all" is, but I'm just me. And I can't imagine how you can make a judgment of my sense of self-importance, so I'd advise that you just steer clear about making statements of which you have no knowledge so that we can keep the discussion civil.
You are stating facts, but they are irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Some disagreements between players and developers are simply one-sided, and that's fine.
In this case, the term "exploitative behavior" has a negative connotation that does not accurately reflect the actions of the players to whom it was implied. I have presented my case for this elsewhere for those who choose to avail themselves of it.
I maintain that Cryptic's use of the word "exploit" is unfair and inaccurate, again for reasons that I have detailed elsewhere.
Simple statements like "it's an exploit because Cryptic says it is" represent a failure to understand the nature of player behaviour and reckon that with developer expectations. The definition of "exploitative" is what this is all about, and the players complaining treat "exploits" pretty seriously, as that word is colloquially used among gamers as very similar to cheating, something that players were not doing.
Were players behaving outside of Cryptic's expectations? Hard to say. Were they receiving rewards beyond Cryptic's expectations? Yes. Were they cheating? I argue, no. Were they gaming the system? Yes, but we all try to game the system when we look for legitimate paths to improve ourselves faster. They thought they had found a legitimate path to faster leveling. How were they to know it was unintended?
Without knowledge that the rewards were unintended, I maintain that it is unreasonable to classify these players' behaviour as cheating, and as such, describing the behaviour as "exploitative" is unnecessarily inflammatory and unfairly pejorative.
Cryptic has every right to enforce their rules in their games. But statements that suggest that these players were "exploiting" or cheating are unjust.
Cryptic's big failure here is not shutting down Tau Dewa, and it's not even failing to catch this unintended progression path. Their big failure is in describing players who thought they were availing themselves of a legitimate gameplay experience as "exploiters" or cheater. The word "exploitative" was unnecessarily pejorative. They could have stated the facts better and avoided the resentment we've seen today.
The big problem here is that we don't know what these players were doing. All we have is hearsay, rampaging emotions and people who connect the dots who might be connecting dots to a complete different puzzle.
It's easy for the players today to say that "It's because of EXP" because of coincidence and Cryptic just can't say anything about it on the off-chance that some nutcase decides he wants to replicate what it was.
There is no way that any game company would release content that intentionally removes levels from players. Although, it is possible that Cryptic tried to release code that attempted to "fix" specialization levels to those who used the Tau Dewa Exploit, but it targetted more players than it should.
Think again. Just learned it really WAS deliberate:
You all seem to have a very over inflated sense of self importance when it comes to STO.
yup! so crack that wallet open and fight n00bs!
This, is the goal, of narrheehaw It's mission, to destroy new worlds and civilizations
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] And to boldly ruin, what no one has ruined before.
You're still not getting it. They were exploiting. They were because Cryptic said they were. Cryptic has final say on what is or is not an exploit. Period. End of discussion.
If they say beaming down to ESD is an exploit then it's an exploit. If they say warping out of the Q'onos system is an exploit then it is an exploit. It does not matter whether you think something is an exploit or not. What matters is what Cryptic determines is an exploit.
You and I and the whole STO playerbase may disagree with their decision, question their thinking and such, but ultimately it is Cryptic/PWE's game and they'll do with it as they see fit.
That is the Communist attitude PWE likes.
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Looking for a new fleet? Drop by the in-game chat channel, "tenforwardforum", and say hi to the members of A Fleet Called Ten Forward (Fed) and The Orion Pirates (KDF). If you already have a fleet you are happy with, please feel free to drop by our chat channel if you are looking for a friendly bunch of helpful people to socialize with.
Whether it was a exploit, design flaw by cryptic or working as intended. These guys that have lost Specialization points still had to put the hours of game time to get those points, sure it was quicker than the Dev's intended but by rolling back their accounts they haven't just stolen hard earned points from these guys they stolen something far more important that cannot be given back, "THERE TIME"
And for that they have every right to be pissed
I was not affected by this as i'm struggling to level 1 toon to 60 and finding it extremely boring and tedious, and wondering if i can be bothered to level the other 12 up as well. Before Delta Grinding all 13 toons on my account got equal game time and all were treated like main characters, fully geared/specced and used. Now with advanced stf's intended for higher levels and elite locked behind lvl 60 i haven't touched a lot of those toons as i can't find the motivation to lvl 13 characters esp now the with the xp nerf.
Dev's you don't seem to know just how fortunate you are to have the Star Trek i.p, as i'd imagine its the only thing keeping a lot of players here and this game alive.
I've never understood this behavior in developers. Even if we get all of these points quicker than they expected because they didn't pay attention to how they designed the game, who does it hurt exactly? Seriously, this game has had so many other problems and still people login so it's not like people are going to en masse get done with content or the grind and then never login again. I personally have two other alts and until they offered this package deal for all three factions i had given up playing them.
I don't understand why they think this is a problem much less why they took away points from something that doesn't harm anything.
That is why I said it targeted more people than it should. A player that lost 50 levels through constantly running Elite Queues is very different from a player that lost 50 levels through an exploit. One is a bug that should be fixed ASAP and the other is fixing an exploit.
The big problem here is that we don't know what these players were doing. All we have is hearsay, rampaging emotions and people who connect the dots who might be connecting dots to a complete different puzzle.
It's easy for the players today to say that "It's because of EXP" because of coincidence and Cryptic just can't say anything about it on the off-chance that some nutcase decides he wants to replicate what it was.
You're right, Cryptic hasn't come out and said what the "exploitative behaviour" is, but we're pretty sure we know. Lots of people were in Tau Dewa, earning Skill Points at a ridiculous rate, and then the sector was shut down.
We're pretty sure we know what behaviour they were referencing. We have good reasons supporting this guess.
I agree with you about rampaging emotions. People don't like that Cryptic unfairly made them feel like cheaters, and I empathize with that. People don't like that Cryptic may be rolling back skill point gains, and I totally empathize with that. Cryptic's within their rights to do it, but we don't have to be happy about it.
No, it's a statement of fact. I'm curious why you would think any interpretation other than Cryptics' of what an exploit is matters?
Get it through your head... whether you feel it was an exploit or not does not matter. What Cryptic says goes.
You're right. Cryptic has the right to call it an exploit if they wish. But this misses the point.
I disagree with their assessment, and I've argued that they've used poor judgment. They have the RIGHT to call it an exploit, and they have the capability to punish players as though they were exploiting. But having the right to do something doesn't mean you are right to do it.
Soon respawning will be an exploit. If you die, you're dead. Game over. Roll a new character... OR buy a resurrection pack for 1500 zen or 5000 for 4. One use per character per account.
It wasn't an "exploit". It was a bad design that they corrected.
Really, really badly.
^^^
This. The REAL issue is:
- They knew about the problem for YEARS (IE the Tau Dewa Patrols worked that way since they ere released - and the Datamine EVERYTHING players do and base changes design decisions on the info gathered.)
- This situation was EVEN REPORTED ON TRIBBLE prior to the release of DR.
Conclusion: The STO design and Dev team was either too oblivious to their own datamining and tester feedback, or too lazy to bother with fixing it prior to DR release.
The fact they then punish a portion of the STO playerbase (who based on the above would conclude that the STO Dev team (and lead designer Captain Gekko) knew about it, and DIDN'T consider it an exploit); just shows the contempt they have for the longtime players of STO whose financial support of said game allows them to draw a salary.
If anything the person/dev who made the call to ignore the datamioning and Tribble reports should be the one to face any punishment - not players who just played the game as it was presented to them.
Now, if Cryptic considered the Tau Dewa patrol code an issue, by ALL MEANS they should fix it so it's in line with their gameplay paradigm. But punishing STO players for their own mistake...
That's just sad/pathetic.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
It was an exploit... The fact that so many people tried to keep it away from the dev's attention just emphasizes it
From what I've read, people were TELLING them exactly what they were doing during the so-called testing phase on Tribble. Unless they go out of their way to ignore all feedback from Tribble, they should bloody well have already known exactly how things were going down. Since they didn't change it before release, why would anyone have any reason to believe this wasn't working as intended?
I wouldn't go so far as to say Cryptic isn't to blame in part. After all, people wanting to farm easy XP is a given and something they should have been aware of and corrected. With that said, I do agree the exploiters are more to blame and that is who the people who lost points should be looking at.
Well yes, they made a mistake... Given enough time, they may even have found it before release, but that's not how it works, and this is no news to STO players who have been around for a while.
The second the exploiters found the bug, they should have realized that 3-4000 XP pr minute (possibly more) is unintended... And they did, they just refuse to aknowlege it, because when you go into a map like japori repeatedly, do the same manuver over and over again because it levels you fast, its obvious.
If they had done it once and then said, "yea... thats obviously not intended", it would have been an honest mistake... Instead... They said "Cool... lets use this go level really fast", making it obvious that it was an exploit.
Thanks to exploiters, we now have people who lost out on honest gameplay and leaving the game because of it... Instead, the exploiters should just have been perma-banned.
I'm honestly still hoping this was a mistake, and will be rectified. I lost 6 points (or 7, I was too upset, so I may have forgotten one). That's nearly 300,000 (!) XP points. No way I'm gonna put up with that.
I am sure they will fix it for you... Your best chance is to send a ticket, making them aware of it... They should be able to back-track your movement.
Don't look silly... Don't call it the "Z-Store/Zen Store"...
A bunch of people lost a bunch of specialization points after this morning's patch. I've heard some as low as 4, others as high as 50. Some are saying that its a deliberate thing on Cryptic's part, others that it's some kind of bug that can get fixed. For those that feel that it's a deliberate thing it's percieved as yet another blow in recent days from Cryptic.
Speaking for myself, I don't seem to have been affected by this one ... although I'm somehow an Admiral at level 54 on one of my alts.
Ah, gotcha and thank you for that explanation. Yeah, i wasn't affected nor did i see any difference and i even checked my sons account and didn't see anything affected. Hmmmm
But still what a low blow they took a whole week to fix an "exploit" and thenroll back everyone specialization points assuming that they took advantage of said "exploit".
That didn't happen.
I used Japori to grind out the masteries on 3 ships (Phantom, Eclipse, Dauntless). I was never at my own level, with the party leader anywhere between 8 to 2 levels lower. I hit 60 with around a dozen additional spec points in the process.
Comments
CBS absolutely does not own the game. They own the IP, and they license that IP to Cryptic. Cryptic owns the game, and runs it. Perfect World Entertainment, their parent company, has to report these assets and licensing costs in their yearly financial statements; go read them if you want to verify what I've said.
It's mission, to destroy new worlds and civilizations
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
And to boldly ruin, what no one has ruined before.
There is no way that any game company would release content that intentionally removes levels from players. Although, it is possible that Cryptic tried to release code that attempted to "fix" specialization levels to those who used the Tau Dewa Exploit, but it targetted more players than it should.
I don't know who "you all" is, but I'm just me. And I can't imagine how you can make a judgment of my sense of self-importance, so I'd advise that you just steer clear about making statements of which you have no knowledge so that we can keep the discussion civil.
You are stating facts, but they are irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Some disagreements between players and developers are simply one-sided, and that's fine.
In this case, the term "exploitative behavior" has a negative connotation that does not accurately reflect the actions of the players to whom it was implied. I have presented my case for this elsewhere for those who choose to avail themselves of it.
I maintain that Cryptic's use of the word "exploit" is unfair and inaccurate, again for reasons that I have detailed elsewhere.
Simple statements like "it's an exploit because Cryptic says it is" represent a failure to understand the nature of player behaviour and reckon that with developer expectations. The definition of "exploitative" is what this is all about, and the players complaining treat "exploits" pretty seriously, as that word is colloquially used among gamers as very similar to cheating, something that players were not doing.
Were players behaving outside of Cryptic's expectations? Hard to say. Were they receiving rewards beyond Cryptic's expectations? Yes. Were they cheating? I argue, no. Were they gaming the system? Yes, but we all try to game the system when we look for legitimate paths to improve ourselves faster. They thought they had found a legitimate path to faster leveling. How were they to know it was unintended?
Without knowledge that the rewards were unintended, I maintain that it is unreasonable to classify these players' behaviour as cheating, and as such, describing the behaviour as "exploitative" is unnecessarily inflammatory and unfairly pejorative.
Cryptic has every right to enforce their rules in their games. But statements that suggest that these players were "exploiting" or cheating are unjust.
Cryptic's big failure here is not shutting down Tau Dewa, and it's not even failing to catch this unintended progression path. Their big failure is in describing players who thought they were availing themselves of a legitimate gameplay experience as "exploiters" or cheater. The word "exploitative" was unnecessarily pejorative. They could have stated the facts better and avoided the resentment we've seen today.
The big problem here is that we don't know what these players were doing. All we have is hearsay, rampaging emotions and people who connect the dots who might be connecting dots to a complete different puzzle.
It's easy for the players today to say that "It's because of EXP" because of coincidence and Cryptic just can't say anything about it on the off-chance that some nutcase decides he wants to replicate what it was.
Think again. Just learned it really WAS deliberate:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=20155921&postcount=2
yup! so crack that wallet open and fight n00bs!
It's mission, to destroy new worlds and civilizations
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
And to boldly ruin, what no one has ruined before.
That is the Communist attitude PWE likes.
> <
> <
>
And for that they have every right to be pissed
I was not affected by this as i'm struggling to level 1 toon to 60 and finding it extremely boring and tedious, and wondering if i can be bothered to level the other 12 up as well. Before Delta Grinding all 13 toons on my account got equal game time and all were treated like main characters, fully geared/specced and used. Now with advanced stf's intended for higher levels and elite locked behind lvl 60 i haven't touched a lot of those toons as i can't find the motivation to lvl 13 characters esp now the with the xp nerf.
Dev's you don't seem to know just how fortunate you are to have the Star Trek i.p, as i'd imagine its the only thing keeping a lot of players here and this game alive.
I don't understand why they think this is a problem much less why they took away points from something that doesn't harm anything.
That is why I said it targeted more people than it should. A player that lost 50 levels through constantly running Elite Queues is very different from a player that lost 50 levels through an exploit. One is a bug that should be fixed ASAP and the other is fixing an exploit.
You're right, Cryptic hasn't come out and said what the "exploitative behaviour" is, but we're pretty sure we know. Lots of people were in Tau Dewa, earning Skill Points at a ridiculous rate, and then the sector was shut down.
We're pretty sure we know what behaviour they were referencing. We have good reasons supporting this guess.
I agree with you about rampaging emotions. People don't like that Cryptic unfairly made them feel like cheaters, and I empathize with that. People don't like that Cryptic may be rolling back skill point gains, and I totally empathize with that. Cryptic's within their rights to do it, but we don't have to be happy about it.
REALLY cryptic?
THANKS A BUNCH.
You're right. Cryptic has the right to call it an exploit if they wish. But this misses the point.
I disagree with their assessment, and I've argued that they've used poor judgment. They have the RIGHT to call it an exploit, and they have the capability to punish players as though they were exploiting. But having the right to do something doesn't mean you are right to do it.
I've made my case. That is all.
^^^
This. The REAL issue is:
- They knew about the problem for YEARS (IE the Tau Dewa Patrols worked that way since they ere released - and the Datamine EVERYTHING players do and base changes design decisions on the info gathered.)
- This situation was EVEN REPORTED ON TRIBBLE prior to the release of DR.
Conclusion: The STO design and Dev team was either too oblivious to their own datamining and tester feedback, or too lazy to bother with fixing it prior to DR release.
The fact they then punish a portion of the STO playerbase (who based on the above would conclude that the STO Dev team (and lead designer Captain Gekko) knew about it, and DIDN'T consider it an exploit); just shows the contempt they have for the longtime players of STO whose financial support of said game allows them to draw a salary.
If anything the person/dev who made the call to ignore the datamioning and Tribble reports should be the one to face any punishment - not players who just played the game as it was presented to them.
Now, if Cryptic considered the Tau Dewa patrol code an issue, by ALL MEANS they should fix it so it's in line with their gameplay paradigm. But punishing STO players for their own mistake...
That's just sad/pathetic.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
From what I've read, people were TELLING them exactly what they were doing during the so-called testing phase on Tribble. Unless they go out of their way to ignore all feedback from Tribble, they should bloody well have already known exactly how things were going down. Since they didn't change it before release, why would anyone have any reason to believe this wasn't working as intended?
Edit: Oops, beaten by half an hour.
Here's hoping the game might be in a better state whenever you remember it want to check it out again. (Yes, I know, I gave myself that look too.)
Well yes, they made a mistake... Given enough time, they may even have found it before release, but that's not how it works, and this is no news to STO players who have been around for a while.
The second the exploiters found the bug, they should have realized that 3-4000 XP pr minute (possibly more) is unintended... And they did, they just refuse to aknowlege it, because when you go into a map like japori repeatedly, do the same manuver over and over again because it levels you fast, its obvious.
If they had done it once and then said, "yea... thats obviously not intended", it would have been an honest mistake... Instead... They said "Cool... lets use this go level really fast", making it obvious that it was an exploit.
Thanks to exploiters, we now have people who lost out on honest gameplay and leaving the game because of it... Instead, the exploiters should just have been perma-banned.
I am sure they will fix it for you... Your best chance is to send a ticket, making them aware of it... They should be able to back-track your movement.
Multiplayer be damned in MMOs
Ah, gotcha and thank you for that explanation. Yeah, i wasn't affected nor did i see any difference and i even checked my sons account and didn't see anything affected. Hmmmm
That didn't happen.
I used Japori to grind out the masteries on 3 ships (Phantom, Eclipse, Dauntless). I was never at my own level, with the party leader anywhere between 8 to 2 levels lower. I hit 60 with around a dozen additional spec points in the process.
I didn't get rolled back.