Play mmos much? You've pretty much described group grinding or power leveling which in ANY OTHER GAME is expected and encouraged because it's more multi-player and social.
Fail post.
Well, call it fail if you want. But why that ONE specific mission? Why not grind mobs in some other mission? There had to be some mysterious reason for the choice. Something different. Something not quite the same as other places. I wonder what it could be? More fun than the others? No, that's not it. Hmm. Let me think on it for a while.
Honestly as far as exploits go this one was tame and mostly harmless. I really don't care how people level up. That was not even the question. The question is how to tell when doing something is making use of a bug. My answer stands.
Were people really enjoying uber-grinding the same damn fight over and over again in rapid succession for hours at a time?
Or were they just enjoying watching their xp bar fly upwards at a crazy rate? (gee, might that be the "if it seems too good to be true" part......)
that pretty much describes most of the "content" - mindlessly collecting favors on Risa, mindlessly doing CE, mindlessly doing Conduit Elite for the billionth time....
Well, call it fail if you want. But why that ONE specific mission? Why not grind mobs in some other mission? There had to be some mysterious reason for the choice. Something different. Something not quite the same as other places. I wonder what it could be? More fun than the others? No, that's not it. Hmm. Let me think on it for a while.
Don't think too long and hard, it might damage something.
The answer is simple and the same no matter the game....it got the best results. Ever had to compete for spawn points in a game? Yeah....well SAME THING....people grouped up and did it because it worked the best. A better question is why would people flock to the 9th best place to grind???
Well it should have been obvious since the enemies didn't correctly match level.
The we should all feel duly exploited by the "Last Stand" mission vs. the Elachi in the Romulan story arc. That mission deploys NPC's a full 10 levels above the stated difficulty; I personally had to spend nearly all my then-available EC's at the exchange to upgrade my best available ship to finish that mission. Even then, I got killed several times...
It's not our job to match levels anywhere in the game, we are here to play it. If the dev's actually ever played the game, they would have a greater appreciation for how uneven the gameplay can be at times. The players are not at fault; it is a total fail on Craptic's part. :mad:
Expendables Fleet: Andrew - Bajoran Fed Engineer Ken'taura - Rom/Fed Scientist Gwyllim - Human Fed Delta Tac Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
It may be difficult. The way to tell is simple --- common sense --- but the vast majority of humanity has lost this rare trait.
I mean, it should be obvious. For example, lets say that you discover that you can buy a white item for 10k credits and sell it back to the same vendor for 1 million credits because someone screwed up the code somewhere. You discover this and immediately buy and sell all day long until you have more money than everyone else in the game combined.
Your common sense should tell you that this sort of thing is not intended.
Basically, when you encounter some content that seems to be enormously profitable on a repeatable basis, far outside similar rewards from other similar content, and you do that nonstop to earn tons of something, its probably you exploiting a bug. If you do it a couple of times, less than 5 or so, to verify that it can be repeated and indeed seems to be outside of normal gameplay reward for effort standards, and you report it as a bug and stop doing it and do not share the method online etc, ... you did not exploit it. If cryptic fails to fix this within 2 weeks, and you go back to repeat the profitable thing a few million times, that is not an exploit -- they were told of a possible bug and ignored it, so it must not be a bug.
Please tell me another game where you have to stop doing the story quests every other level due to not getting enough exp through story mode.
then they put a pop up telling people to go grind patrols/STF's .... then when people do its an exploit.
And due to the stf lockout, you cant really grind them, gated content is cool isn't it.
And the reason why people don't grind delta rising patrols, is most of us have t12 gear and the shield strength/HP is pretty much double compared to old content, even the stuff that scales to level.
spend 8-15 mins killing a Delta rising patrol for x amount of exp
Or
spend 4-6 mins killing old content patrols for virtually the same exp and better drops. HIHI R+D mats.
Don't think too long and hard, it might damage something.
The answer is simple and the same no matter the game....it got the best results. Ever had to compete for spawn points in a game? Yeah....well SAME THING....people grouped up and did it because it worked the best. A better question is why would people flock to the 9th best place to grind???
Right. The rewards were higher than normal (best results). Common sense tells us that when the rewards are significantly higher than expected, it is probably a bug and using it nonstop is probably an exploit. Just like I said to begin with, THAT is how you can TELL if something is an exploit. The two clues are obvious --- doing something ad nauseam & better than usual rewards.
Most mmo's have a get out of jail free card for them in their tos which is along the lines of "not in the spirit of the intended game" ie any bug if found and exploited whether known or not allows them to punish players here they removed XP and points in some games such as wow and gw2 you would have logged in to account terminated, Its a TRIBBLE one sided affair which more often than not takes a dump on players who believe what they are doing is legit unfortunately that legitimacy is at the game companies decision.
Please tell me another game where you have to stop doing the story quests every other level due to not getting enough exp through story mode.
then they put a pop up telling people to go grind patrols/STF's .... then when people do its an exploit.
And due to the stf lockout, you cant really grind them, gated content is cool isn't it.
And the reason why people don't grind delta rising patrols, is most of us have t12 gear and the shield strength/HP is pretty much double compared to old content, even the stuff that scales to level.
spend 8-15 mins killing a Delta rising patrol for x amount of exp
Or
spend 4-6 mins killing old content patrols for virtually the same exp and better drops. HIHI R+D mats.
this is PWE's mess not the player base.
You infer that I care how people level or whether people abused this glitch. I do not. I am just answering the question of how someone should know if what they are doing is intended or not as best I can. That was the question.
I personally am not happy with the lack of missions and the "go grind levels" " content??? " from the expansion. I think that if they ad 10 levels we should be able to earn 10 levels from questing. I think if people found a way to deal with the lack of content, it does not bother me at all.
Right. The rewards were higher than normal (best results). Common sense tells us that when the rewards are significantly higher than expected, it is probably a bug and using it nonstop is probably an exploit. Just like I said to begin with, THAT is how you can TELL if something is an exploit. The two clues are obvious --- doing something ad nauseam & better than usual rewards.
So what is the currently most rewarding activity in the game so that I can be informed said content is currently bugged and therefore an exploit?
See how stupidly broad and nebulous the description you're parroting is?
The amount of wild variation in xp gain rates from different activities and even specific missions/stfs have been a part of this game for years.
Is queuing for the same 3 or 4 stfs in a circle over and over while hunting for the same dozen or so especially lucrative Doff missions exploiting?
It fits the given definition. SOMETHING will ALWAYS fit the amorphous blob of a description currently being used. There are people claiming they've done literally nothing but new DR quests and otherwise the usual stf/bz/Doff stuff and had points deducted, I mean they CLEARLY had to know what they were doing was an exploit...
You do not have to look at the numbers for their level. You failed to notice that you were rickrolling the mobs far easier than usual?
Have you ever fought Tholians? Have you noticed those pathetic mirror ships that often appear from rifts they make? They don't scale either. EVERYONE STOP KILLING THEM! IT'S EXPLOITING!
Please tell me another game where you have to stop doing the story quests every other level due to not getting enough exp through story mode.
Perfect World where you had to grind EVERY level because missions would only get you the first 25-40% and even those involved killing dozens or hundreds of enemies. You can probably guess who made that MMO.
So what is the currently most rewarding activity in the game so that I can be informed said content is currently bugged and therefore an exploit?
See how stupidly broad and nebulous the description you're parroting is?
The amount of wild variation in xp gain rates from different activities and even specific missions/stfs have been a part of this game for years.
Is queuing for the same 3 or 4 stfs in a circle over and over while hunting for the same dozen or so especially lucrative Doff missions exploiting?
It fits the given definition. SOMETHING will ALWAYS fit the amorphous blob of a description currently being used.
Oh thats easy,
leveling up by Doff missions, will take years however it means you only need to log in to the game for 3 mins on each character then you can play something else.
now i have said it watch for the incoming nurf/rollback/ban wave
Have you ever fought Tholians? Have you noticed those pathetic mirror ships that often appear from rifts they make? They don't scale either. EVERYONE STOP KILLING THEM! IT'S EXPLOITING!
Perfect World where you had to grind EVERY level because missions would only get you the first 25-40% and even those involved killing dozens or hundreds of enemies. You can probably guess who made that MMO.
Ahh yes i forgot about that beautiful game, i should have said AAA western MMO's as i know a lot of Asian MMO's are ultra grindy
Years I won't touch Delta Rising stuff for another week yet, and with the queues pretty much mucked up I've barely touched them either, yet I'm already 55.
Right. The rewards were higher than normal (best results). Common sense tells us that when the rewards are significantly higher than expected, it is probably a bug and using it nonstop is probably an exploit. Just like I said to begin with, THAT is how you can TELL if something is an exploit. The two clues are obvious --- doing something ad nauseam & better than usual rewards.
There is no definition of higher than normal results, that's totally subjective. Moreover running elite missions with a full group is the EXACT activity you'd expect to get "better than normal" rewards from....RIGHT? Right.....
As for doing the same thing over and over non-stop...well that's called grinding. Gonna ban that next?
Ever help a friend out by going on a mission with them in ANY game that allowed level matching (as in HAS A BUTTON FOR IT)? If so then according to these people you're an "exploiter"...
Have you ever fought Tholians? Have you noticed those pathetic mirror ships that often appear from rifts they make? They don't scale either. EVERYONE STOP KILLING THEM! IT'S EXPLOITING!
Perfect World where you had to grind EVERY level because missions would only get you the first 25-40% and even those involved killing dozens or hundreds of enemies. You can probably guess who made that MMO.
I never said to stop doing it --- until they put quests in for 50-60, I have zero ethical problems with finding alternative methods to earn the xp. And the mirror ships are not much of a counterexample. The tholians themselves.... easier than they should be? Someone already said it --- 15 min on real leveled up enemy or 5 on bugged enemy. That is all that needed to be said.
Lol have you tried swordsman? It has a built in botting function so you don't have to actually play it, you can just build your character to farm a little area 24-7, and it will even sell your loot for you when your bags are full and more. Its freaking progress quest, but not a joke, they are serious!
There is no definition of higher than normal results, that's totally subjective. Moreover running elite missions with a full group is the EXACT activity you'd expect to get "better than normal" rewards from....RIGHT? Right.....
You wouldn't get on well in a legal profession.
"Well the laws of physics don't set a limit on what my defendent could claim as a business expense, so that Gold Plated F-22 should be fair game!"
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
"Well the laws of physics don't set a limit on what my defendent could claim as a business expense, so that Gold Plated F-22 should be fair game!"
Actually I'd get on quite well with one (scary thought but true).
We're not talking about the "laws of physics", we're talking about how a game is set up and moreover using the FEATURES it included. Whining about level matching, which there is a button for, is like whining about people being able to FIRE THEIR WEAPONS.
"DAMN PLAYERS are doing damage and leveling up AGAIN pushing that button we made that lets them fire their weapons!!!....EXPLOITERS!!11!!!!!...roll back....
You do not have to look at the numbers for their level. You failed to notice that you were rickrolling the mobs far easier than usual?
And you did the *same boring mission with strangely easy enemy* over and over and over and over.... ???
I don't buy it. WHY did you do that mission (if you did) over and over? Because the rewards were higher than the difficulty involved. Period. Which goes back to my common sense comment.
I suppose someone with a very, very, bad case of backsidehattery could be doing it over and over and over because everyone else was doing it over, and over, and over without asking "why we doing that again". If you are that, erm, unobservant and consider doing the same thing over and over and over to be "normal play" then I suppose YOU can have a pass for being clueless.
You want to know why I ran it? I ran it because I was bored with New Romulus. I enjoy fighting in space; I did so with the patrol missions. After doing the patrol missions for marks, with three other fleet mates; found it to be fun and, got a couple levels out of it. 4x gw provided absolute control on the incoming waves. 3x torp spread 3, and 1x cannon volley would lay down some serious hurt with the way we were set up.
Went back, actually was able to do a couple episodes in DR without the exp hunting that breaks the story in to semi-coherent, disjointed babble.
The next day, did it again, for marks and another level. And, at that point, since I knew the wave patterns; kept it in mind for other, newer fleet members for if(and when) they needed exp.
Why not DR patrols? Because, like the pve queues, they're nothing but damage sponges and I really do not wish to deal with them.
There is no definition of higher than normal results, that's totally subjective. Moreover running elite missions with a full group is the EXACT activity you'd expect to get "better than normal" rewards from....RIGHT? Right.....
As for doing the same thing over and over non-stop...well that's called grinding. Gonna ban that next?
Ever help a friend out by going on a mission with them in ANY game that allowed level matching (as in HAS A BUTTON FOR IT)? If so then according to these people you're an "exploiter"...
That falls flat. If the rewards were not higher than expected, why did 9/10 the player base do that one mission and no others? Why? Was it more fun? More challenging? Again, when you answer the WHY you will discover that the rewards to effort ratio were wrong.
Grinding is fine. The problem is one mission being more profitable than others for the effort involved -- making it the ONLY one being used to grind. That indicates either a serious design flaw or a bug.
Level matching is usually DOWN. That is, you help a lowbie by having your own level effectively reduced. I have not played a game in years where a high level could power level a lowbie by whacking high level mobs while grouped. But yes, 20 years ago, I did help people that way. And yes, it was sort of an exploit (morally, perhaps) --- however the game developers KNEW we could do that and never changed or removed that feature. It was OK by them. That means not an exploit for those old games since it was known and allowed. Again, modern games do not generally allow this to be a useful way to power level friends.
We're not talking about the "laws of physics", we're talking about how a game is set up and moreover using the FEATURES it included.
Which is subjective (versus objective, which is where the physics comes in). If you're doing something that the devs (being dependent on the long and short term health of the game, its systems, and economy) don't want you to do they have the right to stop you. Remember the TOU agreement? I can't imagine that [and haven't seen] ANY active dev fail to refer to it when confronted with a clear, game breaking exploit.
Resets, bans, lock downs, you should have seen PLENTY in your time as a gamer to cue you into how seriously devs take their game. Even if its their bugs/bad decisions that create the situation, they'll still act against those who go too far with it (and before you start whining about how other people have been affected, refer to the larger post around here complaining about a 10 spec point loss while hit with a forced reset. I strongly suspect that there's a separate issue with the "skill invalid" respec glitch [which has been with us for some weeks] that's ALSO causing lost spec points.)
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
That falls flat. If the rewards were not higher than expected, why did 9/10 the player base do that one mission and no others? Why? Was it more fun? More challenging? Again, when you answer the WHY you will discover that the rewards to effort ratio were wrong.
Grinding is fine. The problem is one mission being more profitable than others for the effort involved -- making it the ONLY one being used to grind. That indicates either a serious design flaw or a bug.
Level matching is usually DOWN. That is, you help a lowbie by having your own level effectively reduced. I have not played a game in years where a high level could power level a lowbie by whacking high level mobs while grouped. But yes, 20 years ago, I did help people that way. And yes, it was sort of an exploit (morally, perhaps) --- however the game developers KNEW we could do that and never changed or removed that feature. It was OK by them. That means not an exploit for those old games since it was known and allowed. Again, modern games do not generally allow this to be a useful way to power level friends.
The fact is that the rewards WERE higher than expected doing ELITE missions with a full group means you shouldn't expect that it's an exploit. The rewards for doing an elite patrol (given the insane difficulty of elite STFs now) should be a clear signal that "this is fine and expected"...period. Try again.
No the fact that ONE mission is better than all the others, means that it's the ONE people are going to do. This, again, is fully expected, reasonable, and makes perfect sense. Go fish.
Level matching can be UP or DOWN it doesn't matter which. CoH allowed BOTH and this didn't cause anyone to have histrionic conniption fits and close down neighborhoods.
Nothing, absolutely NOTHING shows exploiting here. IF the devs didn't like the metric (which they flipped on its head BTW) players were achieving then they should "fix" it and move on. Not flip out in a magnificently spastic manner, close down a sector, and roll back people to oblivion.
You want to know why I ran it? I ran it because I was bored with New Romulus. I enjoy fighting in space; I did so with the patrol missions. After doing the patrol missions for marks, with three other fleet mates; found it to be fun and, got a couple levels out of it. 4x gw provided absolute control on the incoming waves. 3x torp spread 3, and 1x cannon volley would lay down some serious hurt with the way we were set up.
Went back, actually was able to do a couple episodes in DR without the exp hunting that breaks the story in to semi-coherent, disjointed babble.
The next day, did it again, for marks and another level. And, at that point, since I knew the wave patterns; kept it in mind for other, newer fleet members for if(and when) they needed exp.
Why not DR patrols? Because, like the pve queues, they're nothing but damage sponges and I really do not wish to deal with them.
That clear enough, for ya?
I don't care why you ran it, how many times etc. Again, given the "go grind" expansion, I am quite proud of you for finding and using an efficient solution to the problem. You are putting words in my mouth -- I have said repeatedly that I don't care that people used this exploit. That was not the question being asked. The question was how to know if you are exploiting. If you want we can debate morality or something, but since I agree with you, it won't be a very lively discussion.
Which is subjective (versus objective, which is where the physics comes in). If you're doing something that the devs (being dependent on the long and short term health of the game, its systems, and economy) don't want you to do they have the right to stop you. Remember the TOU agreement? I can't imagine that [and haven't seen] ANY active dev fail to refer to it when confronted with a clear, game breaking exploit.
Resets, bans, lock downs, you should have seen PLENTY in your time as a gamer to cue you into how seriously devs take their game. Even if its their bugs/bad decisions that create the situation, they'll still act against those who go too far with it (and before you start whining about how other people have been affected, refer to the larger post around here complaining about a 10 spec point loss while hit with a forced reset. I strongly suspect that there's a separate issue with the "skill invalid" respec glitch [which has been with us for some weeks] that's ALSO causing lost spec points.)
There is NOTHING subjective about a feature of a game, either it's there or it isn't. In this case it is...period. Why are we still talking about it?
What would cue me into how seriously they take their game is to fix this problem prior to it getting off tribble where many, many, MANY people pointed it out....but they didn't. DID they?
The fact is that the rewards WERE higher than expected doing ELITE missions with a full group means you shouldn't expect that it's an exploit. The rewards for doing an elite patrol (given the insane difficulty of elite STFs now) should be a clear signal that "this is fine and expected"...period. Try again.
No the fact that ONE mission is better than all the others, means that it's the ONE people are going to do. This, again, is fully expected, reasonable, and makes perfect sense. Go fish.
Level matching can be UP or DOWN it doesn't matter which. CoH allowed BOTH and this didn't cause anyone to have histrionic conniption fits and close down neighborhoods.
Nothing, absolutely NOTHING shows exploiting here. IF the devs didn't like the metric (which they flipped on its head BTW) players were achieving then they should "fix" it and move on. Not flip out in a magnificently spastic manner, close down a sector, and roll back people to oblivion.
I agree. There should be no rollbacks or freaking out, just patch it and move on.
I agree -- people will take the easy way out and if one mission is "as expected" giving significantly more xp than all the others people will do that one. I do not have any issue with that, nor with people abusing this relatively harmless* bug.
Level matching does not bother me. Its not a problem. It was not the problem here either, the problem here was a buggy mission that made level matching a wee bit better than was probably intended.
I don't agree there were no signs. When one mission is significantly better than all the rest, its a red flag that something is messed up.
*bugs that allow exploits that mess up the economy irritate me. The ones that let people cheeze to beat a mission or level up or other harmless things do not bother me at all, though I dislike being grouped with exploiters cheating to beat a boss because I like an actual challenge.
Comments
Well, call it fail if you want. But why that ONE specific mission? Why not grind mobs in some other mission? There had to be some mysterious reason for the choice. Something different. Something not quite the same as other places. I wonder what it could be? More fun than the others? No, that's not it. Hmm. Let me think on it for a while.
Honestly as far as exploits go this one was tame and mostly harmless. I really don't care how people level up. That was not even the question. The question is how to tell when doing something is making use of a bug. My answer stands.
that pretty much describes most of the "content" - mindlessly collecting favors on Risa, mindlessly doing CE, mindlessly doing Conduit Elite for the billionth time....
Hardly. :P EvE Online is the only game i know of in which scamming is perfectly legal. It's an ueber 'tough-nose' game!
And banned?!! Hahaha! How many mining bot accounts have you ever seen banned?!
Really?! I kinda like them. I just couldn't stand the 'non-consensual PvP' -- which turned out to be large part of the game. :P
Don't think too long and hard, it might damage something.
The answer is simple and the same no matter the game....it got the best results. Ever had to compete for spawn points in a game? Yeah....well SAME THING....people grouped up and did it because it worked the best. A better question is why would people flock to the 9th best place to grind???
It's not our job to match levels anywhere in the game, we are here to play it. If the dev's actually ever played the game, they would have a greater appreciation for how uneven the gameplay can be at times. The players are not at fault; it is a total fail on Craptic's part. :mad:
Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci
Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
Please tell me another game where you have to stop doing the story quests every other level due to not getting enough exp through story mode.
then they put a pop up telling people to go grind patrols/STF's .... then when people do its an exploit.
And due to the stf lockout, you cant really grind them, gated content is cool isn't it.
And the reason why people don't grind delta rising patrols, is most of us have t12 gear and the shield strength/HP is pretty much double compared to old content, even the stuff that scales to level.
spend 8-15 mins killing a Delta rising patrol for x amount of exp
Or
spend 4-6 mins killing old content patrols for virtually the same exp and better drops. HIHI R+D mats.
this is PWE's mess not the player base.
Right. The rewards were higher than normal (best results). Common sense tells us that when the rewards are significantly higher than expected, it is probably a bug and using it nonstop is probably an exploit. Just like I said to begin with, THAT is how you can TELL if something is an exploit. The two clues are obvious --- doing something ad nauseam & better than usual rewards.
You infer that I care how people level or whether people abused this glitch. I do not. I am just answering the question of how someone should know if what they are doing is intended or not as best I can. That was the question.
I personally am not happy with the lack of missions and the "go grind levels" " content??? " from the expansion. I think that if they ad 10 levels we should be able to earn 10 levels from questing. I think if people found a way to deal with the lack of content, it does not bother me at all.
So what is the currently most rewarding activity in the game so that I can be informed said content is currently bugged and therefore an exploit?
See how stupidly broad and nebulous the description you're parroting is?
The amount of wild variation in xp gain rates from different activities and even specific missions/stfs have been a part of this game for years.
Is queuing for the same 3 or 4 stfs in a circle over and over while hunting for the same dozen or so especially lucrative Doff missions exploiting?
It fits the given definition. SOMETHING will ALWAYS fit the amorphous blob of a description currently being used. There are people claiming they've done literally nothing but new DR quests and otherwise the usual stf/bz/Doff stuff and had points deducted, I mean they CLEARLY had to know what they were doing was an exploit...
Precisely! As I said elsewhere, with that kind of warped reasoning, even playing on Elite is an exploit!
Have you ever fought Tholians? Have you noticed those pathetic mirror ships that often appear from rifts they make? They don't scale either. EVERYONE STOP KILLING THEM! IT'S EXPLOITING!
Perfect World where you had to grind EVERY level because missions would only get you the first 25-40% and even those involved killing dozens or hundreds of enemies. You can probably guess who made that MMO.
Oh thats easy,
leveling up by Doff missions, will take years however it means you only need to log in to the game for 3 mins on each character then you can play something else.
now i have said it watch for the incoming nurf/rollback/ban wave
Ahh yes i forgot about that beautiful game, i should have said AAA western MMO's as i know a lot of Asian MMO's are ultra grindy
Years
There is no definition of higher than normal results, that's totally subjective. Moreover running elite missions with a full group is the EXACT activity you'd expect to get "better than normal" rewards from....RIGHT? Right.....
As for doing the same thing over and over non-stop...well that's called grinding. Gonna ban that next?
Ever help a friend out by going on a mission with them in ANY game that allowed level matching (as in HAS A BUTTON FOR IT)? If so then according to these people you're an "exploiter"...
I never said to stop doing it --- until they put quests in for 50-60, I have zero ethical problems with finding alternative methods to earn the xp. And the mirror ships are not much of a counterexample. The tholians themselves.... easier than they should be? Someone already said it --- 15 min on real leveled up enemy or 5 on bugged enemy. That is all that needed to be said.
Lol have you tried swordsman? It has a built in botting function so you don't have to actually play it, you can just build your character to farm a little area 24-7, and it will even sell your loot for you when your bags are full and more. Its freaking progress quest, but not a joke, they are serious!
You wouldn't get on well in a legal profession.
"Well the laws of physics don't set a limit on what my defendent could claim as a business expense, so that Gold Plated F-22 should be fair game!"
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Actually I'd get on quite well with one (scary thought but true).
We're not talking about the "laws of physics", we're talking about how a game is set up and moreover using the FEATURES it included. Whining about level matching, which there is a button for, is like whining about people being able to FIRE THEIR WEAPONS.
"DAMN PLAYERS are doing damage and leveling up AGAIN pushing that button we made that lets them fire their weapons!!!....EXPLOITERS!!11!!!!!...roll back....
You want to know why I ran it? I ran it because I was bored with New Romulus. I enjoy fighting in space; I did so with the patrol missions. After doing the patrol missions for marks, with three other fleet mates; found it to be fun and, got a couple levels out of it. 4x gw provided absolute control on the incoming waves. 3x torp spread 3, and 1x cannon volley would lay down some serious hurt with the way we were set up.
Went back, actually was able to do a couple episodes in DR without the exp hunting that breaks the story in to semi-coherent, disjointed babble.
The next day, did it again, for marks and another level. And, at that point, since I knew the wave patterns; kept it in mind for other, newer fleet members for if(and when) they needed exp.
Why not DR patrols? Because, like the pve queues, they're nothing but damage sponges and I really do not wish to deal with them.
That clear enough, for ya?
Sarah Knightly - Co-leader; Frontier Explorers - U.S.S. Witchblade
Rias Gremory - Leader; Frontier Marauders - I.K.S. B'ullwinkle
That falls flat. If the rewards were not higher than expected, why did 9/10 the player base do that one mission and no others? Why? Was it more fun? More challenging? Again, when you answer the WHY you will discover that the rewards to effort ratio were wrong.
Grinding is fine. The problem is one mission being more profitable than others for the effort involved -- making it the ONLY one being used to grind. That indicates either a serious design flaw or a bug.
Level matching is usually DOWN. That is, you help a lowbie by having your own level effectively reduced. I have not played a game in years where a high level could power level a lowbie by whacking high level mobs while grouped. But yes, 20 years ago, I did help people that way. And yes, it was sort of an exploit (morally, perhaps) --- however the game developers KNEW we could do that and never changed or removed that feature. It was OK by them. That means not an exploit for those old games since it was known and allowed. Again, modern games do not generally allow this to be a useful way to power level friends.
Which is subjective (versus objective, which is where the physics comes in). If you're doing something that the devs (being dependent on the long and short term health of the game, its systems, and economy) don't want you to do they have the right to stop you. Remember the TOU agreement? I can't imagine that [and haven't seen] ANY active dev fail to refer to it when confronted with a clear, game breaking exploit.
Resets, bans, lock downs, you should have seen PLENTY in your time as a gamer to cue you into how seriously devs take their game. Even if its their bugs/bad decisions that create the situation, they'll still act against those who go too far with it (and before you start whining about how other people have been affected, refer to the larger post around here complaining about a 10 spec point loss while hit with a forced reset. I strongly suspect that there's a separate issue with the "skill invalid" respec glitch [which has been with us for some weeks] that's ALSO causing lost spec points.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
The fact is that the rewards WERE higher than expected doing ELITE missions with a full group means you shouldn't expect that it's an exploit. The rewards for doing an elite patrol (given the insane difficulty of elite STFs now) should be a clear signal that "this is fine and expected"...period. Try again.
No the fact that ONE mission is better than all the others, means that it's the ONE people are going to do. This, again, is fully expected, reasonable, and makes perfect sense. Go fish.
Level matching can be UP or DOWN it doesn't matter which. CoH allowed BOTH and this didn't cause anyone to have histrionic conniption fits and close down neighborhoods.
Nothing, absolutely NOTHING shows exploiting here. IF the devs didn't like the metric (which they flipped on its head BTW) players were achieving then they should "fix" it and move on. Not flip out in a magnificently spastic manner, close down a sector, and roll back people to oblivion.
I don't care why you ran it, how many times etc. Again, given the "go grind" expansion, I am quite proud of you for finding and using an efficient solution to the problem. You are putting words in my mouth -- I have said repeatedly that I don't care that people used this exploit. That was not the question being asked. The question was how to know if you are exploiting. If you want we can debate morality or something, but since I agree with you, it won't be a very lively discussion.
There is NOTHING subjective about a feature of a game, either it's there or it isn't. In this case it is...period. Why are we still talking about it?
What would cue me into how seriously they take their game is to fix this problem prior to it getting off tribble where many, many, MANY people pointed it out....but they didn't. DID they?
I agree. There should be no rollbacks or freaking out, just patch it and move on.
I agree -- people will take the easy way out and if one mission is "as expected" giving significantly more xp than all the others people will do that one. I do not have any issue with that, nor with people abusing this relatively harmless* bug.
Level matching does not bother me. Its not a problem. It was not the problem here either, the problem here was a buggy mission that made level matching a wee bit better than was probably intended.
I don't agree there were no signs. When one mission is significantly better than all the rest, its a red flag that something is messed up.
*bugs that allow exploits that mess up the economy irritate me. The ones that let people cheeze to beat a mission or level up or other harmless things do not bother me at all, though I dislike being grouped with exploiters cheating to beat a boss because I like an actual challenge.
The game just got an explansion where everything changed, how was anyone suppose to know XP was higher.
Now if they had left the STF alone like they should have and just added new content maybe the bugged would not have happen.
From what i can tell people saw the expansion and patch hit and thought this is a great way to level.
Crytpic messed with too many variables in the game how is anyone suppose to really know.
In Sovjet Russia the system exploits YOU!