The dev team calculated your post/time ratio, and concluded you were going 17x faster than elsewhere; then decided to roll you back to anything over postcount 1. :P
The dev team calculated your post/time ratio, and concluded you were going 17x faster than elsewhere; then decided to roll you back to anything over postcount 1. :P
he should have known his post count was too good to be true.
Thank you for your very thoughtful post. Couldn't agree more.
I can't afford to fully boycott the game, as I've invested too much in it, figuratively and literally (you know, as a loyal paying customer). But being branded an exploiter, I will simply accomodate them, and cheat them out of their paycheck! I had several hundred bucks worth of gear, T6/lockbox ships planned for this month. Ain't happening now. If my word isn't good, then nor is my money.
I have an LTS main account and a month to month sub for experimenting with content and supporting the game. The alt account is more similar to what silver players experience.
And thanks to all who agree with my assessment. I am trying to be objective and reasonable.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
this weeks exploit probably is doffing.
you should know dev team didnt want you to get sp that easy.
they just didnt care about it till we get punished.
+1 vote for it being doffing... I *gasp* have leveled up eight of my toons between 52-54 with doffing alone rather than The Great One's pet project Delta Rising and all it's wonderful "Five Groups of Five Patrols"... oops I mean "high quality story-driving missions".
+1 vote for it being doffing... I *gasp* have leveled up eight of my toons between 52-54 with doffing alone rather than The Great One's pet project Delta Rising and all it's wonderful "Five Groups of Five Patrols"... oops I mean "high quality story-driving missions".
I never got hit with the the general sweep of points.... I have done tau dewa daily for the rom marks never considered i was exploiting the game...
I too would have voted with my feet but decided to check all my skrill transactions and steam purchases for this game... inc 2 lifetime accounts I have invested over $3400 and 4000+ hours of game play since jan 2013.... For that sort of money and commitment i would expect better support and customer service.
I have had fleet mates who are in the awesome DPS build group and when they teamed with me moved the speed of doing a DQ system patrol from 30-40mins down to 5 mins.... They never went near the "system which shall not be named" but because of their prowess and their skill they got slapped down..... sort of reminds me of the start of the Movie the adventures of Baron Munchausen... where the hero is taken outside and shot because he single handedly save the Turkish army against orders from his Turkish bosses...
I know I posted earlier on this thread but all this posting is just getting nowhere. still no response, no return of the stolen time....
Being as i cant afford to walk away from the game i too will be protesting with my wallet... I actually spent the first 2 hours of game play after this sat on the floor in ESD as a protest..... Do you think Admiral Quinn would mind if we had a sit-in......
Being as i cant afford to walk away from the game i too will be protesting with my wallet... I actually spent the first 2 hours of game play after this sat on the floor in ESD as a protest..... Do you think Admiral Quinn would mind if we had a sit-in......
Occupy ESD will have at least as much effect as Occupy Wall Street did.
Actually something that would really hurt the dev's/PWE is a sit in. All that server cost going to waste because no-one's buying stuff from the zen store, but everyone is still playing the game. Their bottom line would take a hit and they would end up being forced to notice the frustrations of the community, even if it is just the vocal minority who got screwed by the decision of D'Angelo and his expected leveling speed metrics. Problem is it would probably just result in PWE closing down STO.
At least then it would allow some other developer to take up the IP with the potential to do something more up to date with it.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
... At least then it would allow some other developer to take up the IP with the potential to do something more up to date with it.
If PWE aren't developing STO: Phase II in the background, five years after STO's original launch, then they're even bigger idiots than His Holiness' retro-nerfing hissy fit exposed them to be.
At least then it would allow some other developer to take up the IP with the potential to do something more up to date with it.
And we would have to wait years for STO 2 to be developed or we would get the same devs that are currently working at Cryptic since they are the only ones that know the system.
There have been more than a few people mentioning that this issue was highlighted on tribble BEFORE delta went live.
To have done nothing before the launch comes across as misplaced confidence that there was sufficient new content for player to level up with at a reasonable pace. To most players at 50 they would consider a reasonable pace to be similar to the previous levelling.
Those same players would also more than likely think that there'd be sufficient content to gain 10 levels off without having to redo patrols and missions umpteen times in addition to the same old stf content.
Simple fact is there isnt enough NEW content to even get you to 51 before the game tells you to grind it out somewhere in the pve queues. Where you find that the xp gain isnt that good either. From what I've seen now there'd not even be enough to get you to 55 if that had been the cap.
Rank 1 of the new rep gives you access to white kit bits, HOWEVER you have to grind all the way up to 58 to actually be able to use them. What kind of idiot comes up with the concept of a reward thats effectively impossible to use for the majority of the time when they might want to be using it?
I went to japori and flew around in circles killing stuff not because I wanted to exploit the system but because I wanted to see some kind of increase in the xp bar. None of my admirals hit 60, by choice, since I was guessing that 55 would be enough to get to 60 off the meagre content. So far I'm on alliances having started at 55 and have yet to hit 58, elite in space despite the bulletspongy combat and advanced ground, as sto's ground combat is pretty dull and uninspiring anyway and I'd like to get past it a bit faster.
How many years have we been at 50 and mk12 has been the highest gear? Most games that introduce a higher level cap actually give quest/mission rewards that are some kind of upgrades. So far it's all be patrols giving the same mk12 junk with no whistles or bells to make it of any use to anyone. Most interesting reward has been a doff but that only boosts ground vs vadwar.
It's a sorry state of affairs that the best xp gains for levelling seem to be the bugged RA's. Fingers might have been justly pointed at folk who abused a system but for a lot of us we were given no viable option if we wanted to play the game and level before the christmas holidays.
this weeks exploit probably is doffing.
you should know dev team didnt want you to get sp that easy.
they just didnt care about it till we get punished.
Nah it's obviously ... earning too much Dilithium during the Dilithium Weekend (everyone with 50k+ Dil is an evil Dino Tagger) ... can't wait for D'Angelos 3rd post ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
I have looked into the claim that some players were not using the exploit maps, but so far every claim I have come across has not held up under data pulls. If anyone still thinks they lost specialization points when they should not have should please file a CS ticket. CS tickets get a tracking number that can ensure we take care of everyone with a concern.
Stephen D’Angelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
Just for the record: I only found out last night I too had been docked specializations. Call me naive, but I didn't bother to check earlier. It never even occured to me I could be docked. I never went to Japori. I didn't team-play at all in Tau Dewa, except for the occassional Tholian red alert. In fact, I don't really care for XP or what level I am at.
On the bright side, I must be a better player than I thought.
Something I still haven't understood is how it harmed anyone that a few people got some serious levels/spec points at the start of the release? How did it harm the casuals who seem so pissed off at these people for something they didn't know about or participate in?
People like ummax, shadowraith and a few others keep saying they deserved it then proudly point out they play casually and have barely scratched lvl 54 14 days after DR release. These people have literally nothing to do with the DPS players, so how or why do they think it impacts them? Their play style, ability and interactions with the game will never bring them in contact with the DPS League players, ever...
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
The development team became aware of a potential leveling exploit on Wednesday morning this week. After initial investigations, we decided to shut down access to the maps that were being used for this power-leveling to perform a deeper investigation.
The investigation uncovered several different bugs in the game that were combining to allow players to level at approximately 17x the rate that players were leveling anywhere else in the game. This was definitely not intended behavior. Fixes for the various bugs went live with the update on Thursday morning, and we opened up the blocked maps.
During the investigation, we pulled data on every players behavior, and then we zeroed in on the players who were gaining levels at unreasonable rates. All of these players were on the maps under investigation. We found that quite a few players dabbled in these maps, but it was really a very small number of players who decided to take advantage of the bugs in excess. In fact, in the end there were around 300 characters (spanning around 250 accounts) that crossed the line from being efficient into taking significant advantage of the bugs. 300 is a very small number from the hundreds of thousands of characters playing.
This raises the question of what an exploit is. Ill loosely define an exploit is any unintended behavior in the game that a player can use to gain significant advantage over others. How does a player know something is unintended? That is definitely open to interpretation and was a huge focus of the discussion in the dev team. In this case, we feel that the difference in leveling speed between playing other content in the game and playing the content that was singled out this week was so large that it is reasonable for players to think this is too good to be something the dev team intended to happen. We find exploits regularly, but it is uncommon to find one that was used to achieve enough of an advantage to require taking action.
Once deciding that there was an exploit, the question is whether action is required or not, which means looking at who dabbled and who took advantage? This was done with an intensive data analysis. In the end, we decided that the vast majority of players were being fairly reasonable in their use of the maps to level, but there was a space in the data between players who gained up to 10 specialization points using the exploit, and those who gained more than 10 specialization points. I decided to make this the cut-off line and anyone who got more than 10 points on those maps had the excess points removed from their characters. For example, a character earning 15 points, 12 of which were on the exploitable maps, would lose 2 specialization points, and a character earning 60 points all of which were on exploitable maps would lose 50 points.
I have looked into the claim that some players were not using the exploit maps, but so far every claim I have come across has not held up under data pulls. If anyone still thinks they lost specialization points when they should not have should please file a CS ticket. CS tickets get a tracking number that can ensure we take care of everyone with a concern.
Im certain that at least some of the players feel they were acting in the right. That errors the dev team makes should be fair game. There are likely some others who feel that I drew the line in the wrong place, either too high or too low. It is challenging to walk the line between protecting the player base that wants the game to be fair, and allowing players to be efficient and game the game. In this case, a judgment was made and the line was drawn in order to protect the integrity of the game for the hundreds of thousands of players who did not and cannot do this going forward. Reviewing the data further, I still feel it was a good place to draw it.
Our communication on this issue was apparently unclear. Ill finish up this afternoon by apologizing for not being more clear about what happened. We normally do not post about actions taken to correct exploits, and I did not expect this correction to require more than a simple post. I was mistaken and I hope this clarifies what happened for those that want a more complete story.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Stephen DAngelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
so.... 17x higher xp than other content in the game
I highly question that you as developer know your game meanwhile.... really
There are missions in this game that reward enough skill points that if you multiply that by 17 you would have easily again 2 level ups with one japori run
On the other side there is the majority of missions (after you nerfed the rewards) where 17xthe skill points wouldnt even be enough to fill one bar of the level
Wherever you devs take your data from... it shows that you have no idea how your own game works.
Was the japori run an exploit?
NO!!
By your defintion its an exploit when it feels too good to be true.
Fact is that it didnt... It felt just alright.
The rewards and progress was about at the same rate that we had prior delta rising so for practically every player on the server the japori runs were expected to be the normal condition while the other mission content was just poorly balanced after the DR release due to reason we up to this point dont know.
Since you as developers dont communicate with us players we have no knowledge of what you intend to be normal. And even today YOUR newly introduced content in some cases give similar rewards like Japori. This leaves us players no other choice than to believe that this is fully intentional and that Japori NEVER WAS AN EXPLOIT.
Fact also is that the gained skill points were almost equaling the rewards that the players knew for years prior delta rising. Yes, they did. The rewards were not unusually high... they were just about the amount that a long term player would expect from this game.
You have been punishing loyal and paying players for mistakes that YOU have done. You have punished players randomly even if they never used the exploit and you have broken the trust with the players.
You call them cheater/exploiters while they only played the game that YOU have created.
The players deserve an apology.
It doesnt matter if you apologize for your overreaction on this matter, if you apologize for having created an absolutely poor balancing which motivated the players to use japori and other methods to compensate game breaking flaws or if you apologize for ignoring the tribble bug reports which actually makes YOU responsible for everything that happened in Tau Dewa.
The players deserve an apology.
The only thing the players are guilty of is the fact that they knew the game better than the developers.
Is that reason to blame them?
NO!
Leveling my characters was roughly 1 story mission = 1 level.
DR is 10+ story missions = 1 level
Then you supplemented that with mirror event and doffing and that was great, fun had by all, no one ran out of stuff to do you simply created alts - which you pay cryptic money for with more slots mind you.
I don't care even remotely how long they think it should take to level, I didn't sign up for any nerfs of nerfs till you can't nerf no more.
Wouldn't the game be great if we only gave them 20 dil for an eSTF that would really promote longevity!!1
I don't care they wanted the content to last longer because all they had the imagination for was copy-pasting our old gear and re-sell it for millions of dil.
I've been patient in the past but that's long gone now.
I expect to see nothing but apologizing, re-rolling and compensation out of the developers for the next 2½ years moving forward as payment for the last 2½ years of wasting our time
Actually, they got nothing on me. Yes, I was at DS9. Yes, I was playing the 'Shutdown' mission, on Elite. I solo-ed, never was in Japori, or patrolling anywhere near Tau Dewa, even. Anything else D'Angelo seems to insinuate is a lie. Like the cake. And I maintain to have been of good faith, and had no reason to suspect that a mission 5x as difficult, also paying out 5x as much, was an exploit. Especially since I haven't looked at XP, ever since I reached VA, a couple of years back.
And I still expect to get my XP back (even though I already grinded my 6 stolen points back).
Yeah, further in my post I also state that I think the code they wrote to take punitive action against the "exploiters" is broken, and it affected a lot more folks than they intended. I also don't think they have any intention of returning any of the xp they took as they don't have to do anything on their end to show they were wrong.
"You were exploiting because we said you were exploiting". That's all they have to do.
Is it right? No. But that's how it's set up.
A few folks who decide to take the time and keep hammering at their "customer service" might, just might get lucky and get their points back just to make them go away, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Yeah, further in my post I also state that I think the code they wrote to take punitive action against the "exploiters" is broken, and it affected a lot more folks than they intended. I also don't think they have any intention of returning any of the xp they took as they don't have to do anything on their end to show they were wrong.
"You were exploiting because we said you were exploiting". That's all they have to do.
Is it right? No. But that's how it's set up.
A few folks who decide to take the time and keep hammering at their "customer service" might, just might get lucky and get their points back just to make them go away, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
And that is why this industry needs regulations - pure and simple....
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
And that is why this industry needs regulations - pure and simple....
I understand why the rule is the way it is, because of the way games are coded there is really no telling what can crop up. Not every player is honest (shocking!) and they can and do lobby for legitimate exploits to be kept on. Or not even exploits, just things that happened that seriously change the way the developers want the game to be played.
One game I was playing had an exploit that allowed level 3 characters to get a flying mount. In and of itself not a bad thing, but lower level characters are meant to run around everywhere and explore the maps, the NPCs, the missions, etc. That's how the game is meant to be played, so they closed the gap, labeled it an exploit, and moved on. (The players that had gotten the mounts were allowed to keep them, btw. No insta-panic that broke the game even more.)
This rule allows the developer to play the parent card when needed, "No, it's broken because I said it is." That saves companies that actually interact with their player base a lot of time. That saves them money and allows them to work on other content and issues.
Sadly, it's open for abuse, which is exactly what happened in this case.
Just like how the few legitimate exploiters and cheaters in games can ruin it for everyone, the same goes for bean counting bureaucrats who decide that they think they know what's best for the game, and push it off on devs to implement.
I understand why the rule is the way it is, because of the way games are coded there is really no telling what can crop up. Not every player is honest (shocking!) and they can and do lobby for legitimate exploits to be kept on. Or not even exploits, just things that happened that seriously change the way the developers want the game to be played.
One game I was playing had an exploit that allowed level 3 characters to get a flying mount. In and of itself not a bad thing, but lower level characters are meant to run around everywhere and explore the maps, the NPCs, the missions, etc. That's how the game is meant to be played, so they closed the gap, labeled it an exploit, and moved on. (The players that had gotten the mounts were allowed to keep them, btw. No insta-panic that broke the game even more.)
This rule allows the developer to play the parent card when needed, "No, it's broken because I said it is." That saves companies that actually interact with their player base a lot of time. That saves them money and allows them to work on other content and issues.
Sadly, it's open for abuse, which is exactly what happened in this case.
Just like how the few legitimate exploiters and cheaters in games can ruin it for everyone, the same goes for bean counting bureaucrats who decide that they think they know what's best for the game, and push it off on devs to implement.
Yes, I think that this helps to show a couple of important principles that I think Cryptic has broken in this case:
First, you might know that in a group of people there are X proportion of cheaters or problems. However, the individual in front of you cannot on that basis alone be know to be a cheater or other problem. In other words, you might need to take some action to close a problem you know X proportion has taken advantage of, but only in a way that is not a punishment to that individual player who may have done something for honest reasons.
Second, for players to feel some sense of permanence within a virtual environment, anything gained (advancement, reward, "physical" object, etc) but be considered "irreversible" in a similar way to a physical object in the real world. For example, if I buy a book, it doesn't just disappear. I might sell it, give it away, lose it on a bus, or have it damaged or destroyed, but it never is "reversed". Similarly, game companies need to not 'reverse' things. They can suspend your access, or in extreme cases ban your access, but reversing anything gained breaks that sense of permanence and creates an environment that is essentially random ("tomorrow, will I log in and find my toon is half the Level of today, in a worse ship, with different equipment?" is a question we don't ask, and only because of this rule).
Simply put, "Group proportionally guilty doesn't equal individual guilt", and "don't break the illusion of virtual permanence and introduce a sense of randomness".
Cryptic's actions have broken both these rules, and nobody - not Cryptic, not its employees and representatives, not the innocent players who were caught in the crossfire, and not the guilty - have won as a result of these actions.
so.... 17x higher xp than other content in the game
I highly question that you as developer know your game meanwhile.... really
There are missions in this game that reward enough skill points that if you multiply that by 17 you would have easily again 2 level ups with one japori run
On the other side there is the majority of missions (after you nerfed the rewards) where 17xthe skill points wouldnt even be enough to fill one bar of the level
Wherever you devs take your data from... it shows that you have no idea how your own game works.
Was the japori run an exploit?
NO!!
By your defintion its an exploit when it feels too good to be true.
Fact is that it didnt... It felt just alright.
The rewards and progress was about at the same rate that we had prior delta rising so for practically every player on the server the japori runs were expected to be the normal condition while the other mission content was just poorly balanced after the DR release due to reason we up to this point dont know.
Since you as developers dont communicate with us players we have no knowledge of what you intend to be normal. And even today YOUR newly introduced content in some cases give similar rewards like Japori. This leaves us players no other choice than to believe that this is fully intentional and that Japori NEVER WAS AN EXPLOIT.
Fact also is that the gained skill points were almost equaling the rewards that the players knew for years prior delta rising. Yes, they did. The rewards were not unusually high... they were just about the amount that a long term player would expect from this game.
You have been punishing loyal and paying players for mistakes that YOU have done. You have punished players randomly even if they never used the exploit and you have broken the trust with the players.
You call them cheater/exploiters while they only played the game that YOU have created.
The players deserve an apology.
It doesnt matter if you apologize for your overreaction on this matter, if you apologize for having created an absolutely poor balancing which motivated the players to use japori and other methods to compensate game breaking flaws or if you apologize for ignoring the tribble bug reports which actually makes YOU responsible for everything that happened in Tau Dewa.
The players deserve an apology.
The only thing the players are guilty of is the fact that they knew the game better than the developers.
Is that reason to blame them?
NO!
I give you in all points right. And in the next patch on Thursday i will look if my 3 chars survive or be deleted. Have a nice day.
Comments
Somehow I wouldn't be surprised!
he should have known his post count was too good to be true.
I have an LTS main account and a month to month sub for experimenting with content and supporting the game. The alt account is more similar to what silver players experience.
And thanks to all who agree with my assessment. I am trying to be objective and reasonable.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Expatriot Might Characters in EXILE
fix bugs when they get reported, not when its convenient to you dev team of baddies.
i didnt exploit anything.
you should know dev team didnt want you to get sp that easy.
they just didnt care about it till we get punished.
this^^^^^^^
system Lord Baal is dead
I bet it's still going to be Argala (despite what ppl say). Watch the upcoming patch notes.
I too would have voted with my feet but decided to check all my skrill transactions and steam purchases for this game... inc 2 lifetime accounts I have invested over $3400 and 4000+ hours of game play since jan 2013.... For that sort of money and commitment i would expect better support and customer service.
I have had fleet mates who are in the awesome DPS build group and when they teamed with me moved the speed of doing a DQ system patrol from 30-40mins down to 5 mins.... They never went near the "system which shall not be named" but because of their prowess and their skill they got slapped down..... sort of reminds me of the start of the Movie the adventures of Baron Munchausen... where the hero is taken outside and shot because he single handedly save the Turkish army against orders from his Turkish bosses...
I know I posted earlier on this thread but all this posting is just getting nowhere. still no response, no return of the stolen time....
Being as i cant afford to walk away from the game i too will be protesting with my wallet... I actually spent the first 2 hours of game play after this sat on the floor in ESD as a protest..... Do you think Admiral Quinn would mind if we had a sit-in......
Occupy ESD will have at least as much effect as Occupy Wall Street did.
you know your right... the floor is for walking on and i don't want to exploit the floor by sitting on it
lol Yeah, they'll just turn it around and say "Oh look our numbers are up, DR is still the best release ever!"
I want to see the "You're cheating!" people screaming bloody murder with a Dyson Ground nerf.
At least then it would allow some other developer to take up the IP with the potential to do something more up to date with it.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
If PWE aren't developing STO: Phase II in the background, five years after STO's original launch, then they're even bigger idiots than His Holiness' retro-nerfing hissy fit exposed them to be.
And we would have to wait years for STO 2 to be developed or we would get the same devs that are currently working at Cryptic since they are the only ones that know the system.
To have done nothing before the launch comes across as misplaced confidence that there was sufficient new content for player to level up with at a reasonable pace. To most players at 50 they would consider a reasonable pace to be similar to the previous levelling.
Those same players would also more than likely think that there'd be sufficient content to gain 10 levels off without having to redo patrols and missions umpteen times in addition to the same old stf content.
Simple fact is there isnt enough NEW content to even get you to 51 before the game tells you to grind it out somewhere in the pve queues. Where you find that the xp gain isnt that good either. From what I've seen now there'd not even be enough to get you to 55 if that had been the cap.
Rank 1 of the new rep gives you access to white kit bits, HOWEVER you have to grind all the way up to 58 to actually be able to use them. What kind of idiot comes up with the concept of a reward thats effectively impossible to use for the majority of the time when they might want to be using it?
I went to japori and flew around in circles killing stuff not because I wanted to exploit the system but because I wanted to see some kind of increase in the xp bar. None of my admirals hit 60, by choice, since I was guessing that 55 would be enough to get to 60 off the meagre content. So far I'm on alliances having started at 55 and have yet to hit 58, elite in space despite the bulletspongy combat and advanced ground, as sto's ground combat is pretty dull and uninspiring anyway and I'd like to get past it a bit faster.
How many years have we been at 50 and mk12 has been the highest gear? Most games that introduce a higher level cap actually give quest/mission rewards that are some kind of upgrades. So far it's all be patrols giving the same mk12 junk with no whistles or bells to make it of any use to anyone. Most interesting reward has been a doff but that only boosts ground vs vadwar.
It's a sorry state of affairs that the best xp gains for levelling seem to be the bugged RA's. Fingers might have been justly pointed at folk who abused a system but for a lot of us we were given no viable option if we wanted to play the game and level before the christmas holidays.
Nah it's obviously ... earning too much Dilithium during the Dilithium Weekend (everyone with 50k+ Dil is an evil Dino Tagger) ... can't wait for D'Angelos 3rd post ...
all they will see is that you are logged on and in game
Just for the record: I only found out last night I too had been docked specializations. Call me naive, but I didn't bother to check earlier. It never even occured to me I could be docked. I never went to Japori. I didn't team-play at all in Tau Dewa, except for the occassional Tholian red alert. In fact, I don't really care for XP or what level I am at.
On the bright side, I must be a better player than I thought.
People like ummax, shadowraith and a few others keep saying they deserved it then proudly point out they play casually and have barely scratched lvl 54 14 days after DR release. These people have literally nothing to do with the DPS players, so how or why do they think it impacts them? Their play style, ability and interactions with the game will never bring them in contact with the DPS League players, ever...
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
so.... 17x higher xp than other content in the game
I highly question that you as developer know your game meanwhile.... really
There are missions in this game that reward enough skill points that if you multiply that by 17 you would have easily again 2 level ups with one japori run
On the other side there is the majority of missions (after you nerfed the rewards) where 17xthe skill points wouldnt even be enough to fill one bar of the level
Wherever you devs take your data from... it shows that you have no idea how your own game works.
Was the japori run an exploit?
NO!!
By your defintion its an exploit when it feels too good to be true.
Fact is that it didnt... It felt just alright.
The rewards and progress was about at the same rate that we had prior delta rising so for practically every player on the server the japori runs were expected to be the normal condition while the other mission content was just poorly balanced after the DR release due to reason we up to this point dont know.
Since you as developers dont communicate with us players we have no knowledge of what you intend to be normal. And even today YOUR newly introduced content in some cases give similar rewards like Japori. This leaves us players no other choice than to believe that this is fully intentional and that Japori NEVER WAS AN EXPLOIT.
Fact also is that the gained skill points were almost equaling the rewards that the players knew for years prior delta rising. Yes, they did. The rewards were not unusually high... they were just about the amount that a long term player would expect from this game.
You have been punishing loyal and paying players for mistakes that YOU have done. You have punished players randomly even if they never used the exploit and you have broken the trust with the players.
You call them cheater/exploiters while they only played the game that YOU have created.
The players deserve an apology.
It doesnt matter if you apologize for your overreaction on this matter, if you apologize for having created an absolutely poor balancing which motivated the players to use japori and other methods to compensate game breaking flaws or if you apologize for ignoring the tribble bug reports which actually makes YOU responsible for everything that happened in Tau Dewa.
The players deserve an apology.
The only thing the players are guilty of is the fact that they knew the game better than the developers.
Is that reason to blame them?
NO!
DR is 10+ story missions = 1 level
Then you supplemented that with mirror event and doffing and that was great, fun had by all, no one ran out of stuff to do you simply created alts - which you pay cryptic money for with more slots mind you.
I don't care even remotely how long they think it should take to level, I didn't sign up for any nerfs of nerfs till you can't nerf no more.
Wouldn't the game be great if we only gave them 20 dil for an eSTF that would really promote longevity!!1
I don't care they wanted the content to last longer because all they had the imagination for was copy-pasting our old gear and re-sell it for millions of dil.
I've been patient in the past but that's long gone now.
I expect to see nothing but apologizing, re-rolling and compensation out of the developers for the next 2½ years moving forward as payment for the last 2½ years of wasting our time
Then we'd be just about even
Yeah, further in my post I also state that I think the code they wrote to take punitive action against the "exploiters" is broken, and it affected a lot more folks than they intended. I also don't think they have any intention of returning any of the xp they took as they don't have to do anything on their end to show they were wrong.
"You were exploiting because we said you were exploiting". That's all they have to do.
Is it right? No. But that's how it's set up.
A few folks who decide to take the time and keep hammering at their "customer service" might, just might get lucky and get their points back just to make them go away, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
And that is why this industry needs regulations - pure and simple....
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
I understand why the rule is the way it is, because of the way games are coded there is really no telling what can crop up. Not every player is honest (shocking!) and they can and do lobby for legitimate exploits to be kept on. Or not even exploits, just things that happened that seriously change the way the developers want the game to be played.
One game I was playing had an exploit that allowed level 3 characters to get a flying mount. In and of itself not a bad thing, but lower level characters are meant to run around everywhere and explore the maps, the NPCs, the missions, etc. That's how the game is meant to be played, so they closed the gap, labeled it an exploit, and moved on. (The players that had gotten the mounts were allowed to keep them, btw. No insta-panic that broke the game even more.)
This rule allows the developer to play the parent card when needed, "No, it's broken because I said it is." That saves companies that actually interact with their player base a lot of time. That saves them money and allows them to work on other content and issues.
Sadly, it's open for abuse, which is exactly what happened in this case.
Just like how the few legitimate exploiters and cheaters in games can ruin it for everyone, the same goes for bean counting bureaucrats who decide that they think they know what's best for the game, and push it off on devs to implement.
Yes, I think that this helps to show a couple of important principles that I think Cryptic has broken in this case:
First, you might know that in a group of people there are X proportion of cheaters or problems. However, the individual in front of you cannot on that basis alone be know to be a cheater or other problem. In other words, you might need to take some action to close a problem you know X proportion has taken advantage of, but only in a way that is not a punishment to that individual player who may have done something for honest reasons.
Second, for players to feel some sense of permanence within a virtual environment, anything gained (advancement, reward, "physical" object, etc) but be considered "irreversible" in a similar way to a physical object in the real world. For example, if I buy a book, it doesn't just disappear. I might sell it, give it away, lose it on a bus, or have it damaged or destroyed, but it never is "reversed". Similarly, game companies need to not 'reverse' things. They can suspend your access, or in extreme cases ban your access, but reversing anything gained breaks that sense of permanence and creates an environment that is essentially random ("tomorrow, will I log in and find my toon is half the Level of today, in a worse ship, with different equipment?" is a question we don't ask, and only because of this rule).
Simply put, "Group proportionally guilty doesn't equal individual guilt", and "don't break the illusion of virtual permanence and introduce a sense of randomness".
Cryptic's actions have broken both these rules, and nobody - not Cryptic, not its employees and representatives, not the innocent players who were caught in the crossfire, and not the guilty - have won as a result of these actions.
I give you in all points right. And in the next patch on Thursday i will look if my 3 chars survive or be deleted. Have a nice day.