Was it Cryptic's intention to turn this game into a single player space sim that required a constant connection while allowing restricted multiplayer instances? Because if so, maybe people would rather play the Armada 3 mod for Sins of a Solar Empire instead?
Now Askray is running about the forum shutting down every thread related to this fiasco.
Looks like Cryptic did take a hit with all this nonsense. And theyre hoping to quiet it down so they dont lose anymore.
17x the rate...Not sure if we're talking XP points or the time required to get through Japori on Elite. Cause if its the time then Im going to go ahead and say it wasnt an exploit. Its been like that for as long as the mission has existed.
Everything points to Cryptic clenching their teeth down around the playerbase and taking the Free out of Free to Play.
Two days after all of this nonsense the EP decides its time to speak up? Bull**** this is trying to get out in front of TRIBBLE you brought on yourselves.
Anyone noticed it's his 2nd Post ... oh boy the end is near :P
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.
Conclusion : You're all evil liars ... now pleae GFYS ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
Though to be honest, I remember when STO first launched, leveling to VA took an eternity, enter F2P, they sped it up. Suddenly the masses cried out that it was too fast & too easy in reaching max rank. Now it is the opposite, goes to show you the shift in clientele, that is the game population.
I do remember those nightmare days where just leveling one toon took a very long time in the Pre-PWE era. Am I the only one that is an ancient STO player since BETA? :cool:
I have been here since Beta and did not see that. Leveling to 50 used to take a casual player about 2 to 3 weeks at most playing 2hrs a day. Faster if you put up more hrs...seen people do it at times in a week unless you consider time as exploit.
This is insane what they switched on 10/23 to extremely slow or turtle speed. Why the crimes of the minority should affect the large majority. Would be nice if those 250 accounts get banned or suspended...now they feel like "winners" and those who use the regular way of leveling as losers.
Im just going to say this in the most respectful way i can.
You at Cryptic could have handled this better from the start. while i appreciate you putting forth this post i think your silence spoke more then this post over the last week.
and may i recommend setting all of your workers up with a non Q account so they can speak with us directly the Q account makes it seem like they are hiding from shame or something worse.
if you can start communicating sooner this could have been avoided.
aswell i still think you owe the romulans who missed out on doing their missions an apology.
with all this being said I am sorry to say my faith is fractured with you personally D'angelo and if you want further information feel free to contact me.
To show behind the scenes stuff - the only people with access to Q are the CM team unless this has changed in recent months, and it's use is very very rare. Normally it's done due to another CM coming in and helping moderate the forums. Makes it easier than having 20+ admins roaming around :P
Now Askray is running about the forum shutting down every thread related to this fiasco.
Looks like Cryptic did take a hit with all this nonsense. And theyre hoping to quiet it down so they dont lose anymore.
17x the rate...Not sure if we're talking XP points or the time required to get through Japori on Elite. Cause if its the time then Im going to go ahead and say it wasnt an exploit. Its been like that for as long as the mission has existed.
Everything points to Cryptic clenching their teeth down around the playerbase and taking the Free out of Free to Play.
Two days after all of this nonsense the EP decides its time to speak up? Bull**** this is trying to get out in front of TRIBBLE you brought on yourselves.
I haven't talked to anyone at Cryptic or PWE today. I saw the EP of our game post, making things clear and honestly we don't need 20+ threads related to one thing. That's been that way since the first year STO was in operation. It has zip to do with this current situation but about the way we've run the forums.
Yes, I'm that Askray@Batbayer in game. Yes, I still play. No, I don't care. Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker. Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
What is sad to me... one of the biggest complaints I heard from players about this game for the first 2 years after launch...
This is boring as *$%$ but at least its over fast. People found the content repetitive and tedious more then fun.
Then at some point we got a nice run of feature story missions... something that a previous head even stated would become a monthly type thing at one point.
Just when it seemed Cryptic was starting to learn from there mistakes and make content people wanted to play... and even started hiring proper voice actors ect....
They take 10 steps back and hand us an expansion made up of multiple grind patrols with a few story missions tossed in. In the end we have the equivalent of one of those old 5-6 mission story runs that should have ended up being the monthly or bi monthly standards years ago... mixed wtih 100s of hours of grind content.
The XP perhaps was a bit crazy when people teamed in the wrong ways before this fix. No doubt there was some stuff that that interacted in an odd way. However to reduce XP in general to a point where its simply an unfun grind... its a bad move.
For the first week after delta a lot of my old friends where logging in... they where playing... even thought the content was grindy (talking about delta stuff here not tau), we had fun doing a bunch of delta patrols together... we even teamed up for a few story missions for something to do... a bunch of us unlocked the new Bug Ground STF by running dragon teeth... and even took some time to min max a bunch of ground toons to walk through the E mode Bug hunt. We where having fun... now the grind is painful... and unfun in the extreme. So this weekend I'm out... honestly I will log in for an hour or so total to run my Rich D tickets. (thats right Cryptic I have over 3000 of them... some of us support you even if we are annoyed) If it wasn't a D weekend I wouldn't bother... and I won't be spending any $ nor moving things on the exchange or buying anyones keys or selling them my D either. (In short I won't support the money wheel for awhile... I am not injecting my own $ or helping anyone else do the same)
I hope by next weeks patch you will come to your senses and realize people need to be rewarded at a rate that doesn't make them sigh every time they have to repeat a Story Mission/Patrol/STF... I enjoy playing most of the content the first few times.... feeling I have to do the same stuff 20x a day to get anywhere at all... our friends lists are going to dry back up.
Though to be honest, I remember when STO first launched, leveling to VA took an eternity, enter F2P, they sped it up. Suddenly the masses cried out that it was too fast & too easy in reaching max rank. Now it is the opposite, goes to show you the shift in clientele, that is the game population.
I do remember those nightmare days where just leveling one toon took a very long time in the Pre-PWE era. Am I the only one that is an ancient STO player since BETA? :cool:
Yes, I'm that Askray@Batbayer in game. Yes, I still play. No, I don't care. Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker. Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
Fixing the exploit is one thing but nerfing the xp from valid game play is another.
over simplified example: on normal, mob has 100 hp and xp is 100... on elite, same mob now has 600 hp (6 times more) and xp was 500, now after patch is only 200.
sorry but when the it's 6 times more difficult, not just in hp and shields but resists as well... and you nerf the xp from 5 times down to 2 times... that is a total rip off and not fair or equitable in any way or shape.
either undo the xp nerf or nerf the elite mobs back down to a more reasonable figure that is closer to the xp reward for killing them.
or maybe there is no need for 100 threads on the same topic, when this one has D'Angelo coming out of the proverbial closet with an explanation. :cool:
After most people read Mr. DeAngelo's post, they will start threads about their interpretion about what THEY have read from the post.
It would be nice to know which maps were "exploit maps". I leveled via Elite story missions and STF's. I don't believe those were exploited, but rather simple regular gameplay. I dropped from something like 18 points back down to 10 points, as far as I could go without losing character levels.
For the record, I've playing the 'Shutdown' mission (near DS9), solo, on Elite. I did not team up with anyone, nor used any team-trickery to lower NPC levels (or any other tricks).
Simple question, was solo-ing this map considered 'exploitative'?!
Well that guy is one of the top 15 players in this game.
Who are you again?
Celebrity does not make someone above the rules, no matter how much skill or how many friends they might have. Honest rules are the kind that apply to everyone equally.
LOL you must have been lived in an alternate parallel universe...my recollection was totally different. Where's Q to bring me back to the real world...perhaps this is just a bad Q's nightmare and when I wake up I will have the XP counter the same as it was on 10/22 1159pm :D:D
Celebrity does not make someone above the rules, no matter how much skill or how many friends they might have. Honest rules are the kind that apply to everyone equally.
Mal (if that's who we're talking about; and I think it is) is generally considered the Nr. 1 player of this game. If he goes, best take heed.
how many YEARS should it take us to complete the specialization tree?
It'll take about 3-4 months.
About the same amount of time it will take them to release the next batch of episodes....and another 2 or 3 specialisation trees. You see the pattern yet?
You're saying I was one of these 300 people who crossed the line from efficient to excessive?
Excuse me?
There are people with 3x my points who were somehow MORE efficient than me yet didn't exploit?
I truly hope your game crashes and burns and you lose all rights to Star Trek.
You've just labelled me a cheater when I had 13 points total while other get to keep their dozens?
You're wrong. And by insisting that I'm a cheater you've lost my business permanently.
I truly hope this backfires. I hope you lose as much faith in something you love as I now have.
I hope you look back on this and remember how it was a giant catalyst of your complete failure.
No. I think they took levels away from anyone who did grinding on Elite because the Elite XP was unintended.
Those who leveled at 17x the level intended likely lost more than you did, or were supposed to.
Leveling faster on Elite was unintended. This was a bug.
It appears that grinding a single group of enemies combat on Elite (perhaps with or without level matching) was considered an exploit and received a slap on the wrist.
300 players engaged in more behavior than just grinding on Elite. Between Skillpoint boosters, level matching, grinding, and what would appear to be other undisclosed exploits, they achieved an XP gain 17x what a player on Normal received for the same time investment. These players would seem to have faced a full rollback, a ban, or should expect further action.
I'm kinda creeped out that they went NSA on each and every individual player just to look for something like this.
Eh, they've (MMO companies in general) always done that. Honestly, I expect it - why should they have to rely on inaccurate & biased reports from players, when they have all the hard facts available.
I just wish that companies would release more aggregate data - it was so interesting when Bioware put out all those infographics about how people played the Mass Effect series (like seeing that, for all the gushing about Jennifer Hale's performance as FemShep/all the dislike of BroShep, in reality 80% of players played Bro. Yet another example of the vocal internet minority not representing the playerbase as a whole.)
It'll take about 3-4 months.
About the same amount of time it will take them to release the next batch of episodes....and another 2 or 3 specialisation trees. You see the pattern yet?
So..... normal operating procedure for MMOs since time began?
I have been here since Beta and did not see that. Leveling to 50 used to take a casual player about 2 to 3 weeks at most playing 2hrs a day. Faster if you put up more hrs...seen people do it at times in a week unless you consider time as exploit.
This is insane what they switched on 10/23 to extremely slow or turtle speed. Why the crimes of the minority should affect the large majority. Would be nice if those 250 accounts get banned or suspended...now they feel like "winners" and those who use the regular way of leveling as losers.
This aint right :mad:
Well compared to what it is now, I suppose you could say it was at least a bit fast back then, especially when the most popular spot to farm xp was in the Gamma sector. However; you have to admit, as of now it is way faster to get to VA in a day or so compared to almost a 1/2 month to a month for the average casual player back in the days.
Regarding past 50 ranking, yeah it is now insanity, and wouldn't necessarily labeled them winners and those who have not achieved 60+ losers, nor would I call out a perma banned on those players either, this isn't like the Great Dilithium scandal of the Foundry Files, where theft was at play.
Like everything, just continue to play until they can balance the xp issue out, hopefully within a week. Besides the only real advantage those players may have is only in the PvP arena or in the farming STF department. PvP is pretty much dead in this game, and well as far as the STFs farmville goes, I can see a potential issue, but we're only talking about a small percentage of the player base.
About 95% of the skill I earned was by doing delta quadrant patrols by myself. I teamed with some fleet mates a few times, but most of it was solo. Why was I punished for this?
I really just want to say F this game but the curiosity is killing me. Heres my ticket #141024-001501.
I never set foot in Tau Dewa and only did Argela twice since I had to in order to continue the story line (once as the original mission and the second to gain the xp neccessary to continue the story). So I want to know what I did that qualified as an exploit. Furthemore, At the time of the character wipe I had just achieved Tier 4 Intelligence with NO other points in Pilot or Comanndo, so its not as if I was sitting on 60spec points. Cryptics response should be telling.
Also what hell is with the inability to slot the 10 remaining points that I do have ? Can't repurchase specializations ? Finally, Why the hell did I take two days off at launch to "enjoy" the new content when I should have known this type of stupid TRIBBLE would most certainly happen. Last part is retorical.
Comments
Anyone noticed it's his 2nd Post ... oh boy the end is near :P
Conclusion : You're all evil liars ... now pleae GFYS ...
I have been here since Beta and did not see that. Leveling to 50 used to take a casual player about 2 to 3 weeks at most playing 2hrs a day. Faster if you put up more hrs...seen people do it at times in a week unless you consider time as exploit.
This is insane what they switched on 10/23 to extremely slow or turtle speed. Why the crimes of the minority should affect the large majority. Would be nice if those 250 accounts get banned or suspended...now they feel like "winners" and those who use the regular way of leveling as losers.
This aint right :mad:
To show behind the scenes stuff - the only people with access to Q are the CM team unless this has changed in recent months, and it's use is very very rare. Normally it's done due to another CM coming in and helping moderate the forums. Makes it easier than having 20+ admins roaming around :P
I haven't talked to anyone at Cryptic or PWE today. I saw the EP of our game post, making things clear and honestly we don't need 20+ threads related to one thing. That's been that way since the first year STO was in operation. It has zip to do with this current situation but about the way we've run the forums.
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
Disgusting.
This is boring as *$%$ but at least its over fast. People found the content repetitive and tedious more then fun.
Then at some point we got a nice run of feature story missions... something that a previous head even stated would become a monthly type thing at one point.
Just when it seemed Cryptic was starting to learn from there mistakes and make content people wanted to play... and even started hiring proper voice actors ect....
They take 10 steps back and hand us an expansion made up of multiple grind patrols with a few story missions tossed in. In the end we have the equivalent of one of those old 5-6 mission story runs that should have ended up being the monthly or bi monthly standards years ago... mixed wtih 100s of hours of grind content.
The XP perhaps was a bit crazy when people teamed in the wrong ways before this fix. No doubt there was some stuff that that interacted in an odd way. However to reduce XP in general to a point where its simply an unfun grind... its a bad move.
For the first week after delta a lot of my old friends where logging in... they where playing... even thought the content was grindy (talking about delta stuff here not tau), we had fun doing a bunch of delta patrols together... we even teamed up for a few story missions for something to do... a bunch of us unlocked the new Bug Ground STF by running dragon teeth... and even took some time to min max a bunch of ground toons to walk through the E mode Bug hunt. We where having fun... now the grind is painful... and unfun in the extreme. So this weekend I'm out... honestly I will log in for an hour or so total to run my Rich D tickets. (thats right Cryptic I have over 3000 of them... some of us support you even if we are annoyed) If it wasn't a D weekend I wouldn't bother... and I won't be spending any $ nor moving things on the exchange or buying anyones keys or selling them my D either. (In short I won't support the money wheel for awhile... I am not injecting my own $ or helping anyone else do the same)
I hope by next weeks patch you will come to your senses and realize people need to be rewarded at a rate that doesn't make them sigh every time they have to repeat a Story Mission/Patrol/STF... I enjoy playing most of the content the first few times.... feeling I have to do the same stuff 20x a day to get anywhere at all... our friends lists are going to dry back up.
I lost 2 points of my 13.
You're saying I was one of these 300 people who crossed the line from efficient to excessive?
Excuse me?
There are people with 3x my points who were somehow MORE efficient than me yet didn't exploit?
I truly hope your game crashes and burns and you lose all rights to Star Trek.
You've just labelled me a cheater when I had 13 points total while other get to keep their dozens?
You're wrong. And by insisting that I'm a cheater you've lost my business permanently.
I truly hope this backfires. I hope you lose as much faith in something you love as I now have.
I hope you look back on this and remember how it was a giant catalyst of your complete failure.
I remember as well, been here since beta myself.
http://support.arcgames.com or you can e-mail customerservice@perfectworld.com however it may be a lot slower as it needs to be funneled properly.
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
over simplified example: on normal, mob has 100 hp and xp is 100... on elite, same mob now has 600 hp (6 times more) and xp was 500, now after patch is only 200.
sorry but when the it's 6 times more difficult, not just in hp and shields but resists as well... and you nerf the xp from 5 times down to 2 times... that is a total rip off and not fair or equitable in any way or shape.
either undo the xp nerf or nerf the elite mobs back down to a more reasonable figure that is closer to the xp reward for killing them.
After most people read Mr. DeAngelo's post, they will start threads about their interpretion about what THEY have read from the post.
And that means something??? Since ya know that is totally provable :rolleyes:
WHAT could possibly be your thinking behind a SEVENTY PERCENT nerf in experience gained from npc kills in elite difficulty?
WHY does elite difficulty exist when you can earn XP at quadrupedal the rate on normal, for the same time investment as if you played elite?
is a nerf to normal difficulty XP next?
how many YEARS should it take us to complete the specialization tree?
do you honestly think anyone is going to keep playing if you don't revert just about everything you changed?
Simple question, was solo-ing this map considered 'exploitative'?!
Celebrity does not make someone above the rules, no matter how much skill or how many friends they might have. Honest rules are the kind that apply to everyone equally.
Thanks for the Info...
Much Appreciated...
Askray... Please make this thread Stick
LOL you must have been lived in an alternate parallel universe...my recollection was totally different. Where's Q to bring me back to the real world...perhaps this is just a bad Q's nightmare and when I wake up I will have the XP counter the same as it was on 10/22 1159pm
Mal (if that's who we're talking about; and I think it is) is generally considered the Nr. 1 player of this game. If he goes, best take heed.
Thank you for this.
About the same amount of time it will take them to release the next batch of episodes....and another 2 or 3 specialisation trees. You see the pattern yet?
Cheers!
No. I think they took levels away from anyone who did grinding on Elite because the Elite XP was unintended.
Those who leveled at 17x the level intended likely lost more than you did, or were supposed to.
Leveling faster on Elite was unintended. This was a bug.
It appears that grinding a single group of enemies combat on Elite (perhaps with or without level matching) was considered an exploit and received a slap on the wrist.
300 players engaged in more behavior than just grinding on Elite. Between Skillpoint boosters, level matching, grinding, and what would appear to be other undisclosed exploits, they achieved an XP gain 17x what a player on Normal received for the same time investment. These players would seem to have faced a full rollback, a ban, or should expect further action.
Eh, they've (MMO companies in general) always done that. Honestly, I expect it - why should they have to rely on inaccurate & biased reports from players, when they have all the hard facts available.
I just wish that companies would release more aggregate data - it was so interesting when Bioware put out all those infographics about how people played the Mass Effect series (like seeing that, for all the gushing about Jennifer Hale's performance as FemShep/all the dislike of BroShep, in reality 80% of players played Bro. Yet another example of the vocal internet minority not representing the playerbase as a whole.)
So..... normal operating procedure for MMOs since time began?
Well compared to what it is now, I suppose you could say it was at least a bit fast back then, especially when the most popular spot to farm xp was in the Gamma sector. However; you have to admit, as of now it is way faster to get to VA in a day or so compared to almost a 1/2 month to a month for the average casual player back in the days.
Regarding past 50 ranking, yeah it is now insanity, and wouldn't necessarily labeled them winners and those who have not achieved 60+ losers, nor would I call out a perma banned on those players either, this isn't like the Great Dilithium scandal of the Foundry Files, where theft was at play.
Like everything, just continue to play until they can balance the xp issue out, hopefully within a week. Besides the only real advantage those players may have is only in the PvP arena or in the farming STF department. PvP is pretty much dead in this game, and well as far as the STFs farmville goes, I can see a potential issue, but we're only talking about a small percentage of the player base.
So please leave.
I never set foot in Tau Dewa and only did Argela twice since I had to in order to continue the story line (once as the original mission and the second to gain the xp neccessary to continue the story). So I want to know what I did that qualified as an exploit. Furthemore, At the time of the character wipe I had just achieved Tier 4 Intelligence with NO other points in Pilot or Comanndo, so its not as if I was sitting on 60spec points. Cryptics response should be telling.
Also what hell is with the inability to slot the 10 remaining points that I do have ? Can't repurchase specializations ? Finally, Why the hell did I take two days off at launch to "enjoy" the new content when I should have known this type of stupid TRIBBLE would most certainly happen. Last part is retorical.
cry more. please. it's hilarious.