Yet, dear Stephen, it ain't an exploit as you or your devs clearly advice between level 51 and 52 that in order to continue further in the story, you (as us players) need to engage other forms/aspects of the game, such as the STF's, patrol missions (which is Japori) and so on. Strangly, that is still advertised between level 51 & 52. All your excuses, explanations are just wind and BLAH BLAH BLAH.
OK, if I have to stay here for a while, your cieling ... looks idious.:D
Lies! I said yesterday that I wouldn't post again until Cryptic commented on the matter...and look what we've had today, right?
The following is totally what happened...I'm sure.
Robert: Alan, so what goofy thing did VD post about today?
Alan: Hrmm, I'm not seeing anything from him.
Robert: What? That's impossible. He's always posting.
Alan: Wait, there's a post from yesterday saying he isn't going to post anymore.
Robert: What? Why? What's going on?
Alan: There appears to be a problem with some of the players in STO.
Robert: Get Emmert on the line.
...moments pass...
Robert: Jack, were you aware that VD's not posting any more on the forums?
Jack: No, I wasn't aware of that.
Alan: There's some problem with STO.
Jack: Oh really? I'll talk to Stephen and get it all sorted out.
Robert: Good, good...let me know when VD's posting again.
Alan: Okay then, about the rest of the business...
Robert: No, nothing more until VD's posting again.
Alan: Okay, you'll talk to Stephen about it Jack?
Jack: Yeah, I'll get Stephen on the line now.
...moments pass...
Jack: Stephen, were you aware that VD's not posting any more on the forums?
Stephen: No, I wasn't aware of that.
Jack: Take care of it.
Alan: Take care of it.
Robert: Take care of it.
Stephen: I'll get right on it.
Be realistic. D'Angelo is already at home soaking in his hot tub and using his ivory backscratcher . He cares n'owt about your replies to him. Nor does his company.
However, for this post to have happened means we are going the right way. Keep the faith, my "vocal minority" brothers and sisters (even though I lost nothing). They are finally starting to take notice.
Cheers!
I can't help but agree with everything said here, despite the fact I thought it was a well written letter that failed to discuss other important topics of late. I also question the "hundreds of thousands" he stated a few times as the number of people playing this game. Ha! Maybe that's how many people are in your database but most of them aren't playing this game anymore. It makes me question his trustworthiness.
Yet, dear Stephen, it ain't an exploit as you or your devs clearly advice between level 51 and 52 that in order to continue further in the story, you (as us players) need to engage other forms/aspects of the game, such as the STF's, patrol missions (which is Japori) and so on. Strangly, that is still advertised between level 51 & 52. All your excuses, explanations are just wind and BLAH BLAH BLAH.
They wanted us to do the patrol missions, just not the patrol missions we were doing.
How is that at 13 points total I was excessive exploiting to warrant losing 2 points while others who have dozens weren't?
This is bs. There is no way, regardless of what I did or didn't do, that I should lose 2 points while others keep their dozens.
It doesn't mesh with what you say.
Please look into this more.
Or don't and watch your community consume itself. Cause it's not gonna take long of others calling me an exploiter because of how YOU labelled me while some actual exploiters aren't called such.
I dont appreciate it one bit - I'm at the point where I will just walk away.
To not only have you call me an exploiter but to have sycophants piling on?
Not sure, haven't had that problem since I stopped running with exploiters and left DPS channel over a year ago, why not ask whoever is left from DPS channel I'm sure some of them know what its like to be bad.
Lies! I said yesterday that I wouldn't post again until Cryptic commented on the matter...and look what we've had today, right?
The following is totally what happened...I'm sure.
Robert: Alan, so what goofy thing did VD post about today?
Alan: Hrmm, I'm not seeing anything from him.
Robert: What? That's impossible. He's always posting.
Alan: Wait, there's a post from yesterday saying he isn't going to post anymore.
Robert: What? Why? What's going on?
Alan: There appears to be a problem with some of the players in STO.
Robert: Get Emmert on the line.
...moments pass...
Robert: Jack, were you aware that VD's not posting any more on the forums?
Jack: No, I wasn't aware of that.
Alan: There's some problem with STO.
Jack: Oh really? I'll talk to Stephen and get it all sorted out.
Robert: Good, good...let me know when VD's posting again.
Alan: Okay then, about the rest of the business...
Robert: No, nothing more until VD's posting again.
Alan: Okay, you'll talk to Stephen about it Jack?
Jack: Yeah, I'll get Stephen on the line now.
...moments pass...
Jack: Stephen, were you aware that VD's not posting any more on the forums?
Stephen: No, I wasn't aware of that.
Jack: Take care of it.
Alan: Take care of it.
Robert: Take care of it.
Stephen: I'll get right on it.
Cause that's totally what happened, right? :P
*gives virus dancer three cookies*
But in all seriousness, it can't have gone down like that, at least one person would have been upset and everyone in your example is polite
I was one of these "Exploiterinos" (grouping Tau Dewa from Hell etc), haven't lost anything ... now please report me ... because guess what after the 20th Spec. Point, I finally realized it's a waste of my time anyway ...
I did. But if I'm already suspicious of you lying, then what makes you think I'm going to believe the end any more than the beginning?
Well the thing is I still can't tell if I'm lying ... still don't know where the Exploit is supposed to kick in ... maybe it was OK to collect 20 Spec Points in Tau Dewa, I dunno ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
Here is my ticket number: #141024-001528
I primarily got my skills points soloing the Argala system on elite and to get the last 3 or 4, I teamed up with a group.
Actually, anyone who did a lot of stuff on elite, and got more than 10 points past 60, could have potentially lost points. The EP didn't really make this part clear: 5x skill points on elite was not intended. 2x was intended, so yesterday they fixed it. Should they have gotten it earlier? Sure. But, they didn't, so they're fixing it now.
Since you got points doing Argala on elite, you were getting quite a bit more xp than intended. Intentional exploit or not, it got adjusted because the devs judged it to be too much. Their game, their choice. Now you can stay or go, your choice. Or stay here and whine. What's done is done.
1. Why did it take until Wednesday to notice this? Some people claim to have reached level 60 on the first day; was that not enough of a warning sign? Furthermore, fast leveling in Tau Dewa was used on Tribble and supposedly reported; how/why was this overlooked?
2. Why did you choose to inconvenience hundreds or thousands of innocent players if you were just going to rollback the gains of those who had gained the most anyway?
3. Why was there not better communication during this whole episode? This post, or one like it, on Wednesday, would have made a *huge* difference in the reaction of the community.
And for the record, I was not involved in the powerleveling, but I was one of the many players inconvenienced by the Taw Dewa shutdown, since I tend to stop off in Beta Thoridar to blast some Klingons every time I pass through on every character I play. (Shooting Klingons never gets old, even if you're a Klingon!)
I'm a paying subscriber and I don't like being inconvenienced. Just saying....
well you are just a troll. Im feeling sorry for you.
I feel sorry for you... I've been following the conv... and tbh, in all my days playing here, i've never seen Iconians troll someone... all he does, it tell you the hard truth, and thing else... Accusing Iconians of being a Troll... meh... low move on your end..
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.
I didn't see anything in the EPs post that mentioned Tau Dewa. Just because it's the new content doesn't mean that it has to be the culprit. Just sayin'.
You're a liar. There is no way you're looking at every claim and determining they were on "those maps".
You're calling me an exploiter when all I did was play the damn game.
And to all the sycophants thanking this guy for bending far more than 300 people over and stealing progress? I hope this happens to you and you get no help
Smfh right now.
Wow, not sure how you get to call the guy a liar. I work in the industry and, frankly, it's not hard to write a script to automate that sort of datamining on their end. So, when someone like the EP on a project says that they have gone over the data, I tend to believe them. As for "playing the damn game" if you were part of the group that was punished for gaining too much exp too quickly, then I'm sorry, but you were doing so by cheating. Deal with it and move on.
First, I'm kinda disappointed, but oh well move on and learn.
Second. I'm lmao at all the players that be like, ERMAHGAWD I LOST SPEC POINTS AND I DIDN'T FARM TAU DEWA. Well guess what, looks like you did. lolzies
As I've said a few times: Nowhere in what the EP said mentioned anything specifically about Tau Dewa.
How is that at 13 points total I was excessive exploiting to warrant losing 2 points while others who have dozens weren't?
This is bs. There is no way, regardless of what I did or didn't do, that I should lose 2 points while others keep their dozens.
It doesn't mesh with what you say.
Please look into this more.
Or don't and watch your community consume itself. Cause it's not gonna take long of others calling me an exploiter because of how YOU labelled me while some actual exploiters aren't called such.
I dont appreciate it one bit - I'm at the point where I will just walk away.
To not only have you call me an exploiter but to have sycophants piling on?
I hope you know what that feels like one day.
File a cs ticket to have it looked into? The link was posted.
You're a liar. There is no way you're looking at every claim and determining they were on "those maps".
You're calling me an exploiter when all I did was play the damn game.
And to all the sycophants thanking this guy for bending far more than 300 people over and stealing progress? I hope this happens to you and you get no help
Smfh right now.
REALLY?!?! Post your ticket whiner... let them review it, if your lucky you'll get them back... if not there's the door.. give them some credit, like your an EXPERT on how TRIBBLE works... and FYI we won't miss you.
I feel sorry for you... I've been following the conv... and tbh, in all my days playing here, i've never seen Iconians troll someone... all he does, it tell you the hard truth, and thing else... Accusing Iconians of being a Troll... meh... low move on your end..
1. Why did it take until Wednesday to notice this? Some people claim to have reached level 60 on the first day; was that not enough of a warning sign?
When I first started playing this game, it took me a little over a week to reach lv 50. That was generally considered slow, LOL. Many told me they had done it in 2 days or so. So, why should have goinng from 50-60 in 2 days suddenly surprise me?!
Nobody is going to admit to exploiting. Nobody is going to admit they were one of the people who were correctly penalized.
I exploited and I was penalized. I only lost 3 points though. Guess I'm lucky that Japori Rising bored me to death after a short while.
Am I upset about this? No. What upsets me was everything else that has led to this Japorigate incident due to Cryptic's negligence and incompetence as a game developer. Do not deflect blame to the players Cryptic when it was your company originally at fault due to ill thought design decisions and poor quality assurance and control. That doesn't mean I expect Cryptic to be 100% perfect, nobody can be, but I expect much more vigilance, professionalism, and commitment from a company who was granted the Star Trek I.P. to work with as an MMO. This release has cost you the respect and trust of many players, who, with this release, are now discouraged from further investments into this product.
You have shot yourselves in the foot with a pulsewave this time around Cryptic, and you're going to have to work harder to regain people's confidence. Players want a game that respects their time and effort invested into it, but you're driving STO in the exact opposite direction.
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
Holy mother of God.
17x the normal rate????????????
That's like 3 levels per patrol mission! They must've been synching with a level 1 or something to get even close to that much XP...and the dil they must've pulled from that...
*shudders*
Glad to hear that you fixed this, EP, that would've blown the game's economy.
Hope the worst of the exploiting scum got permabanned.
UMM, I have tickets 100s of days old that have yet to be responded to. How did yall get on these tickets so quick? I guess they aren't actually dealy with in the order they were received.
Comments
Were you enjoying yourself? Because if the answer is yes.....
Yes. Word for word.
I can't help but agree with everything said here, despite the fact I thought it was a well written letter that failed to discuss other important topics of late. I also question the "hundreds of thousands" he stated a few times as the number of people playing this game. Ha! Maybe that's how many people are in your database but most of them aren't playing this game anymore. It makes me question his trustworthiness.
Firesworn Nation (@rswfire) - https://www.firesworn.com
They wanted us to do the patrol missions, just not the patrol missions we were doing.
What progress ... you didn't care to read till the end, did you ...
... taking a TRIBBLE somewhere isn't progress, so why would I care if anyone decides to flush ...
If the answer is yes, then I'm SOL. If not, I will have to escalate (and get CS to accept a ticket on it first).
I did. But if I'm already suspicious of you lying, then what makes you think I'm going to believe the end any more than the beginning?
plus the fact is if we dont encourage cryptic to talk to us they may just decide to do their own thing and not include the community in it at all.
i have a goal for them to be more intune with the community that makes them grow and profit.
This is bs. There is no way, regardless of what I did or didn't do, that I should lose 2 points while others keep their dozens.
It doesn't mesh with what you say.
Please look into this more.
Or don't and watch your community consume itself. Cause it's not gonna take long of others calling me an exploiter because of how YOU labelled me while some actual exploiters aren't called such.
I dont appreciate it one bit - I'm at the point where I will just walk away.
To not only have you call me an exploiter but to have sycophants piling on?
I hope you know what that feels like one day.
Not sure, haven't had that problem since I stopped running with exploiters and left DPS channel over a year ago, why not ask whoever is left from DPS channel I'm sure some of them know what its like to be bad.
*gives virus dancer three cookies*
But in all seriousness, it can't have gone down like that, at least one person would have been upset and everyone in your example is polite
Honestly hope they scutinize you, thoroughly.
well you are just a troll. Im feeling sorry for you.
Well the thing is I still can't tell if I'm lying ... still don't know where the Exploit is supposed to kick in ... maybe it was OK to collect 20 Spec Points in Tau Dewa, I dunno ...
there was none, the rates just where bugged, you never deserved 5 times more gain for 5-10 times more effort. :P
Actually, anyone who did a lot of stuff on elite, and got more than 10 points past 60, could have potentially lost points. The EP didn't really make this part clear: 5x skill points on elite was not intended. 2x was intended, so yesterday they fixed it. Should they have gotten it earlier? Sure. But, they didn't, so they're fixing it now.
Since you got points doing Argala on elite, you were getting quite a bit more xp than intended. Intentional exploit or not, it got adjusted because the devs judged it to be too much. Their game, their choice. Now you can stay or go, your choice. Or stay here and whine. What's done is done.
2. Why did you choose to inconvenience hundreds or thousands of innocent players if you were just going to rollback the gains of those who had gained the most anyway?
3. Why was there not better communication during this whole episode? This post, or one like it, on Wednesday, would have made a *huge* difference in the reaction of the community.
And for the record, I was not involved in the powerleveling, but I was one of the many players inconvenienced by the Taw Dewa shutdown, since I tend to stop off in Beta Thoridar to blast some Klingons every time I pass through on every character I play. (Shooting Klingons never gets old, even if you're a Klingon!)
I'm a paying subscriber and I don't like being inconvenienced. Just saying....
I feel sorry for you... I've been following the conv... and tbh, in all my days playing here, i've never seen Iconians troll someone... all he does, it tell you the hard truth, and thing else... Accusing Iconians of being a Troll... meh... low move on your end..
I didn't see anything in the EPs post that mentioned Tau Dewa. Just because it's the new content doesn't mean that it has to be the culprit. Just sayin'.
Wow, not sure how you get to call the guy a liar. I work in the industry and, frankly, it's not hard to write a script to automate that sort of datamining on their end. So, when someone like the EP on a project says that they have gone over the data, I tend to believe them. As for "playing the damn game" if you were part of the group that was punished for gaining too much exp too quickly, then I'm sorry, but you were doing so by cheating. Deal with it and move on.
As I've said a few times: Nowhere in what the EP said mentioned anything specifically about Tau Dewa.
File a cs ticket to have it looked into? The link was posted.
Sarah Knightly - Co-leader; Frontier Explorers - U.S.S. Witchblade
Rias Gremory - Leader; Frontier Marauders - I.K.S. B'ullwinkle
REALLY?!?! Post your ticket whiner... let them review it, if your lucky you'll get them back... if not there's the door.. give them some credit, like your an EXPERT on how TRIBBLE works... and FYI we won't miss you.
So there was no way to know, you're "exploiting" ...
you did a low move too. congrats.
When I first started playing this game, it took me a little over a week to reach lv 50. That was generally considered slow, LOL. Many told me they had done it in 2 days or so. So, why should have goinng from 50-60 in 2 days suddenly surprise me?!
Logically, this is where you ask yourself (or others) if what you were doing is actually exploitive behavior.
If you're going to admit you're exploiting, then you should be prepared for Cryptic to investigate your account.
If you still keep your progress you allegedely earned, then hey, maybe what you were doing was not exploitive at all.
If you were not exploiting, then you are fabricating a story that you are/were one of the exploiters singled out. And that is nothing to be proud of.
But you can't prove you were exploiting any more than I can disprove it.
Under their calculations/projections, this is all the average player should be at the moment. Anyone else seeing the pattern yet?
Cheers!
I exploited and I was penalized. I only lost 3 points though. Guess I'm lucky that Japori Rising bored me to death after a short while.
Am I upset about this? No. What upsets me was everything else that has led to this Japorigate incident due to Cryptic's negligence and incompetence as a game developer. Do not deflect blame to the players Cryptic when it was your company originally at fault due to ill thought design decisions and poor quality assurance and control. That doesn't mean I expect Cryptic to be 100% perfect, nobody can be, but I expect much more vigilance, professionalism, and commitment from a company who was granted the Star Trek I.P. to work with as an MMO. This release has cost you the respect and trust of many players, who, with this release, are now discouraged from further investments into this product.
You have shot yourselves in the foot with a pulsewave this time around Cryptic, and you're going to have to work harder to regain people's confidence. Players want a game that respects their time and effort invested into it, but you're driving STO in the exact opposite direction.
Holy mother of God.
17x the normal rate????????????
That's like 3 levels per patrol mission! They must've been synching with a level 1 or something to get even close to that much XP...and the dil they must've pulled from that...
*shudders*
Glad to hear that you fixed this, EP, that would've blown the game's economy.
Hope the worst of the exploiting scum got permabanned.