I suspect that many players actually don't realize what the real exploit in Tau Dewa and the like was.
Sure, everyone teaming up could get lots of skill points. But there was more trickery to it if you wanted to get to the real depth of the exploit. As a hint, without going in the actual details: It wasn't just about some endgame players of practically equal level joining for a fun event of making elite level NPCs explode from firepower and space magic.
Again its the way it always worked. For YEARS I would join lower level toons with friends and we would match team levels. That option had been in game for YEARS and worked the same way. As I have said I KNOW I have even played with devs using that "exploit"... seeing as they never said anything why would I assume it was an exploit. So you got more XP when end game friends helped you level... seemed logical to me and a good way to help people skip some of the grind with alts. As far as I and most people where concerned it was working as intended before delta. If Crytpic wanted to change it before delta it was up to them. Where not supposed to be mind readers.
For them to come out a week later and call me a cheat... Ticked me off to no end. There stupid way of applying punishment was also annoying. I freely admit I teamed with some friends... and when I hit 60 I stuck around and helped out some friends for awhile. When Cryptic "fixed" peoples toons. One of my 6-7 toons that I played got a small role back... and the rest didn't. People that had played 20hr days didn't get touched and some people that hadn't played any patrols at all got roled back. If Cryptic was going to do that they should have taken there time and investigated things properly.
However again this was not an exploit. No teaming with lower level friends to get them higher XP gains was NOT an exploit. For Cryptic to call it one retroactively after it had worked that way for years and they KNEW it did, is horse dung.
"Exploiting" is like realizing that a company is poorly managed, and shorting their stock to make a profit.
It is neither morally wrong or unfair to anyone. It encourages better market practices, it rewards attention and foresight, and it is the point of choosing a proper place to invest your time, money and work.
Expecting players to be mind readers to what the devs' intent is is ludicrous. And the players are neither committing a crime or a moral offense by doing so. They are playing by the rules set forth. Cryptic is entirely responsible for the way their game works, and for the consequences of that.
It's also interesting how everyone rails on and on about the Tau Dewa "exploit" (I honestly have no idea how that worked), but nobody ever talks about the people who were penalized for grinding Kobali Prime. I lost over 20 spec points that I EARNED on Kobali Prime, and nobody ever wanted to talk about what was going on there: because it would be a very tall order to call it an exploit.
It's also interesting how everyone rails on and on about the Tau Dewa "exploit" (I honestly have no idea how that worked), but nobody ever talks about the people who were penalized for grinding Kobali Prime. I lost over 20 spec points that I EARNED on Kobali Prime, and nobody ever wanted to talk about what was going on there: because it would be a very tall order to call it an exploit.
The people that play this game are extremely special snowflakes. It's actually kind of comical to watch the general population of this game/forum freak out of things that literally do not matter at all. At this point, you either have the head on your shoulders to realize to run and run fast or, you really like trek, dont mind abuse/exploitation from the company that runs the game, and will stick around through more 66% finished content being released onto a live server with no reason to rush other than dear leader says so. I truly hope Salami will turn this game around. It's not like I enjoy turning around and bad mouthing a game I've enjoyed for years and put quite a bit of money into, but times change (and so do EP's thankfully).
The problem here was how the knee jerk reaction cause so much collateral damage which in turn, created the cess-pool effect on the forum. For a second, I will entertain the notion that TD was a legit exploit, and by association, all forms of faster exp gain than intended were exploits. There is no way less than 50% of the people logged in day 1 DR didn't know of TD patrols or Argala within there first few hours logged in. Lets say a number of 20% of the total population of STO (including chinese dil and ec bots which represent 40% of the player base alone) was "guilty". There is no physical way they could have parsed log files that fast to accurately find the people that needed to be banned. I think we've all seen the proof of this via our own accounts, or some of our friends who lost skill points for just playing the DR story missions. People were rolled back 53~ to 50. Seriously the most half assed slop job ever.
Bioware specifically told their customers, "We know about Ravagers. Keep doing it and you will be banned." Judging by the punishments given out, only people who CONTINUED exploiting the final chest recieved punishment more severe than a 1 day suspension. They took almost a month to parse their logs and find as many people as they could that they felt deserved punishment. Was it perfect? No. But you won't see any outcry on their forums stating "I was suspended and never even took part in this exploit." The people who got punished KNEW what they did was wrong and had to pay the price. Truth is though, it was worth it.
Looking back at another game I used to play when I was younger, Final Fantasy XI. Late in the games life there was an exploit to triplicate all drops from certain areas of the game or from certain monsters. There was a raid system called "Salvage", where you enter with all of your gear removed and restricted. You gain cells from mobs and chests that unlock attributes and equip slots during the run, so you can have 80-100% of your gear back on by the final boss. However, this exploit allowed you to get 3x the cells you were supposed to, as well as duplicating the actual armor drops from bosses which were meant to be incredibly rare. 6 man groups were capping on drops in less than 3 months. The system was designed to be around for years. It took Square Enix over 2 months of parsing logs to properly ban everyone involved in this exploit. Again, no one bitched that they "shouldn't" have been punished. They knew what they did, and they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Why is it that there are so many vocal complaints about Specgate? Well that's pretty damn easy. Something that was around for years becomes an exploit. And people going on about TD being the fastest in the game. No. Argala was, if you didnt suck. Three person elite argala was the best exp possible. The mobs were equal level at all times, no slaughtering mobs 10 levels under you via level synch to exploit old hp values. Yet people still got rolled back for Argala...and Kobali....and just doing STFs....and doing just Story missions. In other words, reaction was too quick, too much of a sledge hammer where a scalpel was needed, and much like everything else cryptic does, supports the "we can work on this only for x time and no more" mentality cryptic seems to have adopted in the past 6 months. At this point, the only sound advice someone still playing this game can hear is this.
It's also interesting how everyone rails on and on about the Tau Dewa "exploit" (I honestly have no idea how that worked), but nobody ever talks about the people who were penalized for grinding Kobali Prime. I lost over 20 spec points that I EARNED on Kobali Prime, and nobody ever wanted to talk about what was going on there: because it would be a very tall order to call it an exploit.
That's because there was NO exploit in Tau. Its simply how leveling has always worked. You got more points teamed... and high level toons got a bonus for matching and helping out lower level friends. That was INTENDED to work that way and had worked that way since matching was added somewhere around 1 year into the game. Tau was simply the sector where it became known to the masses I guess. Most long time players already knew the mechanics... I spent my time in Delta honestly... my friends have / HAD now, the DPS to more then handle the slightly harder patrols there. The "Tau" Exploit wasn't a tau thing any patrol / content in the game rewarded the same way. Most of the players yelling "exploit exploit" don't seem to understand how the game worked, before Cryptic destroyed all those mechanics when they realized people could power level there junk content. (as we always have)
Comments
Again its the way it always worked. For YEARS I would join lower level toons with friends and we would match team levels. That option had been in game for YEARS and worked the same way. As I have said I KNOW I have even played with devs using that "exploit"... seeing as they never said anything why would I assume it was an exploit. So you got more XP when end game friends helped you level... seemed logical to me and a good way to help people skip some of the grind with alts. As far as I and most people where concerned it was working as intended before delta. If Crytpic wanted to change it before delta it was up to them. Where not supposed to be mind readers.
For them to come out a week later and call me a cheat... Ticked me off to no end. There stupid way of applying punishment was also annoying. I freely admit I teamed with some friends... and when I hit 60 I stuck around and helped out some friends for awhile. When Cryptic "fixed" peoples toons. One of my 6-7 toons that I played got a small role back... and the rest didn't. People that had played 20hr days didn't get touched and some people that hadn't played any patrols at all got roled back. If Cryptic was going to do that they should have taken there time and investigated things properly.
However again this was not an exploit. No teaming with lower level friends to get them higher XP gains was NOT an exploit. For Cryptic to call it one retroactively after it had worked that way for years and they KNEW it did, is horse dung.
Suspensions of 1 to 7 days is a "very" small slap on the wrist for exploiters. Come back and do it again is not a "good" policy.
However, permanent bans might be extreme. Closing the exploit is the better system.
Or a worst one like Cryptic did...closing the exploit, rewarding expoliters but PUNISHING ALL players and NERFING everything...recipe for disaster
It is neither morally wrong or unfair to anyone. It encourages better market practices, it rewards attention and foresight, and it is the point of choosing a proper place to invest your time, money and work.
Expecting players to be mind readers to what the devs' intent is is ludicrous. And the players are neither committing a crime or a moral offense by doing so. They are playing by the rules set forth. Cryptic is entirely responsible for the way their game works, and for the consequences of that.
The people that play this game are extremely special snowflakes. It's actually kind of comical to watch the general population of this game/forum freak out of things that literally do not matter at all. At this point, you either have the head on your shoulders to realize to run and run fast or, you really like trek, dont mind abuse/exploitation from the company that runs the game, and will stick around through more 66% finished content being released onto a live server with no reason to rush other than dear leader says so. I truly hope Salami will turn this game around. It's not like I enjoy turning around and bad mouthing a game I've enjoyed for years and put quite a bit of money into, but times change (and so do EP's thankfully).
The problem here was how the knee jerk reaction cause so much collateral damage which in turn, created the cess-pool effect on the forum. For a second, I will entertain the notion that TD was a legit exploit, and by association, all forms of faster exp gain than intended were exploits. There is no way less than 50% of the people logged in day 1 DR didn't know of TD patrols or Argala within there first few hours logged in. Lets say a number of 20% of the total population of STO (including chinese dil and ec bots which represent 40% of the player base alone) was "guilty". There is no physical way they could have parsed log files that fast to accurately find the people that needed to be banned. I think we've all seen the proof of this via our own accounts, or some of our friends who lost skill points for just playing the DR story missions. People were rolled back 53~ to 50. Seriously the most half assed slop job ever.
Bioware specifically told their customers, "We know about Ravagers. Keep doing it and you will be banned." Judging by the punishments given out, only people who CONTINUED exploiting the final chest recieved punishment more severe than a 1 day suspension. They took almost a month to parse their logs and find as many people as they could that they felt deserved punishment. Was it perfect? No. But you won't see any outcry on their forums stating "I was suspended and never even took part in this exploit." The people who got punished KNEW what they did was wrong and had to pay the price. Truth is though, it was worth it.
Looking back at another game I used to play when I was younger, Final Fantasy XI. Late in the games life there was an exploit to triplicate all drops from certain areas of the game or from certain monsters. There was a raid system called "Salvage", where you enter with all of your gear removed and restricted. You gain cells from mobs and chests that unlock attributes and equip slots during the run, so you can have 80-100% of your gear back on by the final boss. However, this exploit allowed you to get 3x the cells you were supposed to, as well as duplicating the actual armor drops from bosses which were meant to be incredibly rare. 6 man groups were capping on drops in less than 3 months. The system was designed to be around for years. It took Square Enix over 2 months of parsing logs to properly ban everyone involved in this exploit. Again, no one bitched that they "shouldn't" have been punished. They knew what they did, and they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
Why is it that there are so many vocal complaints about Specgate? Well that's pretty damn easy. Something that was around for years becomes an exploit. And people going on about TD being the fastest in the game. No. Argala was, if you didnt suck. Three person elite argala was the best exp possible. The mobs were equal level at all times, no slaughtering mobs 10 levels under you via level synch to exploit old hp values. Yet people still got rolled back for Argala...and Kobali....and just doing STFs....and doing just Story missions. In other words, reaction was too quick, too much of a sledge hammer where a scalpel was needed, and much like everything else cryptic does, supports the "we can work on this only for x time and no more" mentality cryptic seems to have adopted in the past 6 months. At this point, the only sound advice someone still playing this game can hear is this.
That's because there was NO exploit in Tau. Its simply how leveling has always worked. You got more points teamed... and high level toons got a bonus for matching and helping out lower level friends. That was INTENDED to work that way and had worked that way since matching was added somewhere around 1 year into the game. Tau was simply the sector where it became known to the masses I guess. Most long time players already knew the mechanics... I spent my time in Delta honestly... my friends have / HAD now, the DPS to more then handle the slightly harder patrols there. The "Tau" Exploit wasn't a tau thing any patrol / content in the game rewarded the same way. Most of the players yelling "exploit exploit" don't seem to understand how the game worked, before Cryptic destroyed all those mechanics when they realized people could power level there junk content. (as we always have)