The thing about assumptions is that you have to go back and prove 'em before they're load-bearing. No, of course I don't know what the thresholds are. Yes, of course I'm making assumptions. Could the thresholds be tuned some? Maybe. I don't have the metrics to work with and it's not my decision to make. I'm not that fussed, to be honest.
The Tinfoil Brigade just needs to get some perspective, is all.
The thing about assumptions is that you have to go back and prove 'em before they're load-bearing. No, of course I don't know what the thresholds are. Yes, of course I'm making assumptions. Could the thresholds be tuned some? Maybe. I don't have the metrics to work with and it's not my decision to make. I'm not that fussed, to be honest.
The Tinfoil Brigade just needs to get some perspective, is all.
Yes, tinfoil hats are actually an amplifier for alien mind control.
its broken and Borticuscryptic said via twitter post that he will chekc into it on Monday when he gets to the office. That is no consolation as we are basically up a creek until its fixed. Also, they wont give us what we lost either.
Theoretically, depending on the kind of bug, it MIGHT be possible to recalculate the progression to set it to where it should be. If the bug is in the calculation, then reversing the calculation and redoing it the right way would put us right.
On the other hand, if the bug is in things not registering despite my seeing the bar flash whenever I log into a toon with DOFF assignments completed, the only ways Cryptic can set us right is to do one of two things. One: award a healthy amount of progression. We would be stuck with their estimate for said reward and it would probably never make people happy since there's no transparency into the metrics governing the contest, or what metrics would be used to calculate the make-up reward. Option Two, and probably the easiest: extend the event by 3 days, accounting for the part of Friday that was messed up, Saturday, Sunday, and whatever time on Monday is required to fix it.
I don't know if they would actually DO any of this for us, and while I admit I don't trust for sure that it would be, I am putting that out there in hopes someone will pick up on these ideas and implement them according to the type of bug they find.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
A note to all the naysayers: NOTHING can create the delta that goes from reaching 80+/- % in hours to suddenly only a handful of percentage points over a day outside of intentional buggery or an actual software glitch bug. NOTHING. You wouldn't have a sudden drop-off - you would have a curve or a "ramp-down" angle. Not going suddenly slow out of nowhere.
In my *personal* opinion, progress was too fast and it was slowed down artificially. Likely, we will be told that out quick progress on Thursday was the bug,and our current slow progress is WAI.
Doesn't really matter either way, because at the rate at which the bar is progressing we'll never reach the Tier 3 target. Well lets face it everything since Delta Rising has been about limiting player progression. The constant cuts to experience gain, the introduction to Cool down timers to patrols, the "re-balancing" of experience from certain patrols in the Delta quadrant, months after they went live. I really don't understand Cryptic prejudice against people gaining experience. From what I witnessed on Thursday's progression I'd not be surprised if we'd have hit the T3 target by now. And I think that says it all. Also why the requirements sky rocketed within a matter of hours.
Doesn't really matter either way, because at the rate at which the bar is progressing we'll never reach the Tier 3 target. Well lets face it everything since Delta Rising has been about limiting player progression. The constant cuts to experience gain, the introduction to Cool down timers to patrols, the "re-balancing" of experience from certain patrols in the Delta quadrant, months after they went live. I really don't understand Cryptic prejudice against people gaining experience. From what I witnessed on Thursday's progression I'd not be surprised if we'd have hit the T3 target by now. And I think that says it all. Also why the requirements sky rocketed within a matter of hours.
You're right, which is part of what bugs me when people throw the "tin foil hat' moniker at me...have they not been playing the same game?!?!?
Anyhow, they data mined the frak out of the first time they did a "global" event that was un-managed. (read: not phucked with) and they realized we can kick some serious TRIBBLE when it comes to doff missions as there are no input limitations like there are with fleet inputs and as they tend to be first-come-first-served. they realized they needed to slow this shizzle down in realitme. And they did, much like Druk said.
Lets all be honest though, if everyone in here who's calling BS on the premise of the thread were right, why may I ask would Cryptic hide the number of doff missions/donations/whatever to complete the event?
You can't claim no rigging with that as the elephant in the room.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
...I really don't understand Cryptic prejudice against people gaining experience...
They need to keep you needing so you keep logging in. The longer you are in the more chance they have to convert a sale or two. Quite simple really.
To be honest it's that reasoning and mentality that from my point of view is costing them money. Because I for one flatly refuse to upgrade any of my alts, because of cost and grind involved, Hell my Delta recruit got leveled to 60 via doffing in the end. I'd had my eye on a lot of c store ships for my alts, but because of all of this, I'm not even entertaining the idea of purchasing anything else. Seven out of eight characters have now been reduced to doff mules.
Besides nothing from the C store is going to help players progress faster, with the exception of the XP boosts and for anyone that thinks the XP boosts are worth anything then... well anything I'd like to say would either be against the forum rules or result in me getting a ban. And that's something I'm not prepared to do.
Lets all be honest though, if everyone in here who's calling BS on the premise of the thread were right, why may I ask would Cryptic hide the number of doff missions/donations/whatever to complete the event?
You can't claim no rigging with that as the elephant in the room.
That's not an elephant in the room. It is possibly because you could infer active player numbers from the actual numbers of doff assignments, which is something Cryptic is apparently quite adamant to not show.
I have a feeling that they only want the bar to go as fast or slow as they want despite what the players do.
I am absolutely on board with the first part, they have a goal for themselves how we as a playerbase should fare. Is it hoping in vain to reach our goal? Is it making us achieve something? I don't know. I doubt the latter part. I can easily accept that something was not working as intended and fixed, but I very much doubt the "manual changes to progress for no reason at all". Why?
1) With an XP bonus, Cryptic has nothing to lose. Dil would be a different matter, but still not that much of a dent. But XP? It's what we want, yes, but it doesn't really change any monetized parts of the game if we get that one spec point in a specialization we hardly use a day sooner.
2) Cryptic have run similar events before. So they will have a good outline about (a) how many doff assignments get turned in and (b) how much players will get out of their way to reach some event goal. If they want a certain result, they can set it from the start without any need for manual adjustments.
What I am "naysaying" is not so much that the meter behaved irrationally (although I wonder where the exact number of "20%" comes from) as the notion that there is somebody watching the progress and changing it despite it working as designed, just because players could reach a certain goal they don't want us to reach.
tl;dr: I don't think everything should be attributed to malice when there are other explanations. Not everybody is out to get you.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
As I have stated a few times before, this Event has been made up as a kludge because they do not want to do what they have done every time before leading up to a Season and Expansion rollout. That includes the Delta Rising Expansion. What they have always done is have a very long XP Bonus Event (month or more). Can't do that now because people would be filling up Specs points too quickly.
And to the point of, 'but they have been giving out Spec Points with FEs'. True, but that is one a week and only good for one character.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
What I am "naysaying" is not so much that the meter behaved irrationally (although I wonder where the exact number of "20%" comes from) as the notion that there is somebody watching the progress and changing it despite it working as designed, just because players could reach a certain goal they don't want us to reach.
tl;dr: I don't think everything should be attributed to malice when there are other explanations. Not everybody is out to get you.
Actually, it was a typo on my behalf (I really should stop posting today, nothing is right - but then I'd have to continue clearing out my flat for a renovation...), I meant the "2000%/20x slower" and meddled the numbers up. But since the calculation probably derives from a similar observation/calculation, I got my answer, so thanks.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Are you kidding short assignments is what a lot of players were doing.
Apart from the question how that has any connection to my post you quoted (apart from the misunderstanding about the rules I implemented here, which has already been corrected in this thread): how do you know that "a lot" of players are going for short assignments during the event? (I understand "a lot" in relation to the overall player number) You may do so, people from your fleet may do so, but how many of those gazillions of more casual oriented players would be?
its not a conspiracy theory. I am very observant to my surrounding. What do you think I am a fool or an idiot?
Nobody is doubting your observations. Hardly anybody argues that the progress bar did not behave strangely. What a few people are doubting is your conclusion that something sinister must be going on instead of a bug or something else. And that is a hallmark of conspiracy theories: taking correct observations and inferring crazy stuff from it (okay, quite a few do not take real observations as a basis, but many do).
For the record: I think what you are saying is not in "conspiracy theory" territory, and the wording is somewhat uncalled for. I think, however, that there is no "behind the scenes changing of rules because we are better than expected", and I also think that stating such as a "fact" would need more proof than "I saw A and therefore B is what's happening", when it could also be C.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
They changed it to slow it down or the server issues yesterday caused it to break. I am banking on the first one. It is moving way to darn slow they had to adjust it because thats what they do and every online game does manipulate things. Shady yes, but they do it.
So you mentioned the other possibility (something is broken - or the third: something was not as intended and fixed) but flat out rejected it.
And again: nobody was doubting the behavior of the progress bar. But "It is a fact, I don't need evidence" is not really a good point to make, and how you know that "thousands of people" have the same conclusion is beyond me (and even if true that they did, that would not necessarily mean that they are right. They may well be, and it would mean that it is an easy conclusion to make, but it isn't a fact). Apart from that, the evidence I asked for is for your statement that there was "shady behavior" from Cryptic's side and not just some kind of bug or other mistake.
And another thing: while in this case I am on your side and want to know what was going on here, too,
What would make it break on its own when it was somewhere around 80% to T2 after such a brief time? If it were crashed or broken somehow wouldn't it simply stop moving entirely instead of slowing to a very regular snails pace?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I can't help but thing that some of you seem to be missing the fact that for the first four hours of the event the bar moved at 20% per hour, and then suddenly stopped moving at that rate and switched to 1% per hour, and now 1% per 2-3 hours.
The requirement was altered, right in front of everybody, by a factor of 20x, by 2000%.
This.
It's amazing that some people still deny it even though it's incredibly obvious.
It's as plain as the sun in the sky that the progress was severely altered mid stream. That is not in debate, the only question left is rather it was intentional or a bug of some kind.
It is part of the Temporal Metrics Cold War. A disturbance in the metrics was noted at the Master Metrics Consoles and a Time Dilation was put into effect. What was hours would now seem like days.
The predictive algorithms foresaw that XP Bonuses awarded in the future could be two or three times what they were destined to be. 'Captains' would gain Specialization Points at a much faster rate than the timelines would allow.
Nothing more than corrections to the Temporal Metrics.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
The requirement was altered, right in front of everybody, by a factor of 20x, by 2000%.
It's amazing that some people still deny it even though it's incredibly obvious.
(quotes shortened to get to the point)
Who is denying it? The fact that the progress bar for week 2 started off extremely fast and then got into a crouch is not up to debate, that's a given (except for the exact number change but that's really not the point here). The thing some people don't believe (and I am not denying anything, I'm just not believing it) is that it is also a given that there is malice at work. And that until proven otherwise you should not discount the possibility of bugs or other similar events and make blunt statements about "shady people" or similar. If you say
Comments
The thing about assumptions is that you have to go back and prove 'em before they're load-bearing. No, of course I don't know what the thresholds are. Yes, of course I'm making assumptions. Could the thresholds be tuned some? Maybe. I don't have the metrics to work with and it's not my decision to make. I'm not that fussed, to be honest.
The Tinfoil Brigade just needs to get some perspective, is all.
My character Tsin'xing
Theoretically, depending on the kind of bug, it MIGHT be possible to recalculate the progression to set it to where it should be. If the bug is in the calculation, then reversing the calculation and redoing it the right way would put us right.
On the other hand, if the bug is in things not registering despite my seeing the bar flash whenever I log into a toon with DOFF assignments completed, the only ways Cryptic can set us right is to do one of two things. One: award a healthy amount of progression. We would be stuck with their estimate for said reward and it would probably never make people happy since there's no transparency into the metrics governing the contest, or what metrics would be used to calculate the make-up reward. Option Two, and probably the easiest: extend the event by 3 days, accounting for the part of Friday that was messed up, Saturday, Sunday, and whatever time on Monday is required to fix it.
I don't know if they would actually DO any of this for us, and while I admit I don't trust for sure that it would be, I am putting that out there in hopes someone will pick up on these ideas and implement them according to the type of bug they find.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
In my *personal* opinion, progress was too fast and it was slowed down artificially. Likely, we will be told that out quick progress on Thursday was the bug,and our current slow progress is WAI.
You're right, which is part of what bugs me when people throw the "tin foil hat' moniker at me...have they not been playing the same game?!?!?
Anyhow, they data mined the frak out of the first time they did a "global" event that was un-managed. (read: not phucked with) and they realized we can kick some serious TRIBBLE when it comes to doff missions as there are no input limitations like there are with fleet inputs and as they tend to be first-come-first-served. they realized they needed to slow this shizzle down in realitme. And they did, much like Druk said.
Hence,here we are.
They need to keep you needing so you keep logging in. The longer you are in the more chance they have to convert a sale or two. Quite simple really.
(and yes, I was bored)
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
You can't claim no rigging with that as the elephant in the room.
To be honest it's that reasoning and mentality that from my point of view is costing them money. Because I for one flatly refuse to upgrade any of my alts, because of cost and grind involved, Hell my Delta recruit got leveled to 60 via doffing in the end. I'd had my eye on a lot of c store ships for my alts, but because of all of this, I'm not even entertaining the idea of purchasing anything else. Seven out of eight characters have now been reduced to doff mules.
Besides nothing from the C store is going to help players progress faster, with the exception of the XP boosts and for anyone that thinks the XP boosts are worth anything then... well anything I'd like to say would either be against the forum rules or result in me getting a ban. And that's something I'm not prepared to do.
That's not an elephant in the room. It is possibly because you could infer active player numbers from the actual numbers of doff assignments, which is something Cryptic is apparently quite adamant to not show.
I am absolutely on board with the first part, they have a goal for themselves how we as a playerbase should fare. Is it hoping in vain to reach our goal? Is it making us achieve something? I don't know. I doubt the latter part. I can easily accept that something was not working as intended and fixed, but I very much doubt the "manual changes to progress for no reason at all". Why?
1) With an XP bonus, Cryptic has nothing to lose. Dil would be a different matter, but still not that much of a dent. But XP? It's what we want, yes, but it doesn't really change any monetized parts of the game if we get that one spec point in a specialization we hardly use a day sooner.
2) Cryptic have run similar events before. So they will have a good outline about (a) how many doff assignments get turned in and (b) how much players will get out of their way to reach some event goal. If they want a certain result, they can set it from the start without any need for manual adjustments.
What I am "naysaying" is not so much that the meter behaved irrationally (although I wonder where the exact number of "20%" comes from) as the notion that there is somebody watching the progress and changing it despite it working as designed, just because players could reach a certain goal they don't want us to reach.
tl;dr: I don't think everything should be attributed to malice when there are other explanations. Not everybody is out to get you.
And to the point of, 'but they have been giving out Spec Points with FEs'. True, but that is one a week and only good for one character.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Me too.
This. Very well said.
Apart from the question how that has any connection to my post you quoted (apart from the misunderstanding about the rules I implemented here, which has already been corrected in this thread): how do you know that "a lot" of players are going for short assignments during the event? (I understand "a lot" in relation to the overall player number) You may do so, people from your fleet may do so, but how many of those gazillions of more casual oriented players would be?
Either way,
Nobody is doubting your observations. Hardly anybody argues that the progress bar did not behave strangely. What a few people are doubting is your conclusion that something sinister must be going on instead of a bug or something else. And that is a hallmark of conspiracy theories: taking correct observations and inferring crazy stuff from it (okay, quite a few do not take real observations as a basis, but many do).
For the record: I think what you are saying is not in "conspiracy theory" territory, and the wording is somewhat uncalled for. I think, however, that there is no "behind the scenes changing of rules because we are better than expected", and I also think that stating such as a "fact" would need more proof than "I saw A and therefore B is what's happening", when it could also be C.
So you mentioned the other possibility (something is broken - or the third: something was not as intended and fixed) but flat out rejected it.
And again: nobody was doubting the behavior of the progress bar. But "It is a fact, I don't need evidence" is not really a good point to make, and how you know that "thousands of people" have the same conclusion is beyond me (and even if true that they did, that would not necessarily mean that they are right. They may well be, and it would mean that it is an easy conclusion to make, but it isn't a fact). Apart from that, the evidence I asked for is for your statement that there was "shady behavior" from Cryptic's side and not just some kind of bug or other mistake.
And another thing: while in this case I am on your side and want to know what was going on here, too,
it's always a bit risky to say "we" when you mean "I". You may think everybody feels the same, but it ain't necessarily so.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
This.
It's amazing that some people still deny it even though it's incredibly obvious.
It's as plain as the sun in the sky that the progress was severely altered mid stream. That is not in debate, the only question left is rather it was intentional or a bug of some kind.
My money is definitely on Nerf.
The predictive algorithms foresaw that XP Bonuses awarded in the future could be two or three times what they were destined to be. 'Captains' would gain Specialization Points at a much faster rate than the timelines would allow.
Nothing more than corrections to the Temporal Metrics.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
(quotes shortened to get to the point)
Who is denying it? The fact that the progress bar for week 2 started off extremely fast and then got into a crouch is not up to debate, that's a given (except for the exact number change but that's really not the point here). The thing some people don't believe (and I am not denying anything, I'm just not believing it) is that it is also a given that there is malice at work. And that until proven otherwise you should not discount the possibility of bugs or other similar events and make blunt statements about "shady people" or similar. If you say
that's perfectly fine (to me at least). If you on the other hand pretended to know for a fact that it was a nerf, some people would like a proof.