1. Why did it took them so long to find and fix this exp bug? I don't think it was a bug anyway, since people used this system forever... including devs i suppose, and nobody ever noticed?!
2. Why did they decide to reward dilithium after finishing the specification tab in the first place? I mean seriously, players would have finish it one way or another, some much quicker than others, bringing them in the position to be able to get rewarded, or "exploit" it....
3. What did you expect players to do with those poorly rewarding new missions?
Th thing is that 8k isn't 8k it's 8k*C (Where C represents the number of characters on the account) and a great many of these people likely have upwards of 10 characters, that's 80k, times that by 5 players... 400k... that's a lot of dilithium...
Now imagine if even 100 players were doing that, that's just a drop in the ocean of players of the game yes, but it's enough dilithium to saturate the dil/zen market with dil thus devaluing Zen, at the same time these people could manually devalue Zen with the Zen they've accumulated, the lowest amount of dil payable per Zen is 25 at 8k is 320 Zen which we dil grinders think is great and we might think with the extra amount of Zen people would have to buy to get an amount of dil Cryptic would be over the moon, think of all the extra money they will make from Zen!
If we look at it from the Zen buyer's point of view my 500 Zen they just bought is now worth 12500 dil, that's just over 1.5 days on one toon, under one day with two toons, so what's the point in buying Zen for dil? But this isn't just one person's point of view, this is the point of view of many thousands of people playing the game.
Suddenly that huge income boost becomes a massive income loss for Cryptic and they would have to make an unlimited amount of Zen available at a price or remove the dil exchange, both of which are a problem with potentially getting Zen buyers back into it and the latter is bad for dilithium grinders and the general free to play-ness of the game that Cryptic seems to pride itself on.
1. Why did it took them so long to find and fix this exp bug? I don't think it was a bug anyway, since people used this system forever... including devs i suppose, and nobody ever noticed?!
If you're talking about after it was brought up by the Tribble testers, probably because they didn't think it would be such a huge organized effort on Holodeck. Of course, they have a long, distinguished history of ignoring Tribble testers, so...
2. Why did they decide to reward dilithium after finishing the specification tab in the first place? I mean seriously, players would have finish it one way or another, some much quicker than others, bringing them in the position to be able to get rewarded, or "exploit" it....
Because they don't understand their audience, they don't understand that they've built a grinding game and that players will take those grinding skills to places they never expected.
3. What did you expect players to do with those poorly rewarding new missions?
And the easiest question.
They expected players to buy stuff with real money to compensate.
but there is an 8k dill refinement cap that has been around since the dawn of time pretty much... what is the problem ... no one is dumping any more refined dill into the system than before because of the cap that is in place to keep it constant... unless this dill reward from leveling is indeed in REFINED dillithium with witch at the rate im hearing folks are getting levels i could understand but i doubt it was.
It's Their Dilithium Market, all They have to do is set the High/Low to a range where none of that could happen.
They have no qualms about Nerffing other parts of the game, why would it be any different with the D Exchange?
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
I admit that Cryptic calling them "Cheaters" was uncalled for, but it is good they closed this loophole to keep the economy in balance. A few people flooding the dil market is bad for the many including Cyrptic.
You realize it was never about the EXP, it was more about the Dilithium you were earning
Irrelevant.
I agree with the original poster in this: The leveling method was NOT an exploit. An exploit is, in the broadest definition, an unintended use of game systems or tech to achieve unintended or expected outcomes, especially those that are detrimental to the game experience.
Running Tau Dewa patrol missions is not an unintended use of game systems. You're supposed to play the game!
Running missions in groups is not unintended either. Duh.
Running missions in groups while scaling your level to that of the lowest person in your group is not an exploit. The game client allows you to do that, and it's seen as a positive feature by developers and players alike.
Getting bonus Skill Points from playing this way is not unintended. Or at least players have no way of knowing if it is. If you gain bonus rewards for helping out lower level players, so much the better. It encourages group play, and helping out lower level players.
Was the tuning of rewards off in these systems? It appears so.
Did the players "exploit" the system. No. Not in the sense that gamers commonly think of as exploiting. Did they exploit to take advantage of an optimal strategy? Yes. Did they exploit in the way that people look for obviously unintended flaws in game systems and mechanics to the detriment of the game experience. No. At least not intentionally.
So I agree with the original poster. There was a tuning mistake on Cryptic's end. Players did not know it was erroneous, and they innocently "exploited" that (as far as they knew) intended game experience for their own benefit---something you do every day in a video game.
But this is not an example of "sploiting".
I don't agree with the original poster that Cryptic owes its customers an apology for using the word "exploit", as I believe they were using it in non-pejoratively.
However, I think they should seriously reconsider their wording in future, to avoid giving the impression that they are blaming their customers for the mistakes made on the design side of things.
It would have been easy enough to say, "Players playing patrol mission content are earning more Skill Points than intended in some circumstances. We are temporarily shutting down the Tau Dewa sector while we develop a solution to rebalance rewards earned when running content as a group."
Th thing is that 8k isn't 8k it's 8k*C (Where C represents the number of characters on the account) and a great many of these people likely have upwards of 10 characters, that's 80k, times that by 5 players... 400k... that's a lot of dilithium...
Now imagine if even 100 players were doing that, that's just a drop in the ocean of players of the game yes, but it's enough dilithium to saturate the dil/zen market with dil thus devaluing Zen, at the same time these people could manually devalue Zen with the Zen they've accumulated, the lowest amount of dil payable per Zen is 25 at 8k is 320 Zen which we dil grinders think is great and we might think with the extra amount of Zen people would have to buy to get an amount of dil Cryptic would be over the moon, think of all the extra money they will make from Zen!
If we look at it from the Zen buyer's point of view my 500 Zen they just bought is now worth 12500 dil, that's just over 1.5 days on one toon, under one day with two toons, so what's the point in buying Zen for dil? But this isn't just one person's point of view, this is the point of view of many thousands of people playing the game.
Suddenly that huge income boost becomes a massive income loss for Cryptic and they would have to make an unlimited amount of Zen available at a price or remove the dil exchange, both of which are a problem with potentially getting Zen buyers back into it and the latter is bad for dilithium grinders and the general free to play-ness of the game that Cryptic seems to pride itself on.
Irrelevant. A lot of players have Alts. A lot of players have simply turned to utilizing their time to grind Dilithium through their Alts. Its been a tactic by players since the launch of F2P. For it to suddenly be an issue now?
but there is an 8k dill refinement cap that has been around since the dawn of time pretty much... what is the problem ... no one is dumping any more refined dill into the system than before because of the cap that is in place to keep it constant... unless this dill reward from leveling is indeed in REFINED dillithium with witch at the rate im hearing folks are getting levels i could understand but i doubt it was.
It doesn't matter, the refinement cap is only character wide not ACCOUNT wide, an account can have countless characters.
It wasn't dilithium, it was pride. They were upset that no one likes the new content, no one is doing queues because the payouts suck and don't reward as much SXP as Tau Dewa did. The new content is very hollow, LoR had tons of episodes that were fun and had a lot of diverse ground and space content, this expansion feels more like a season to me... no fun, just endless grind, timegates, and a lot of the same. The cons outweigh the few pros of this expansion and unless they make the playerbase whole they may have done irreparable damage.
now call their players who use intentionally those bugs cheaters.
That's basically the definition of cheating right there...
from the Wiki article on the word
Cheating is the getting of reward for ability by dishonest means or finding an easy way out of an unpleasant situation.
Or would you prefer an "Unsportsmanlike Conduct" penalty? 15 yard penalty on the Players, repeat first down....
Everywhere I look, people are screaming about how bad Cryptic is.
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
Th thing is that 8k isn't 8k it's 8k*C (Where C represents the number of characters on the account) and a great many of these people likely have upwards of 10 characters, that's 80k, times that by 5 players... 400k... that's a lot of dilithium...
Now imagine if even 100 players were doing that, that's just a drop in the ocean of players of the game yes, but it's enough dilithium to saturate the dil/zen market with dil thus devaluing Zen, at the same time these people could manually devalue Zen with the Zen they've accumulated, the lowest amount of dil payable per Zen is 25 at 8k is 320 Zen which we dil grinders think is great and we might think with the extra amount of Zen people would have to buy to get an amount of dil Cryptic would be over the moon, think of all the extra money they will make from Zen!
If we look at it from the Zen buyer's point of view my 500 Zen they just bought is now worth 12500 dil, that's just over 1.5 days on one toon, under one day with two toons, so what's the point in buying Zen for dil? But this isn't just one person's point of view, this is the point of view of many thousands of people playing the game.
Suddenly that huge income boost becomes a massive income loss for Cryptic and they would have to make an unlimited amount of Zen available at a price or remove the dil exchange, both of which are a problem with potentially getting Zen buyers back into it and the latter is bad for dilithium grinders and the general free to play-ness of the game that Cryptic seems to pride itself on.
The problem with this is you have it entirely backwards.
A high supply of Dilithium doesn't devalue Zen, it devalues Dilithium. More Dil is required to get a single Zen under these conditions.
Choking supply and raising demand (with sinks) means people hoard/spend their Dilithium, lowering the amount being offered on the Exchange, forcing the Zen sellers to lower their prices before the market gets traction.
Really, Cryptic's ideal would be for high supply AND high demand, as this creates the most liquidity in the context of players being spread out in their progression (and by extension, need for Dilithium). When you have some players with excess and some in need, the exchange works for all parties.
But when everyone is constantly in need at the same time, Exchange rates drop and the amount of Dilithium you get for buying Zen turns too many people off as you described. This is when consumers exit the market as all forms of input (time OR money) require an excessive investment for the perceived return.
It wasn't dilithium, it was pride. They were upset that no one likes the new content, no one is doing queues because the payouts suck and don't reward as much SXP as Tau Dewa did. The new content is very hollow, LoR had tons of episodes that were fun and had a lot of diverse ground and space content, this expansion feels more like a season to me... no fun, just endless grind, timegates, and a lot of the same. The cons outweigh the few pros of this expansion and unless they make the playerbase whole they may have done irreparable damage.
I disagree. I do think it was about dilithium. How this entire fiasco was handled reeks of panic from some department (i.e. accounting) who doesn't understand the actual game, and started shrieking at the devs. YOU MADE THIS MESS YOU FIX IT NOW!
Not the first time in gaming history it's happened.
I will first say this is not a Rage/I Quit Thread.
I am a very big fan of STO I love the game the story and especially the space combat. But what you have done is nearly unforgivable...
When DR was announced and we were told there would be a level increase and a difficulty increase the vast majority of the Fleet I am in was excited. We drew out plans for the fleet for the upcoming weeks/months to keep our fleet busy. Our general idea was that the first week we would focus on leveling (let's face it if you are good at it you can get a new char to 50 in 2 days) and we knew 10 levels was gonna be cake.
Now you have done what I feel is almost unforgivable in my eyes. You dared to call your players cheaters/exploiters by finding an easy way to powerlevel. The nerve of this is beyond me CRYPTIC and I have no idea what possessed you or the individual to say that.
In MMOs the general public will ALWAYS seek the fastest method for gain in the least amount of time. This is nothing new nor will it change it is the nature of MMOs. Granted you just released your new expansion some people will finish it in a month others in a few days THAT'S A GAME! But calling us exploiters??? What you have done and confirmed with your latest patch notes is give your players a giant middle finger and then #itch-slapped us for good measure.
An Exploit is the use of a game function or functions to gain more out of a given scenario than would normally be available. Grinding a location is not an exploit even if it was a bug causing it not to scale properly this is an unforseen bug in the game itself and they happen all the time.
Here is a proper example of a Exploit. (Not gonna name the title but many of you may know it) in this game there was a method for making massive amounts of in-game currency and here is how you did it. You would go to a shop to sell a vehicle immediately after selling it you would log out your character. This allowed you to get the currency keep the vehicle AND bypass the time gate allowing you to do it over and over without limit. THAT'S AN EXPLOIT! Grinding a mission that has been around for a long time is not especially when it's an oversight on your end CRYPTIC.
Frankly you need to apologize to your players CRYPTIC you owe that much at least even if it's half-#!$ed.
as for what cryptic should do? nothing. your a guest here, its not a right, play it or take that exit door your thinking about based on your first lines of text but do it quietly.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
That's basically the definition of cheating right there...
from the Wiki article on the word
Or would you prefer an "Unsportsmanlike Conduct" penalty? 15 yard penalty on the Players, repeat first down....
Let's not use Wiki, which is a wholly unreliable source of information aside from their references.
Let's use an actual dictionary. Merriam-Webster for example.
Cheat
Verb
: to break a rule or law usually to gain an advantage at something
: to take something from (someone) by lying or breaking a rule
: to prevent (someone) from having something that he or she deserves or was expecting to get
- Any rules or laws broken?
No.
- Anything taken from (someone) by lying or breaking a rule?
No.
- Anyone prevented from having something that he or she deserves or was expecting to get?
Yes, actually. But on Cryptic's end. They set it up so people were legitimately expecting a dilithium reward. Which now has been taken away.
It doesn't matter, the refinement cap is only character wide not ACCOUNT wide, an account can have countless characters.
See my previous post for the maths.
doesnt matter, people have been farming dill on alts for so long now, i know alot of folks with a good 15 + alts who use them just to get more dill, just takes marginly shorter time , we make the 8k cap incredably easy as it with only a few things to do and then we get a ton more ore that gets held to randsom after we hit that cap i can assure you it only sped up the rate by a fairly small margin .
Cryptic is so worried you might actually buy something in the game without using real world cash they will go to drastic measures to nerf anything. It bothers me greatly when bugs, story missions, and everything else benifical to a player. Gets put on hold for months, even years but when a player finds out how to save a extra 25 cents on items by erning a little extra dilithium. Cryptic goes completely ape ****, wakes up every employee at PWI and puts them on the job to nerf iit right away. This is Greed at its worst. I am ashamed to say I play a game made by this company. I truly wish that PWI and Cryptic studios get the same respect and hospitality that they have showed to thier players. Nothing more, Nothing less the same.
Since Cryptic has officially classified this as an exploit, and discussion of exploits is strictly not allowed, I am closing the thread. It may even have to disappear.
Doesn't matter that the exploit was 'fixed'. It's still not open for discussion.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Comments
1. Why did it took them so long to find and fix this exp bug? I don't think it was a bug anyway, since people used this system forever... including devs i suppose, and nobody ever noticed?!
2. Why did they decide to reward dilithium after finishing the specification tab in the first place? I mean seriously, players would have finish it one way or another, some much quicker than others, bringing them in the position to be able to get rewarded, or "exploit" it....
3. What did you expect players to do with those poorly rewarding new missions?
Now imagine if even 100 players were doing that, that's just a drop in the ocean of players of the game yes, but it's enough dilithium to saturate the dil/zen market with dil thus devaluing Zen, at the same time these people could manually devalue Zen with the Zen they've accumulated, the lowest amount of dil payable per Zen is 25 at 8k is 320 Zen which we dil grinders think is great and we might think with the extra amount of Zen people would have to buy to get an amount of dil Cryptic would be over the moon, think of all the extra money they will make from Zen!
If we look at it from the Zen buyer's point of view my 500 Zen they just bought is now worth 12500 dil, that's just over 1.5 days on one toon, under one day with two toons, so what's the point in buying Zen for dil? But this isn't just one person's point of view, this is the point of view of many thousands of people playing the game.
Suddenly that huge income boost becomes a massive income loss for Cryptic and they would have to make an unlimited amount of Zen available at a price or remove the dil exchange, both of which are a problem with potentially getting Zen buyers back into it and the latter is bad for dilithium grinders and the general free to play-ness of the game that Cryptic seems to pride itself on.
If you're talking about after it was brought up by the Tribble testers, probably because they didn't think it would be such a huge organized effort on Holodeck. Of course, they have a long, distinguished history of ignoring Tribble testers, so...
Because they don't understand their audience, they don't understand that they've built a grinding game and that players will take those grinding skills to places they never expected.
And the easiest question.
They expected players to buy stuff with real money to compensate.
They have no qualms about Nerffing other parts of the game, why would it be any different with the D Exchange?
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Irrelevant.
I agree with the original poster in this: The leveling method was NOT an exploit. An exploit is, in the broadest definition, an unintended use of game systems or tech to achieve unintended or expected outcomes, especially those that are detrimental to the game experience.
Running Tau Dewa patrol missions is not an unintended use of game systems. You're supposed to play the game!
Running missions in groups is not unintended either. Duh.
Running missions in groups while scaling your level to that of the lowest person in your group is not an exploit. The game client allows you to do that, and it's seen as a positive feature by developers and players alike.
Getting bonus Skill Points from playing this way is not unintended. Or at least players have no way of knowing if it is. If you gain bonus rewards for helping out lower level players, so much the better. It encourages group play, and helping out lower level players.
Was the tuning of rewards off in these systems? It appears so.
Did the players "exploit" the system. No. Not in the sense that gamers commonly think of as exploiting. Did they exploit to take advantage of an optimal strategy? Yes. Did they exploit in the way that people look for obviously unintended flaws in game systems and mechanics to the detriment of the game experience. No. At least not intentionally.
So I agree with the original poster. There was a tuning mistake on Cryptic's end. Players did not know it was erroneous, and they innocently "exploited" that (as far as they knew) intended game experience for their own benefit---something you do every day in a video game.
But this is not an example of "sploiting".
I don't agree with the original poster that Cryptic owes its customers an apology for using the word "exploit", as I believe they were using it in non-pejoratively.
However, I think they should seriously reconsider their wording in future, to avoid giving the impression that they are blaming their customers for the mistakes made on the design side of things.
It would have been easy enough to say, "Players playing patrol mission content are earning more Skill Points than intended in some circumstances. We are temporarily shutting down the Tau Dewa sector while we develop a solution to rebalance rewards earned when running content as a group."
Irrelevant. A lot of players have Alts. A lot of players have simply turned to utilizing their time to grind Dilithium through their Alts. Its been a tactic by players since the launch of F2P. For it to suddenly be an issue now?
Not buying it.
It doesn't matter, the refinement cap is only character wide not ACCOUNT wide, an account can have countless characters.
See my previous post for the maths.
That's basically the definition of cheating right there...
from the Wiki article on the word
Or would you prefer an "Unsportsmanlike Conduct" penalty? 15 yard penalty on the Players, repeat first down....
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
The problem with this is you have it entirely backwards.
A high supply of Dilithium doesn't devalue Zen, it devalues Dilithium. More Dil is required to get a single Zen under these conditions.
Choking supply and raising demand (with sinks) means people hoard/spend their Dilithium, lowering the amount being offered on the Exchange, forcing the Zen sellers to lower their prices before the market gets traction.
Really, Cryptic's ideal would be for high supply AND high demand, as this creates the most liquidity in the context of players being spread out in their progression (and by extension, need for Dilithium). When you have some players with excess and some in need, the exchange works for all parties.
But when everyone is constantly in need at the same time, Exchange rates drop and the amount of Dilithium you get for buying Zen turns too many people off as you described. This is when consumers exit the market as all forms of input (time OR money) require an excessive investment for the perceived return.
I disagree. I do think it was about dilithium. How this entire fiasco was handled reeks of panic from some department (i.e. accounting) who doesn't understand the actual game, and started shrieking at the devs. YOU MADE THIS MESS YOU FIX IT NOW!
Not the first time in gaming history it's happened.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=17898641&postcount=1
as for what cryptic should do? nothing. your a guest here, its not a right, play it or take that exit door your thinking about based on your first lines of text but do it quietly.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Let's not use Wiki, which is a wholly unreliable source of information aside from their references.
Let's use an actual dictionary. Merriam-Webster for example.
- Any rules or laws broken?
No.
- Anything taken from (someone) by lying or breaking a rule?
No.
- Anyone prevented from having something that he or she deserves or was expecting to get?
Yes, actually. But on Cryptic's end. They set it up so people were legitimately expecting a dilithium reward. Which now has been taken away.
So using your logic, Cryptic are cheaters.
im not far behind you and never got any dill im 60 + 12 in spec points
and i agree with your OP 100%
system Lord Baal is dead
doesnt matter, people have been farming dill on alts for so long now, i know alot of folks with a good 15 + alts who use them just to get more dill, just takes marginly shorter time , we make the 8k cap incredably easy as it with only a few things to do and then we get a ton more ore that gets held to randsom after we hit that cap i can assure you it only sped up the rate by a fairly small margin .
Doesn't matter that the exploit was 'fixed'. It's still not open for discussion.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek