I've said it before in other threads about this, but the dil issue is a red herring.
There are plenty of other ways to get far more dil than what people were getting from max specialisation grinding. Even if you have lots of chars. They have even made it easier for you to get max dil from multiple chars by allowing the rich mining claims to be account bound rather than char bound. Also, if you are f2p, just go to dyson and grind there with your multiple chars. You make loads of dil, but you're still bound to 8k (9k vet) per day.
I bet you tau dewa xp from elite team patrols will give you less SP since this patch, no matter how they word it. Yes on solo play you will receive approx a 12.5% boost in SP and it should make levelling to 60 easier. But the idea is to timegate the players, especially with the spec points after 60.
They can't have people skipping the grind. It's the only thing that keeps your mind off the actual content (or lack thereof) .
People are starting to report that a load of their spec points have been rolled back.
Yeah, it was clearly the dil issue....
So PWE is removing spec points from everyone just cuz? Even I don't think they've devolved that far. I think it's a bug, probably caused by their attempted "exploit" fix, but not a deliberate vindictive or corrective move on their part.
Sounds more like a variation of the skills bug that resulted in the server being shut down recently.
There has been no official word on the reason for the Tau Dawa take down, anything else is purely speculation.
Umm, the patch note CONFIRM the reason for the Tau Dewa take down... They explicitly mention the removal of dil rewards for post 110 which would only be as a result of running Dewa patrols in it's previous state owing to a bg with the patrols Cryptic have fixed.. Or rather they deemed what a small number of players were doing an exploit.
As for your bit about the skills.. yes, deffo a similar bug, possibly caused by changing things after realizing the problem...
They are a gaming company. They should know their demographic at least.
Oh gee, a dil reward for this.
Guess what, gamers are going to find a way to hit "this" as much as they can.
You don't need a freaking crystal ball to know how gamers play. The fact that they didn't see this is, in fact, a fail on their part, not the community for doing what they do. This is basic gaming. The entire game is built around grinding, this community KNOWS how to grind, and knows how to find the best way to grind effectively.
If they had a working testing system in place, they would have caught it.
Sorry, this is on them.
^^^
Yep, Cryptic DATAMINE's everything the players do. If Gekko and his team of STO Devs had no idea that what occurred was a good possibility BEFORE they released DR Live -- it's because Gekko's more concerned with meeting and partying, and getting Star Trek actors to officiate at his wedding vow renewal renewal ceremony at the Star Trek Vegas Conventions then developing/expanding STO.
he didn't need to be omniscient; he just needed to know how to read an STO datamined spreadsheet on a game he's supposedly been working on for the past 5 years of his career.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Yeah it had nothing to do with the bug that was causing the NPC's to spawn at lower weaker levels which made farming them easy.
Sorry dude, but that's a strawman argument. This was a perfectly acceptable mechanic 2 weeks ago. All that happened is that cryptic screwed up and their players (experts in grinding) found the best way to grind.
For the moment, I am standing by my assertion that this is all about timegating the playerbase.
Umm, the patch note CONFIRM the reason for the Tau Dewa take down... They explicitly mention the removal of dil rewards for post 110 which would only be as a result of running Dewa patrols in it's previous state owing to a bg with the patrols Cryptic have fixed.. Or rather they deemed what a small number of players were doing an exploit.
As for your bit about the skills.. yes, deffo a similar bug, possibly caused by changing things after realizing the problem...
No they don't. They say that Dilithium for skill points after 60 have been removed.
Sorry dude, but that's a strawman argument. This was a perfectly acceptable mechanic 2 weeks ago. All that happened is that cryptic screwed up and their players (experts in grinding) found the best way to grind.
For the moment, I am standing by my assertion that this is all about timegating the playerbase.
Cheers!
Incorrect usage of term. Five points from Hufflepuff.
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'd say that it was mostly about the dilithium. Anytime there is an exploit that features dilithium, they have to do something to correct it.
Remember guys that Dilithium is supposed to be rewarded for your efforts based on how much time you spent doing them.
They attached a high sum of dilithium at the end of the specialization level process probably because they initially didn't figure people would be purposely level up just to get the dilithium. Oh how wrong they were.
Now because of the few that did this, cryptic has to take away a reward that was supposed to be a reward for the effort of going through and maxing out the specialization system, something that they designed to take a while. Cryptic had good intentions, but they forget to remember that exploiters will find anyway to get ahead.
I can't see what difference there is with any of they changes they making you can still choose to match levels in your group so they are still going to spawn at level 50 if the lowest member in your group is level 50 which is what people were doing before.
Becaues the level 50s were still giving out level 60 exp to the level 60 players essentially
Has it been mentioned that Tau Dewa, and pretty much all the 51+ ship combat for that matter, is just ridiculously boring? Jacking up the HP on a patrol so it takes 10 minutes to chip away at the first couple of waves is just tedious.
Fine, they want to match the level to avoid farming, but giving the smallest ships in a faction 350K HP isn't exactly the best way to go about it.
I've said it before in other threads about this, but the dil issue is a red herring.
There are plenty of other ways to get far more dil than what people were getting from max specialisation grinding.
I think the larger issue is that a very small group of players figured out a variation on this that is faster than what you were aware of or may have done. This strategy included them buying XP boosters (which is why XP boosters temporarily had to be nerfed) and likely involved a way to bypass the standard dilithium cap.
The fallacy in most of the player outrage is in assuming that nobody was doing anything worse than you were doing or that those people were interested in playing the game/leveling or the reasons why you did what you did.
I can see right now how those other players likely bypassed the dilithium refinement cap and likely earned dilithium at a rate far greater than you think they did.
In fact, I can think of a few potential loopholes still out there.
While I'm sure what you may have done fell outside Cryptic's design goals and was perceived as a threat to their monetization model, you likely did not see the extent of this.
I did not set foot in Tau Dewa. I have not communicated with the more serious exploiters. But I can see ways to take this further and if these people were buying XP boosts on the C-Store to fuel progress (which they clearly were due to the temporary nerf) and this was cost effective for them to do on many alts, you should at least be able to appreciate that they had a means of taking this much, much further than you did.
I think the larger issue is that a very small group of players figured out a variation on this that is faster than what you were aware of or may have done. This strategy included them buying XP boosters (which is why XP boosters temporarily had to be nerfed) and likely involved a way to bypass the standard dilithium cap.
And let's, for argument's sake, assume they did indeed use XP booster packs, then, in what universe is that an exploit!? Those packs are BOUGHT for the *exact* purpose of boosting your XP!
Seriously, I'm getting sick of Cryptic branding everything an exploit, up and including using Zen items that are blatantly sold for the precise reason ppl use them for! This is getting insane.
And let's, for argument's sake, assume they did indeed use XP booster packs, then, in what universe is that an exploit!? Those packs are BOUGHT for the *exact* purpose of boosting your XP!
Seriously, I'm getting sick of Cryptic branding everything an exploit, up and including using Zen items that are blatantly sold for the precise reason ppl use them for! This is getting insane.
I'm pretty sure he's implying that they were using the XP packs for something other than the intended purpose, that they allowed them to bypass the dil refining cap somehow. I have no idea how or if that's possible - it certainly does seem from their one public statement and pointed silence since that the rolled back levels people are complaining about was an intentional response to the power-levelling as opposed to any more sinister exploit though, albeit a pretty huge overreaction if so.
I'm pretty sure he's implying that they were using the XP packs for something other than the intended purpose, that they allowed them to bypass the dil refining cap somehow. I have no idea how or if that's possible - it certainly does seem from their one public statement and pointed silence since that the rolled back levels people are complaining about was an intentional response to the power-levelling as opposed to any more sinister exploit though, albeit a pretty huge overreaction if so.
Bypassing the daily refining limit with an XP booster pack, sounds like a neat trick. But that sounds close to impossible. Yet I understand where's coming from: denial. No, seriously, he probably can't fathom why using an XP booster pack, all by itself, pack could possibly be deemed exploitive. Nor can I, for that matter.
Bypassing the daily refining limit with an XP booster pack, sounds like a neat trick. But that sounds close to impossible. Yet I understand where's coming from: denial. No, seriously, he probably can't fathom why using an XP booster pack, all by itself, pack could possibly be deemed exploitive. Nor can I, for that matter.
to me sounds like a tin foil hat theory xp booster to bypass refinement daily cap...........
Well for starters devs are good at hitting things with the nerf bat in any game ... now then since I can't make post cause their bad at coming up with things why is it the GM's are bad at this game and can't do simple things
Well for starters devs are good at hitting things with the nerf bat in any game ... now then since I can't make post cause their bad at coming up with things why is it the GM's are bad at this game and can't do simple things
Because there are no in-game GMs, for one. Still boggles me.
I think the larger issue is that a very small group of players figured out a variation on this that is faster than what you were aware of or may have done. This strategy included them buying XP boosters (which is why XP boosters temporarily had to be nerfed) and likely involved a way to bypass the standard dilithium cap.
Ok,
That is a plausible scenario. But please explain why so many (and there has been a shed load of people) have had Spec points taken off them if this was all about a "very small group" exploiting dil?
The perceived solution they have rolled out does not match your hypothesis.
Bypassing the daily refining limit with an XP booster pack, sounds like a neat trick. But that sounds close to impossible. Yet I understand where's coming from: denial. No, seriously, he probably can't fathom why using an XP booster pack, all by itself, pack could possibly be deemed exploitive. Nor can I, for that matter.
Without any hard specifics...
I'm NOT saying the XP pack is what allowed the limit bypass although I think I can identify how a limit bypass would come into play.
I am saying that I think an organized operation kicked in, employing a combination of unintended game mechanics to multiplicative effect, likely with the intent of amassing personal economic power or on behalf of a resale operation.
I want to point out: Those XP bonuses max out at 1k XP and sell for 200 ZEN.
At 60, it is around 50k XP per level.
A single level's worth of use would cost $10 ordinarily for an extra 5k XP.
Unless... Unless you have a single source of XP that grands more than 5000 skillpoints at once, in which case you would get additional benefit from the XP booster, I believe.
200 ZEN is 31,200 dilithium or so.
Basically, after running the math here, for the skillpoint boosters to be useful in a cost effective way, one of four things would need to be the case:
1) You are earning 10 levels worth of skillpoints from a single kill or turn-in and this turn-in is boosted. That would generate the dilithium necessary to convert and break even on the boosters.
2) You have an insane amount of energy credits which you are attempting to convert into another form like dilithium and are buying XP boosters on the exchange. Implication: botting. Because this should be inefficient use of a conscious player's time.
3) You are reselling the product of the dilithium in some way for real money, at a rate that exceeds dilithium exchange rate. (Ie. a botting or sweatshop operation that involved lockbox opening and Lobi transfer.)
4) The system is being used to launder money/points from compromised credit cards and/or accounts.
None of these would be good things. But you have to consider why the skillpoint booster was temporarily nerfed in there.
I'm NOT saying the XP pack is what allowed the limit bypass although I think I can identify how a limit bypass would come into play.
I am saying that I think an organized operation kicked in, employing a combination of unintended game mechanics to multiplicative effect, likely with the intent of amassing personal economic power or on behalf of a resale operation.
I want to point out: Those XP bonuses max out at 1k XP and sell for 200 ZEN.
At 60, it is around 50k XP per level.
A single level's worth of use would cost $10 ordinarily for an extra 5k XP.
Unless... Unless you have a single source of XP that grands more than 5000 skillpoints at once, in which case you would get additional benefit from the XP booster, I believe.
200 ZEN is 31,200 dilithium or so.
Basically, after running the math here, for the skillpoint boosters to be useful in a cost effective way, one of four things would need to be the case:
1) You are earning 10 levels worth of skillpoints from a single kill or turn-in and this turn-in is boosted. That would generate the dilithium necessary to convert and break even on the boosters.
2) You have an insane amount of energy credits which you are attempting to convert into another form like dilithium and are buying XP boosters on the exchange. Implication: botting. Because this should be inefficient use of a conscious player's time.
3) You are reselling the product of the dilithium in some way for real money, at a rate that exceeds dilithium exchange rate. (Ie. a botting or sweatshop operation that involved lockbox opening and Lobi transfer.)
4) The system is being used to launder money/points from compromised credit cards and/or accounts.
None of these would be good things. But you have to consider why the skillpoint booster was temporarily nerfed in there.
That is a plausible scenario. But please explain why so many (and there has been a shed load of people) have had Spec points taken off them if this was all about a "very small group" exploiting dil?
The perceived solution they have rolled out does not match your hypothesis.
Cheers!
If they said the problem was tau dewa (they did) and people who never went to tau dewa got hit, then just maybe the problem is a bug in whatever tool they used to determine guilt.
We are talking about the same cryptic here right? Like the "oops the potato man wasn't supposed to be customizable that's a bug" people?
If they said the problem was tau dewa (they did) and people who never went to tau dewa got hit, then just maybe the problem is a bug in whatever tool they used to determine guilt.
We are talking about the same cryptic here right? Like the "oops the potato man wasn't supposed to be customizable that's a bug" people?
That's my take on it. Too random to be intentional. Couple thoughts are:
A) A mistake made to skill points scaling/accrual for launch; correction messes with folks randomly.
A mistake made when 'fixing' Tau Dewa affects the entire game, messing with folks randomly.
Either way, it would indicate that there are some other issues at play/lurking in the coding.
Comments
There are plenty of other ways to get far more dil than what people were getting from max specialisation grinding. Even if you have lots of chars. They have even made it easier for you to get max dil from multiple chars by allowing the rich mining claims to be account bound rather than char bound. Also, if you are f2p, just go to dyson and grind there with your multiple chars. You make loads of dil, but you're still bound to 8k (9k vet) per day.
I bet you tau dewa xp from elite team patrols will give you less SP since this patch, no matter how they word it. Yes on solo play you will receive approx a 12.5% boost in SP and it should make levelling to 60 easier. But the idea is to timegate the players, especially with the spec points after 60.
They can't have people skipping the grind. It's the only thing that keeps your mind off the actual content (or lack thereof)
Cheers!
People are starting to report that a load of their spec points have been rolled back.
Yeah, it was clearly the dil issue....
Going that there appears to be a difference in how many, locations of players etc, this seems like a bug more than by design...
Still not a good situation but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that their knee jerk broke something causing unintended consequences
So PWE is removing spec points from everyone just cuz? Even I don't think they've devolved that far. I think it's a bug, probably caused by their attempted "exploit" fix, but not a deliberate vindictive or corrective move on their part.
There has been no official word on the reason for the Tau Dawa take down, anything else is purely speculation.
Umm, the patch note CONFIRM the reason for the Tau Dewa take down... They explicitly mention the removal of dil rewards for post 110 which would only be as a result of running Dewa patrols in it's previous state owing to a bg with the patrols Cryptic have fixed.. Or rather they deemed what a small number of players were doing an exploit.
As for your bit about the skills.. yes, deffo a similar bug, possibly caused by changing things after realizing the problem...
We'll find out soon enough though if it is intentional or not.
Cheers!
Yep, Cryptic DATAMINE's everything the players do. If Gekko and his team of STO Devs had no idea that what occurred was a good possibility BEFORE they released DR Live -- it's because Gekko's more concerned with meeting and partying, and getting Star Trek actors to officiate at his wedding vow renewal renewal ceremony at the Star Trek Vegas Conventions then developing/expanding STO.
he didn't need to be omniscient; he just needed to know how to read an STO datamined spreadsheet on a game he's supposedly been working on for the past 5 years of his career.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
last i looked how it worked for 3 years :rolleyes:
system Lord Baal is dead
For the moment, I am standing by my assertion that this is all about timegating the playerbase.
Cheers!
No they don't. They say that Dilithium for skill points after 60 have been removed.
They do not state this was the reason for it tho.
That is correct, the release notes do not say the reason.
But the Official Tau Dewa thread in the Galactic News Network says it's closed due to an exploit.
That exploit was farming Dilithium and/or not grinding in the appropriate sector. Take your pick.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1268701
Incorrect usage of term. Five points from Hufflepuff.
"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'd say that it was mostly about the dilithium. Anytime there is an exploit that features dilithium, they have to do something to correct it.
Remember guys that Dilithium is supposed to be rewarded for your efforts based on how much time you spent doing them.
They attached a high sum of dilithium at the end of the specialization level process probably because they initially didn't figure people would be purposely level up just to get the dilithium. Oh how wrong they were.
Now because of the few that did this, cryptic has to take away a reward that was supposed to be a reward for the effort of going through and maxing out the specialization system, something that they designed to take a while. Cryptic had good intentions, but they forget to remember that exploiters will find anyway to get ahead.
Becaues the level 50s were still giving out level 60 exp to the level 60 players essentially
system Lord Baal is dead
Fine, they want to match the level to avoid farming, but giving the smallest ships in a faction 350K HP isn't exactly the best way to go about it.
I think the larger issue is that a very small group of players figured out a variation on this that is faster than what you were aware of or may have done. This strategy included them buying XP boosters (which is why XP boosters temporarily had to be nerfed) and likely involved a way to bypass the standard dilithium cap.
The fallacy in most of the player outrage is in assuming that nobody was doing anything worse than you were doing or that those people were interested in playing the game/leveling or the reasons why you did what you did.
I can see right now how those other players likely bypassed the dilithium refinement cap and likely earned dilithium at a rate far greater than you think they did.
In fact, I can think of a few potential loopholes still out there.
While I'm sure what you may have done fell outside Cryptic's design goals and was perceived as a threat to their monetization model, you likely did not see the extent of this.
I did not set foot in Tau Dewa. I have not communicated with the more serious exploiters. But I can see ways to take this further and if these people were buying XP boosts on the C-Store to fuel progress (which they clearly were due to the temporary nerf) and this was cost effective for them to do on many alts, you should at least be able to appreciate that they had a means of taking this much, much further than you did.
And let's, for argument's sake, assume they did indeed use XP booster packs, then, in what universe is that an exploit!? Those packs are BOUGHT for the *exact* purpose of boosting your XP!
Seriously, I'm getting sick of Cryptic branding everything an exploit, up and including using Zen items that are blatantly sold for the precise reason ppl use them for! This is getting insane.
Bypassing the daily refining limit with an XP booster pack, sounds like a neat trick.
to me sounds like a tin foil hat theory xp booster to bypass refinement daily cap...........
system Lord Baal is dead
Because there are no in-game GMs, for one. Still boggles me.
That is a plausible scenario. But please explain why so many (and there has been a shed load of people) have had Spec points taken off them if this was all about a "very small group" exploiting dil?
The perceived solution they have rolled out does not match your hypothesis.
Cheers!
oh I know as much .. devs and gm won't take responsibility for their TRIBBLE ups just blame the players
Without any hard specifics...
I'm NOT saying the XP pack is what allowed the limit bypass although I think I can identify how a limit bypass would come into play.
I am saying that I think an organized operation kicked in, employing a combination of unintended game mechanics to multiplicative effect, likely with the intent of amassing personal economic power or on behalf of a resale operation.
I want to point out: Those XP bonuses max out at 1k XP and sell for 200 ZEN.
At 60, it is around 50k XP per level.
A single level's worth of use would cost $10 ordinarily for an extra 5k XP.
Unless... Unless you have a single source of XP that grands more than 5000 skillpoints at once, in which case you would get additional benefit from the XP booster, I believe.
200 ZEN is 31,200 dilithium or so.
Basically, after running the math here, for the skillpoint boosters to be useful in a cost effective way, one of four things would need to be the case:
1) You are earning 10 levels worth of skillpoints from a single kill or turn-in and this turn-in is boosted. That would generate the dilithium necessary to convert and break even on the boosters.
2) You have an insane amount of energy credits which you are attempting to convert into another form like dilithium and are buying XP boosters on the exchange. Implication: botting. Because this should be inefficient use of a conscious player's time.
3) You are reselling the product of the dilithium in some way for real money, at a rate that exceeds dilithium exchange rate. (Ie. a botting or sweatshop operation that involved lockbox opening and Lobi transfer.)
4) The system is being used to launder money/points from compromised credit cards and/or accounts.
None of these would be good things. But you have to consider why the skillpoint booster was temporarily nerfed in there.
This is a really good observation
If they said the problem was tau dewa (they did) and people who never went to tau dewa got hit, then just maybe the problem is a bug in whatever tool they used to determine guilt.
We are talking about the same cryptic here right? Like the "oops the potato man wasn't supposed to be customizable that's a bug" people?
That's my take on it. Too random to be intentional. Couple thoughts are:
A) A mistake made to skill points scaling/accrual for launch; correction messes with folks randomly.
Either way, it would indicate that there are some other issues at play/lurking in the coding.
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