Okay, let's be perfectly honest here: If a new batch of content got released and you're grinding something that obviously is giving more experience than you get elsewhere, then common sense would dictate that you're abusing the system. Abusing the system = breaking the rules. Breaking the rules = you get punished. That's how things work. Period. That said, I always need to remind myself that common sense isn't so common :-/
So let me get this straight, you wish for them to punish thousands upon thousands of established players for reaching rank 60 with a perma banned, alongside those who superceded the specialization points by ranking several times beyond 60. That would be an insane action on the part of Cryptic, because they would be losing a huge financial base.
Especially with the fact that this should have been tested on Tribble and studied more before applying it to Holodeck. What is TRIBBLE used for again?
It was a failed execution on the part of Cryptic that this even happen, and according to D'Angelo they went through thousands of data and only a very few superceded the specialization points by going way beyond 60.
What is needed is quality control before putting out the product, again what is Tribble good for?
The problem here is they did not just nerf Elite XP, they nerfed all XP. I was getting 3x more XP from mission rewards (which have nothing to do with the difficulty you have set) not mobs. I finished 4 missions of the undine arc, and gained 1.5 bars worth of a level (at 56). That is INSANE.
The development team became aware of a potential leveling exploit on Wednesday morning this week. After initial investigations, we decided to shut down access to the maps that were being used for this power-leveling to perform a deeper investigation.
The investigation uncovered several different bugs in the game that were combining to allow players to level at approximately 17x the rate that players were leveling anywhere else in the game. This was definitely not intended behavior. Fixes for the various bugs went live with the update on Thursday morning, and we opened up the blocked maps.
During the investigation, we pulled data on every players behavior, and then we zeroed in on the players who were gaining levels at unreasonable rates. All of these players were on the maps under investigation. We found that quite a few players dabbled in these maps, but it was really a very small number of players who decided to take advantage of the bugs in excess. In fact, in the end there were around 300 characters (spanning around 250 accounts) that crossed the line from being efficient into taking significant advantage of the bugs. 300 is a very small number from the hundreds of thousands of characters playing.
This raises the question of what an exploit is. Ill loosely define an exploit is any unintended behavior in the game that a player can use to gain significant advantage over others. How does a player know something is unintended? That is definitely open to interpretation and was a huge focus of the discussion in the dev team. In this case, we feel that the difference in leveling speed between playing other content in the game and playing the content that was singled out this week was so large that it is reasonable for players to think this is too good to be something the dev team intended to happen. We find exploits regularly, but it is uncommon to find one that was used to achieve enough of an advantage to require taking action.
Once deciding that there was an exploit, the question is whether action is required or not, which means looking at who dabbled and who took advantage? This was done with an intensive data analysis. In the end, we decided that the vast majority of players were being fairly reasonable in their use of the maps to level, but there was a space in the data between players who gained up to 10 specialization points using the exploit, and those who gained more than 10 specialization points. I decided to make this the cut-off line and anyone who got more than 10 points on those maps had the excess points removed from their characters. For example, a character earning 15 points, 12 of which were on the exploitable maps, would lose 2 specialization points, and a character earning 60 points all of which were on exploitable maps would lose 50 points.
I have looked into the claim that some players were not using the exploit maps, but so far every claim I have come across has not held up under data pulls. If anyone still thinks they lost specialization points when they should not have should please file a CS ticket. CS tickets get a tracking number that can ensure we take care of everyone with a concern.
Im certain that at least some of the players feel they were acting in the right. That errors the dev team makes should be fair game. There are likely some others who feel that I drew the line in the wrong place, either too high or too low. It is challenging to walk the line between protecting the player base that wants the game to be fair, and allowing players to be efficient and game the game. In this case, a judgment was made and the line was drawn in order to protect the integrity of the game for the hundreds of thousands of players who did not and cannot do this going forward. Reviewing the data further, I still feel it was a good place to draw it.
Our communication on this issue was apparently unclear. Ill finish up this afternoon by apologizing for not being more clear about what happened. We normally do not post about actions taken to correct exploits, and I did not expect this correction to require more than a simple post. I was mistaken and I hope this clarifies what happened for those that want a more complete story.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Stephen DAngelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
and this is the kind of response i think many appreciate i know i do and thanks for finally talking to us about all this . i hope we can see allot more of this kind of open explanation from you guys. keep it up good job .
Trophies for killing FEDS ahh those were the days.
Dyson ground BZ "Obviously" gives more dilithium than elsewhere. Have you ever played that? Then you are breaking the rules and should be punished, as you said.
Uh, how is me stating that grinding something that is giving 17 times the normal exp is an exploit a strawman argument? There's no logical fallacy there. It's common sense. Oh, am I getting huge chunks of exp? Far more than I am getting elsewhere running other missions and patrols? Then this is probably a bug and I should both report it and not participate in it to avoid getting the hammer brought down on me when it inevitably gets fixed. Once again, common sense.
Please define "elsewhere", because hate to break it to you ... it was not just Tau Dewa ... it was pretty much everything except the DQ ...
"Elsewhere" as in the other areas in the game that weren't giving out 17x exp rewards. Pretty simple. Oh, and I also said nothing about it taking place in Tau Dewa and, in fact, have said several times that no one specifically said the exploit was in Tau Dewa. So, there ya go.
Except the DS9 misson I was doing on Elite did NOT reward more than the DR patrols on Elite (around 900-1200 XP per boss NPC).
And this is really gonna bake your noodle, later on: the reason ppl resorted to missioning/running patrols elsewhere is precisely because there were XP gaps in the the DR storyline, preventing ppl from taking those many 'Go patrol these 5 locations in the Delta Quadrant' to begin with!'
Just because the new content is more of a grind does not make exploiting something that is broken okay. As I have also stated before: It took me about 3 days of casual playing to get from 50 to 60 and I just filled the content gaps by running DR patrols, which is something the exploiters could have done but actively chose not to.
The problem here is they did not just nerf Elite XP, they nerfed all XP. I was getting 3x more XP from mission rewards (which have nothing to do with the difficulty you have set) not mobs. I finished 4 missions of the undine arc, and gained 1.5 bars worth of a level (at 56). That is INSANE.
Working as intended- Cryptic
Yet a naive few still think it was a BUG, in regards to the momentary XP nerf.
The problem here is they did not just nerf Elite XP, they nerfed all XP. I was getting 3x more XP from mission rewards (which have nothing to do with the difficulty you have set) not mobs. I finished 4 missions of the undine arc, and gained 1.5 bars worth of a level (at 56). That is INSANE.
Wait, wut?! You don't get more XP mission reward, depending on your Difficulty setting?! What have I been playing those DR ground missions on Elite for then?! LOL. I *hate* ground!
"Elsewhere" as in the other areas in the game that weren't giving out 17x exp rewards. Pretty simple. Oh, and I also said nothing about it taking place in Tau Dewa and, in fact, have said several times that no one specifically said the exploit was in Tau Dewa. So, there ya go.
So I should have known 75% of the game is porbably an Exploit, while the other 25% (-17x exp rewards) are working as intended ... you're funny ... I like you ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
"This whole argument, and several prior, seem to stem from a difference of opinion on the definition of the term "exploit." And, it appears that I have a different definition than most. Perhaps we can put this whole semantic debate behind us, if I offer some clarification.
In my opinion, as a Dev, somebody that is Exploiting is deserving of punishment. By extension, an action should be called an Exploit only if it is an action that the player should be held accountable for, and face punitive measures for.
If a player is utilizing a coding error, potentially without their knowledge, they should not be held accountable for it, in my opinion. And therefore, by my personal definition, that action is not Exploiting. To call it Exploiting would imply that disciplinary actions would be warranted.
My opinion on this may be quite bias, however.
For example, it was my responsibility that the Jem'Hadar Shield was benefiting from Brace-for-Impact Doffs in error at the time they rolled out to the public. It would have been improper - unfair, illogical - to punish players for utilizing that combination of items/powers, when it was MY responsibility that they were malfunctioning. Therefore, doing so was not what I would define as an Exploit."
Translates to Cryptic is too cheap/lazy to police stuff unless it hits their bottom line, then it's not a bug but finally meets the "exploit" criteria?
How about NOT over analyzing this with YOUR interpretation and live with his considering HIS information is more valuable than YOURS. He did the right thing and YOU are not helping this thread any. Let them do their jobs, instead of trying to beat blood out of them. :rolleyes:
The problem here is they did not just nerf Elite XP, they nerfed all XP. I was getting 3x more XP from mission rewards (which have nothing to do with the difficulty you have set) not mobs. I finished 4 missions of the undine arc, and gained 1.5 bars worth of a level (at 56). That is INSANE.
Just as an fyi, I've seen where storyline missions I haven't run yet on a toon give ~3k rewards, but only 900 on a re-run. Not sure if it's been like that awhile or not, since it's been years since I cared (if ever).
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Okay, let's be perfectly honest here: If a new batch of content got released and you're grinding something that obviously is giving more experience than you get elsewhere, then common sense would dictate that you're abusing the system. Abusing the system = breaking the rules. Breaking the rules = you get punished. That's how things work. Period. That said, I always need to remind myself that common sense isn't so common :-/
Ok ... Here is the issue. XP is usually related strictly to the number of mobs. The more mobs you kill, the more XP.
IMO the DQ TRIBBLE was so slow because it was so much walk and talk and you might kill like 3-4 ships in some missions.
The Tau Dewa mission are like good Foundry pew pews. Several waves of mobs .... and they come to you, you don't have to fly all over.
I instantly put my difficulty on Elite and went to Tau Dewa since I knew those maps were fun and mob rich.
I had no clue it wasn't set up right. My assumption was my xp gain based on kills and not some mob level issue.
Some mission or map is always going to be more XP rich or offer a better risk/reward. I mean if you look at the queues, everyone plays the same things.
Also its funny that these team tactics was used extensively in their other game CoH/V.
In my long history of online gaming, this is the second time I've seen a post that pleasantly surprised me in this way.
Communication is essential with online games..between players, between developers, and between those two groups. Chaos ensues when those lines of communication fail.
i agree 100% and not that i actually agree with what they said or did. but the fact that they were atleast open about what they did and why they did it. that i can accept and then move on... they made a choice and told us why and thats cool. even if we disagree.
unlike some GEEK that was telling us to shut up and like what we were not being told before.
Trophies for killing FEDS ahh those were the days.
I'd like to thank Mr. D'Angelo for posting an explanation of the situation. However, there are two points I'd like to share:
1. I firmly believe that timely communication would've gone a far way to quell the hot tempers and frustration rightfully exhibited by players here on the forum. Cryptic's past approach of keeping quiet and let the problem blow over left a lot of people expecting the same thing. I think this is why we so many rage posts.
2. Filing a CS ticket has proven to be almost fruitless since STO launched way back in February '09 (after beta). We've all heard the stories of CS tickets never getting a response, and quite a few of us have been in that situation. I myself have filed a few tickets (I don't think it's been more than 5) in the almost-five years I've been playing, and not once have I gotten a response; they weren't even for superfluous issues. So should the player-base expect any different when filing what may be a valid CS ticket over lost points?
The development team became aware of a potential leveling exploit on Wednesday morning this week. After initial investigations, we decided to shut down access to the maps that were being used for this power-leveling to perform a deeper investigation.
The investigation uncovered several different bugs in the game that were combining to allow players to level at approximately 17x the rate that players were leveling anywhere else in the game. This was definitely not intended behavior. Fixes for the various bugs went live with the update on Thursday morning, and we opened up the blocked maps.
During the investigation, we pulled data on every players behavior, and then we zeroed in on the players who were gaining levels at unreasonable rates. All of these players were on the maps under investigation. We found that quite a few players dabbled in these maps, but it was really a very small number of players who decided to take advantage of the bugs in excess. In fact, in the end there were around 300 characters (spanning around 250 accounts) that crossed the line from being efficient into taking significant advantage of the bugs. 300 is a very small number from the hundreds of thousands of characters playing.
This raises the question of what an exploit is. Ill loosely define an exploit is any unintended behavior in the game that a player can use to gain significant advantage over others. How does a player know something is unintended? That is definitely open to interpretation and was a huge focus of the discussion in the dev team. In this case, we feel that the difference in leveling speed between playing other content in the game and playing the content that was singled out this week was so large that it is reasonable for players to think this is too good to be something the dev team intended to happen. We find exploits regularly, but it is uncommon to find one that was used to achieve enough of an advantage to require taking action.
Once deciding that there was an exploit, the question is whether action is required or not, which means looking at who dabbled and who took advantage? This was done with an intensive data analysis. In the end, we decided that the vast majority of players were being fairly reasonable in their use of the maps to level, but there was a space in the data between players who gained up to 10 specialization points using the exploit, and those who gained more than 10 specialization points. I decided to make this the cut-off line and anyone who got more than 10 points on those maps had the excess points removed from their characters. For example, a character earning 15 points, 12 of which were on the exploitable maps, would lose 2 specialization points, and a character earning 60 points all of which were on exploitable maps would lose 50 points.
I have looked into the claim that some players were not using the exploit maps, but so far every claim I have come across has not held up under data pulls. If anyone still thinks they lost specialization points when they should not have should please file a CS ticket. CS tickets get a tracking number that can ensure we take care of everyone with a concern.
Im certain that at least some of the players feel they were acting in the right. That errors the dev team makes should be fair game. There are likely some others who feel that I drew the line in the wrong place, either too high or too low. It is challenging to walk the line between protecting the player base that wants the game to be fair, and allowing players to be efficient and game the game. In this case, a judgment was made and the line was drawn in order to protect the integrity of the game for the hundreds of thousands of players who did not and cannot do this going forward. Reviewing the data further, I still feel it was a good place to draw it.
Our communication on this issue was apparently unclear. Ill finish up this afternoon by apologizing for not being more clear about what happened. We normally do not post about actions taken to correct exploits, and I did not expect this correction to require more than a simple post. I was mistaken and I hope this clarifies what happened for those that want a more complete story.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Stephen DAngelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
I will say that I do applaud you for finally coming out and posting a more in depth explanation of what happened, and the overall thought process involved in the ultimate decisions you and the STO Dev team made. However, this exact post SHOULD have been made once the decisions were enacted.
Also, In your position as STO Executive Producer with this only being your second real post on these forums after again taking the position again in January of 2014 - I don't understand how 2 whole posts in 10 months is 'adequate communication' to a playerbase of 'hundreds of thousands'.
I still have to wonder if you are actually spending time making decisions about STO development, or really handing the job over to someone less qualified, and just signing off on stuff as it crosses your desk for the most part.
Two posts (and what, two blogs of about a paragraph each) since you took the position isn't very effective 'communication' (IMO.) Still, you did at least provide a response to what is probably one of the worst PR disasters in STO's 5 year development history (and given some of STO's previous PR disasters, that's saying something.)
Maybe the Lead Designer in your group shouldn't be a Dev who sees the majority of feedback as 'player whining' - and per his own admissions seems to peruse forum threads just to count "how many post 'til Hitler." A LOT of this was reported on Tribble PRIOR to DR's release, but it seems either no one from the STO Dev team looks at those reports; or if they do, in the end a Lead Designer dismisses them. If you guys aren't going to look at reports generated in your own in game feedback/bug report system - why not dump it? I mean you removed the exploration content to decrease download size; why not just pull out the hooks and code to this back end reporting system too since you don't seem to think it has value?
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..."
Just as an fyi, I've seen where storyline missions I haven't run yet on a toon give ~3k rewards, but only 900 on a re-run. Not sure if it's been like that awhile or not, since it's been years since I cared (if ever).
Not re-running them. I never did them when they were released last season, which is why was doing them.
First thank you for speaking, and communicating. Then I understand the exploit and why it was closed/hotfixed.
However, I hope this incident have shown you the current leveling process in DR is for most player, a problem. I don't remember large number of player grinding patrols when LoR was introduced, or any story content.
In fact, the only time we had something remotely close was back during beta/release, where the story missions were not enough and didn't give enough reward. But then, we could grind the mirror universe STF, and the exploration cluster. Both of them were removed. And yet, you added more missions, and more xp, so we didn't have to grind in between.
And now, we are back to the beginning, except this time, we don't have the same tools at all, we have much less.
I used Tau Dewa myself, not for the specialization grind or dilithium, but to lvl to 60. I still have a character which is 50. I do not plan on leveling her, since it will be a drag.
So I should have known 75% of the game is an Exploit, while the other 25% (-17x exp rewards) are working as intended ... you're funny ... I like you ...
Um, what? Dude. Where did I say that? Where's that strawman argument guy that tried calling me out on it because THIS is a strawman argument lol.
Flat out: It's not hard to know when you're exploiting something that you shouldn't. It really is just common sense, especially if you've played video games for any extended period of time.
Surely this would be like fixing the barn door after the horses have already bolted? According to whats emerged is that your Dev team were made aware of the issue during beta testing on tribble and yet no corrective action was taken at that time. This issue is the sort of thing that should have been nailed down before it went live.
I do believe that your entire QA and beta test system needs a serious overhaul and improvement. Because like someone else above posted you've lost a portion of the player base over this mistake, many of them loyal customers over a school boy error that should never have occurred.
I am going to take a stab at answering you. The Op pointed out they find a lot of exploits but generally don't close them because they are not heavily used. Same way a police officer generally does not pull someone over for going only 5mph faster than the limit on the freeway.
The mistake wasn't letting the exploit go uncorrected. It was under estimating how much it would be used.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Flat out: It's not hard to know when you're exploiting something that you shouldn't. It really is just common sense, especially if you've played video games for any extended period of time.
No it isn't ... how should I know if it's the same XP/Time - ratio, it gave me the last 4 years ...
... you're just assuming the "Exploits" were supposed to be something out of the ordinary, while in fact the Delta Rising Content was ... I was used to shoot down Elite Mobs within 5min after FOUR YEARS ... zerging down giant HP-bags in the DQ for 45min, not so much ... I often told myself "Well this is obviously a BUG" during Story Missions ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
I didn't see anything in the EPs post that mentioned Tau Dewa. Just because it's the new content doesn't mean that it has to be the culprit. Just sayin'.
Then you didn't read the official statement and are incompetent.
Wow, not sure how you get to call the guy a liar. I work in the industry and, frankly, it's not hard to write a script to automate that sort of datamining on their end. So, when someone like the EP on a project says that they have gone over the data, I tend to believe them. As for "playing the damn game" if you were part of the group that was punished for gaining too much exp too quickly, then I'm sorry, but you were doing so by cheating. Deal with it and move on.
As I've said a few times: Nowhere in what the EP said mentioned anything specifically about Tau Dewa.
Why would folks want to follow fat Neelix in a tacky suit about a dull Talaxian base pointlessly clicking badly written text boxes for no real payoff in xp?
Patrols are not an exploit. You even wrote entire patrol based mission content into your game. I don't think you planed the scaling of xp based on groups doing high dps.
If people were making lvls quick doing a patrol mission, this is because they were teaming in very high dps builds. So, you put all this elite content in which is basically telling people they need to do more dps. Spend money, buy gear, do high dps but don't for the love of God lvl too quick to be able to do that?
If people lvl'd fast, they did so because they were actually good at space builds. If they were sitting in 3k dps builds, they would have been doing a japori in 20-30 mins or so. Getting the same xp for mission content, based on time and effort to gain that xp.
All your data proof has done is identified folks doing good dps. Then punished them. Smashing job.
How about NOT over analyzing this with YOUR interpretation and live with his considering HIS information is more valuable than YOURS. He did the right thing and YOU are not helping this thread any. Let them do their jobs, instead of trying to beat blood out of them. :rolleyes:
I'm the customer I'm giving negative feedback on a part of their service which I don't like. If you don't like the feedback feel free to ignore it or offer cogent counter argument.
I'm not discussing his "information" it's the b.s. rationalization to selectively enforce their ToS on exploiting I took issue with. I made that point by quoting a Dev who basically gave a cart blanche to exploiting code error bugs 2 years ago under the pretext players shouldn't be punished for Dev's mistakes.
I actually don't have an issue w/what they did in revoking skill point et al gained. What I haven an issue is they don't do it unless it impacts their bottom line directly. They've let exploits ride for years w/o an acknowledgement (the old shield swapping bug), let alone a fix.
[Zone] Dack@****: cowards can't take a fed 1 on 1 crinckley cowards Hahahaha you smell like flowers
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
The development team became aware of a potential leveling exploit on Wednesday morning this week. After initial investigations, we decided to shut down access to the maps that were being used for this power-leveling to perform a deeper investigation.
The investigation uncovered several different bugs in the game that were combining to allow players to level at approximately 17x the rate that players were leveling anywhere else in the game. This was definitely not intended behavior. Fixes for the various bugs went live with the update on Thursday morning, and we opened up the blocked maps.
Firstly: Seventeen times faster than where? Seeing as the game provides different rates of XP depending on the content (and you've significantly altered them in recent days) , what is your basis for implying that this so-called exploit allowed people to gain EXP / skill points at seventeen times the rate you consider as normal? Indeed, what do you consider a normal rate of EXP / skill point, that should be earned?
Secondly: Most, if not nearly all, players who would have accessed the supposed "exploit" zones would have had level 50 characters for quite some time, or certainly not leveled a fresh character recently. How would a player know that their EXP / skill point gain is excessive? You've often released content in the past that can be sped through quicker than other games, the casual nature of STO is one of the main attractions of the game - how can you expect players to be aware that their skill point acquisition is above a certain level, particularly if this level is never revealed to the player base?
During the investigation, we pulled data on every players behavior, and then we zeroed in on the players who were gaining levels at unreasonable rates. All of these players were on the maps under investigation. We found that quite a few players dabbled in these maps, but it was really a very small number of players who decided to take advantage of the bugs in excess. In fact, in the end there were around 300 characters (spanning around 250 accounts) that crossed the line from being efficient into taking significant advantage of the bugs. 300 is a very small number from the hundreds of thousands of characters playing.
Please define "being efficient". I'd argue that finding the best sources of EXP / skill points in the game is being VERY efficient especially when there was no warning flag, no indicator that such a thing should be avoided. If, as you say, you've removed spec points from people who farmed EXP in a variety of zones and found all their removals to be warranted, could it not be argued that you provided multiple means for the player-base to be efficient? And drawing on my earlier points, if this excessive leveling was a bug, how did you expect players to know the difference, and why is the onus on them to self-police something they've never had to self-police before? If these bugs have existed in game for some time (going by how long the Tau Dewa sector has been around) then if players did notice their EXP gains before, then anything gained since the expansion will have appeared relatively normal to them, correct?
Where did you draw the line between efficient and unreasonable?
This raises the question of what an exploit is. Ill loosely define an exploit is any unintended behavior in the game that a player can use to gain significant advantage over others. How does a player know something is unintended? That is definitely open to interpretation and was a huge focus of the discussion in the dev team. In this case, we feel that the difference in leveling speed between playing other content in the game and playing the content that was singled out this week was so large that it is reasonable for players to think this is too good to be something the dev team intended to happen. We find exploits regularly, but it is uncommon to find one that was used to achieve enough of an advantage to require taking action.
At least you're gracious enough to admit that interpretation comes into this. But as you've seen rather spectacularly over the past few days - we're not devs, we're unique sets of groups and individuals. How do we know what the dev team intended to happen? I'm sure you intend to be the greatest best-selling MMO of all-time but it doesn't make it so.
And in terms of leveling up / gain specialisation points - your own content pushes the player to finding sources of XP to level up in order to do the content! You even suggest as much! This wasn't about gaining an advantage, it was about completing the content you laid out for us to achieve. Shouldn't you be happy that people are actively playing the game, most more than usual, in order to do what you have *specifically* laid out what you want us to do?
Once deciding that there was an exploit, the question is whether action is required or not, which means looking at who dabbled and who took advantage? This was done with an intensive data analysis. In the end, we decided that the vast majority of players were being fairly reasonable in their use of the maps to level, but there was a space in the data between players who gained up to 10 specialization points using the exploit, and those who gained more than 10 specialization points. I decided to make this the cut-off line and anyone who got more than 10 points on those maps had the excess points removed from their characters. For example, a character earning 15 points, 12 of which were on the exploitable maps, would lose 2 specialization points, and a character earning 60 points all of which were on exploitable maps would lose 50 points.
I have looked into the claim that some players were not using the exploit maps, but so far every claim I have come across has not held up under data pulls. If anyone still thinks they lost specialization points when they should not have should please file a CS ticket. CS tickets get a tracking number that can ensure we take care of everyone with a concern.
I can't comment on this, except to say that the comments of players here and in other sections of the community... well, you're effectively calling them liars. If I were so adamant that I was right, and others were "cheating", well I'd provide actual evidence to back up my case. I realise that you'll have some reason why providing this is not possible but you'd certainly gain a lot of trust back if you actually told us which maps / what behaviour it is you're specifically punishing, particularly when a lot of people claim to have been nowhere near the effected sectors? Y'know, so we as players have a better indication of what to avoid or report in future?
And I also wonder how, having said people were leveling seventeen times quicker, you've reached these figures? It just looks like a set of arbitrary figures to me?
Im certain that at least some of the players feel they were acting in the right. That errors the dev team makes should be fair game. There are likely some others who feel that I drew the line in the wrong place, either too high or too low. It is challenging to walk the line between protecting the player base that wants the game to be fair, and allowing players to be efficient and game the game. In this case, a judgment was made and the line was drawn in order to protect the integrity of the game for the hundreds of thousands of players who did not and cannot do this going forward. Reviewing the data further, I still feel it was a good place to draw it.
Our communication on this issue was apparently unclear. Ill finish up this afternoon by apologizing for not being more clear about what happened. We normally do not post about actions taken to correct exploits, and I did not expect this correction to require more than a simple post. I was mistaken and I hope this clarifies what happened for those that want a more complete story.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Stephen DAngelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
[/quote]
Thank you for making this post and taking the time to communicate with us. It was long over-due. But frankly, it's raised more questions than answers. You even admit that the error devs make should be fair game, and having come to realise that the inflated EXP issue bug was actually reported on Tribble but not instated on Holodeck, can you accept that you've kinda screwed up and caused a lot of players to waste both time and energy? And furthermore, you've made a lot of decent honest players feel like they've somehow wronged, and involuntarily turned sections of this community against one another by labeling such people as exploiters? Because with the bug you left in the game, and without any sort of barrier or safeguard to curtail player leveling (quite the opposite) how can you be surprised? I totally understand that if was a bug, it needed fixing. But you were the ones who left it there and you have to take some responsibility for it. I'm sure there's a section of the TOS that says otherwise but that won't keep players - trusting the development team, and the direction of the game, will!
And I sincerely hope you and the other devs have a wonderful weekend.
Baz
Oh do stop being such a sycophant worffan old chap, it doesn't suit you.
I'm serious.
17x the XP you'd get per hour doing those missions solo on elite is ABSURD.
EP noted specifically that the exploiters were levelling 17 times as fast as people "snywhere else in the game". That means 17x more than people grinding Argala elites, or ESTFing, or sitting in Foundry battleship royal rumble missions with the difficulty set to max.
That's cheating. That's bad.
Of course, the (probably unintentional) XP nerf that resulted from the fix is just bad dev work, and I'm pissed about that. I'm angry that I am FORCED to suck up to that prattling imbecile Neelix EVERY time I bring a character through the DR storyline on MULTIPLE occasions. I'm ENRAGED that Neelix is supposed to be not only plucky comic relief but also somehow effective at anything.
I'm highly disappointed in the bags-o-HP-and-instadeath-spam that most Advanced STFs are. I'm displeased with the dil nerfs that have been going on.
I don't get it...how is killing mobs in a patrol mission exploiting...HOW. Seriously have all the smart people just quit already and now I'm just left here with the cryptic fanboys who think this is ok. Calling something an exploit because people can level quickly from it DOES NOT MAKE IT AN EXPLOIT it means cryptic went into crybaby because people are hitting cap to quickly and not playing their DR content. I have been grinding patrol missions and enemy encounters to level since day 1 so no I NEVER thought I was exploiting by doing missions cryptic made on an elite difficulty cryptic made to give more xp in a system cryptic made. Am I the only one who understand that this is not an exploit?
Comments
So let me get this straight, you wish for them to punish thousands upon thousands of established players for reaching rank 60 with a perma banned, alongside those who superceded the specialization points by ranking several times beyond 60. That would be an insane action on the part of Cryptic, because they would be losing a huge financial base.
Especially with the fact that this should have been tested on Tribble and studied more before applying it to Holodeck. What is TRIBBLE used for again?
It was a failed execution on the part of Cryptic that this even happen, and according to D'Angelo they went through thousands of data and only a very few superceded the specialization points by going way beyond 60.
What is needed is quality control before putting out the product, again what is Tribble good for?
You sir WIN!
and this is the kind of response i think many appreciate i know i do and thanks for finally talking to us about all this . i hope we can see allot more of this kind of open explanation from you guys. keep it up good job .
Nope - faster leveling = exploiting ... don't even try ... that's why they nerfed everything except DOFF XP (shouldn't have mentioned it, I guess)
Uh, how is me stating that grinding something that is giving 17 times the normal exp is an exploit a strawman argument? There's no logical fallacy there. It's common sense. Oh, am I getting huge chunks of exp? Far more than I am getting elsewhere running other missions and patrols? Then this is probably a bug and I should both report it and not participate in it to avoid getting the hammer brought down on me when it inevitably gets fixed. Once again, common sense.
"Elsewhere" as in the other areas in the game that weren't giving out 17x exp rewards. Pretty simple. Oh, and I also said nothing about it taking place in Tau Dewa and, in fact, have said several times that no one specifically said the exploit was in Tau Dewa. So, there ya go.
Just because the new content is more of a grind does not make exploiting something that is broken okay. As I have also stated before: It took me about 3 days of casual playing to get from 50 to 60 and I just filled the content gaps by running DR patrols, which is something the exploiters could have done but actively chose not to.
Working as intended - Cryptic
Yet a naive few still think it was a BUG, in regards to the momentary XP nerf.
Wait, wut?! You don't get more XP mission reward, depending on your Difficulty setting?! What have I been playing those DR ground missions on Elite for then?! LOL. I *hate* ground!
ĥahahaha
So I should have known 75% of the game is porbably an Exploit, while the other 25% (-17x exp rewards) are working as intended ... you're funny ... I like you ...
How about NOT over analyzing this with YOUR interpretation and live with his considering HIS information is more valuable than YOURS. He did the right thing and YOU are not helping this thread any. Let them do their jobs, instead of trying to beat blood out of them. :rolleyes:
Just as an fyi, I've seen where storyline missions I haven't run yet on a toon give ~3k rewards, but only 900 on a re-run. Not sure if it's been like that awhile or not, since it's been years since I cared (if ever).
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
i saw that my self been what he has been EP almost a year and only 2 post lmfao
system Lord Baal is dead
Ok ... Here is the issue. XP is usually related strictly to the number of mobs. The more mobs you kill, the more XP.
IMO the DQ TRIBBLE was so slow because it was so much walk and talk and you might kill like 3-4 ships in some missions.
The Tau Dewa mission are like good Foundry pew pews. Several waves of mobs .... and they come to you, you don't have to fly all over.
I instantly put my difficulty on Elite and went to Tau Dewa since I knew those maps were fun and mob rich.
I had no clue it wasn't set up right. My assumption was my xp gain based on kills and not some mob level issue.
Some mission or map is always going to be more XP rich or offer a better risk/reward. I mean if you look at the queues, everyone plays the same things.
Also its funny that these team tactics was used extensively in their other game CoH/V.
i agree 100% and not that i actually agree with what they said or did. but the fact that they were atleast open about what they did and why they did it. that i can accept and then move on... they made a choice and told us why and thats cool. even if we disagree.
unlike some GEEK that was telling us to shut up and like what we were not being told before.
1. I firmly believe that timely communication would've gone a far way to quell the hot tempers and frustration rightfully exhibited by players here on the forum. Cryptic's past approach of keeping quiet and let the problem blow over left a lot of people expecting the same thing. I think this is why we so many rage posts.
2. Filing a CS ticket has proven to be almost fruitless since STO launched way back in February '09 (after beta). We've all heard the stories of CS tickets never getting a response, and quite a few of us have been in that situation. I myself have filed a few tickets (I don't think it's been more than 5) in the almost-five years I've been playing, and not once have I gotten a response; they weren't even for superfluous issues. So should the player-base expect any different when filing what may be a valid CS ticket over lost points?
I will say that I do applaud you for finally coming out and posting a more in depth explanation of what happened, and the overall thought process involved in the ultimate decisions you and the STO Dev team made. However, this exact post SHOULD have been made once the decisions were enacted.
Also, In your position as STO Executive Producer with this only being your second real post on these forums after again taking the position again in January of 2014 - I don't understand how 2 whole posts in 10 months is 'adequate communication' to a playerbase of 'hundreds of thousands'.
I still have to wonder if you are actually spending time making decisions about STO development, or really handing the job over to someone less qualified, and just signing off on stuff as it crosses your desk for the most part.
Two posts (and what, two blogs of about a paragraph each) since you took the position isn't very effective 'communication' (IMO.) Still, you did at least provide a response to what is probably one of the worst PR disasters in STO's 5 year development history (and given some of STO's previous PR disasters, that's saying something.)
Maybe the Lead Designer in your group shouldn't be a Dev who sees the majority of feedback as 'player whining' - and per his own admissions seems to peruse forum threads just to count "how many post 'til Hitler." A LOT of this was reported on Tribble PRIOR to DR's release, but it seems either no one from the STO Dev team looks at those reports; or if they do, in the end a Lead Designer dismisses them. If you guys aren't going to look at reports generated in your own in game feedback/bug report system - why not dump it? I mean you removed the exploration content to decrease download size; why not just pull out the hooks and code to this back end reporting system too since you don't seem to think it has value?
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..."
Not re-running them. I never did them when they were released last season, which is why was doing them.
However, I hope this incident have shown you the current leveling process in DR is for most player, a problem. I don't remember large number of player grinding patrols when LoR was introduced, or any story content.
In fact, the only time we had something remotely close was back during beta/release, where the story missions were not enough and didn't give enough reward. But then, we could grind the mirror universe STF, and the exploration cluster. Both of them were removed. And yet, you added more missions, and more xp, so we didn't have to grind in between.
And now, we are back to the beginning, except this time, we don't have the same tools at all, we have much less.
I used Tau Dewa myself, not for the specialization grind or dilithium, but to lvl to 60. I still have a character which is 50. I do not plan on leveling her, since it will be a drag.
Um, what? Dude. Where did I say that? Where's that strawman argument guy that tried calling me out on it because THIS is a strawman argument lol.
Flat out: It's not hard to know when you're exploiting something that you shouldn't. It really is just common sense, especially if you've played video games for any extended period of time.
I am going to take a stab at answering you. The Op pointed out they find a lot of exploits but generally don't close them because they are not heavily used. Same way a police officer generally does not pull someone over for going only 5mph faster than the limit on the freeway.
The mistake wasn't letting the exploit go uncorrected. It was under estimating how much it would be used.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
No it isn't ... how should I know if it's the same XP/Time - ratio, it gave me the last 4 years ...
... you're just assuming the "Exploits" were supposed to be something out of the ordinary, while in fact the Delta Rising Content was ... I was used to shoot down Elite Mobs within 5min after FOUR YEARS ... zerging down giant HP-bags in the DQ for 45min, not so much ... I often told myself "Well this is obviously a BUG" during Story Missions ...
Yes and you've been wrong more than a few times.
Patrols are not an exploit. You even wrote entire patrol based mission content into your game. I don't think you planed the scaling of xp based on groups doing high dps.
If people were making lvls quick doing a patrol mission, this is because they were teaming in very high dps builds. So, you put all this elite content in which is basically telling people they need to do more dps. Spend money, buy gear, do high dps but don't for the love of God lvl too quick to be able to do that?
If people lvl'd fast, they did so because they were actually good at space builds. If they were sitting in 3k dps builds, they would have been doing a japori in 20-30 mins or so. Getting the same xp for mission content, based on time and effort to gain that xp.
All your data proof has done is identified folks doing good dps. Then punished them. Smashing job.
I'm the customer I'm giving negative feedback on a part of their service which I don't like. If you don't like the feedback feel free to ignore it or offer cogent counter argument.
I'm not discussing his "information" it's the b.s. rationalization to selectively enforce their ToS on exploiting I took issue with. I made that point by quoting a Dev who basically gave a cart blanche to exploiting code error bugs 2 years ago under the pretext players shouldn't be punished for Dev's mistakes.
I actually don't have an issue w/what they did in revoking skill point et al gained. What I haven an issue is they don't do it unless it impacts their bottom line directly. They've let exploits ride for years w/o an acknowledgement (the old shield swapping bug), let alone a fix.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Firstly: Seventeen times faster than where? Seeing as the game provides different rates of XP depending on the content (and you've significantly altered them in recent days) , what is your basis for implying that this so-called exploit allowed people to gain EXP / skill points at seventeen times the rate you consider as normal? Indeed, what do you consider a normal rate of EXP / skill point, that should be earned?
Secondly: Most, if not nearly all, players who would have accessed the supposed "exploit" zones would have had level 50 characters for quite some time, or certainly not leveled a fresh character recently. How would a player know that their EXP / skill point gain is excessive? You've often released content in the past that can be sped through quicker than other games, the casual nature of STO is one of the main attractions of the game - how can you expect players to be aware that their skill point acquisition is above a certain level, particularly if this level is never revealed to the player base?
Please define "being efficient". I'd argue that finding the best sources of EXP / skill points in the game is being VERY efficient especially when there was no warning flag, no indicator that such a thing should be avoided. If, as you say, you've removed spec points from people who farmed EXP in a variety of zones and found all their removals to be warranted, could it not be argued that you provided multiple means for the player-base to be efficient? And drawing on my earlier points, if this excessive leveling was a bug, how did you expect players to know the difference, and why is the onus on them to self-police something they've never had to self-police before? If these bugs have existed in game for some time (going by how long the Tau Dewa sector has been around) then if players did notice their EXP gains before, then anything gained since the expansion will have appeared relatively normal to them, correct?
Where did you draw the line between efficient and unreasonable?
At least you're gracious enough to admit that interpretation comes into this. But as you've seen rather spectacularly over the past few days - we're not devs, we're unique sets of groups and individuals. How do we know what the dev team intended to happen? I'm sure you intend to be the greatest best-selling MMO of all-time but it doesn't make it so.
And in terms of leveling up / gain specialisation points - your own content pushes the player to finding sources of XP to level up in order to do the content! You even suggest as much! This wasn't about gaining an advantage, it was about completing the content you laid out for us to achieve. Shouldn't you be happy that people are actively playing the game, most more than usual, in order to do what you have *specifically* laid out what you want us to do?
I can't comment on this, except to say that the comments of players here and in other sections of the community... well, you're effectively calling them liars. If I were so adamant that I was right, and others were "cheating", well I'd provide actual evidence to back up my case. I realise that you'll have some reason why providing this is not possible but you'd certainly gain a lot of trust back if you actually told us which maps / what behaviour it is you're specifically punishing, particularly when a lot of people claim to have been nowhere near the effected sectors? Y'know, so we as players have a better indication of what to avoid or report in future?
And I also wonder how, having said people were leveling seventeen times quicker, you've reached these figures? It just looks like a set of arbitrary figures to me?
[/quote]
Thank you for making this post and taking the time to communicate with us. It was long over-due. But frankly, it's raised more questions than answers. You even admit that the error devs make should be fair game, and having come to realise that the inflated EXP issue bug was actually reported on Tribble but not instated on Holodeck, can you accept that you've kinda screwed up and caused a lot of players to waste both time and energy? And furthermore, you've made a lot of decent honest players feel like they've somehow wronged, and involuntarily turned sections of this community against one another by labeling such people as exploiters? Because with the bug you left in the game, and without any sort of barrier or safeguard to curtail player leveling (quite the opposite) how can you be surprised? I totally understand that if was a bug, it needed fixing. But you were the ones who left it there and you have to take some responsibility for it. I'm sure there's a section of the TOS that says otherwise but that won't keep players - trusting the development team, and the direction of the game, will!
And I sincerely hope you and the other devs have a wonderful weekend.
Baz
I'm serious.
17x the XP you'd get per hour doing those missions solo on elite is ABSURD.
EP noted specifically that the exploiters were levelling 17 times as fast as people "snywhere else in the game". That means 17x more than people grinding Argala elites, or ESTFing, or sitting in Foundry battleship royal rumble missions with the difficulty set to max.
That's cheating. That's bad.
Of course, the (probably unintentional) XP nerf that resulted from the fix is just bad dev work, and I'm pissed about that. I'm angry that I am FORCED to suck up to that prattling imbecile Neelix EVERY time I bring a character through the DR storyline on MULTIPLE occasions. I'm ENRAGED that Neelix is supposed to be not only plucky comic relief but also somehow effective at anything.
I'm highly disappointed in the bags-o-HP-and-instadeath-spam that most Advanced STFs are. I'm displeased with the dil nerfs that have been going on.
But I'm 100% on board with the EP on this issue.