Exactly. I appreciate this post and don't understand why people are STILL giving them TRIBBLE about this whole thing. I've been speculating what the EP laid out and have said these things in the Dev's defense (i.e., what the definition of the word exploit is ) online and in-game, so I'm glad to have some official corroboration.
I think this is a case of fair assessment and reasonable action taken.
Actually, anyone who did a lot of stuff on elite, and got more than 10 points past 60, could have potentially lost points. The EP didn't really make this part clear: 5x skill points on elite was not intended. 2x was intended, so yesterday they fixed it. Should they have gotten it earlier? Sure. But, they didn't, so they're fixing it now.
Since you got points doing Argala on elite, you were getting quite a bit more xp than intended. Intentional exploit or not, it got adjusted because the devs judged it to be too much. Their game, their choice. Now you can stay or go, your choice. Or stay here and whine. What's done is done.
No where in my post(s) am I whining or saying that I'm going to quit. And yes, it is their game, but to arbitrarily say "this is not intended" frankly isn't good enough. If they decide the style that you play isn't as they intended and decided to change it on you without so much as a warning, you would be upset too.
Did I power-grind, yes, was it or was it not intended, who knows. But as far as I'm aware, grouping up for content, and fighting the highest level of mobs possible for the highest xp reward in any MMO is standard practice. If I want to not run their story content and just kill a mob 6 levels above me, for xp, in most MMOS that I have played, that is okay.
That may not be how you CHOSE to play, but it is how I CHOSE to play. What I do with my time is my own concern.
I know people that lost 6-7 points and all they did was stuff in the PVE queue, I'm sure in your narrow definition, they cheated too, right?
I want it now! I want it now! WAAAA! is all I am seeing posted for the most part. You aren't supposed to get something that should take a month or 2 in the span of a week, give up already, its not happening.
Excuse me? Go do a ctrl + f and look up Tau Dewa on the EPs post. You'll find nothing. All the EP said was that they "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". He did not specify where or what the exploit was, only that it was not operating as intended. So, yeah, sorry bud, read it again instead of jumping to your own conclusions.
I want it now! I want it now! WAAAA! is all I am seeing posted for the most part. You aren't supposed to get something that should take a month or 2 in the span of a week, give up already, its not happening.
Huh ? ... What are you supposed to get after 2 months ... no idea what it is, but I hope you enjoy it ... after all it'S 2 months of your time ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
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.
If you don't like the service why trash his apology, stick to the topic at hand not some garbage 2 years ago. He just took his position this year. Ultimately if you don't have an issue, on this topic or was affected by it why post, and yeah I'm paying customer also. There is a time and place for feedback, negative ones at that NOT when he is trying to clear the air on current issues. :rolleyes:
I want it now! I want it now! WAAAA! is all I am seeing posted for the most part. You aren't supposed to get something that should take a month or 2 in the span of a week, give up already, its not happening.
If getting to level 60 is supposed to be 2 months of work then we have BIG problems in this game considering the devs have created less then 1 week of content.
The idea that this was found on Tribble and reported to the Devs, just reinforces my reasons for no longer agreeing to test their content on Tribble.
Our beta feedback often means nothing.
Additionally, the communication and PR around the whole thing was handled absolutely terrible.
Much as the marketing for Season 9.5 and Delta Rising were embarrassing at best.
Cryptic and PWE need to work on their PR and Marketing Departments.
That's my disappointment with the situation.
I was not affected, by the rollback, punishment, whatever.
I've been happy to take DR slowly, so 55 is my highest level.
From my perspective ...
Horrible communication led to angry players.
Angry players honestly, acted out like a bunch of preschoolers who didn't get their snack.
Some of the things people have said , and attacks in words they made against people are despicable.
I also, disagree with many of the things in D'Angelo's letter to us.
And disagree with their handling of the entire situation.
Especially considering that "the dev team became aware of this wednesday morning" when (I believe) it was reported on tribble during the testing for the expansion.
But I do thank him for coming here and at least saying something.
As I understand it, it takes a lot to get D'angelo to come talk to the players.
I hope that out of this the Cryptic and more specifically STO team learns how to communicate with their playerbase. I also hope that they take a good long look at the internal failures they made that led to this entire situation. From the top down. Start to finish.
Why wasn't this addressed when reported on tribble?
which designer decided to ignore the reports?
That person should be shown the door.
Right up through, the way the exploit was finally dealt with in such a Draconian fashion when it was finally dealt with.
Now, like the rest of you. I face the choice of will I keep playing or not.
The answer is yes. I'm a Foundry addict, and you should see some of the new updates.
But except for a handful of Devs I actually like, Cryptic just lost the last bit of trust and faith I had in them.
I might have agreed with you 10 years ago . Back when you had to work for everything. But now anyone with a credit card can be just as bad TRIBBLE as me.
If you don't like the service why trash his apology, stick to the topic at hand not some garbage 2 years ago. He just took his position this year. Ultimately if you don't have an issue, on this topic or was affected by it why post, and yeah I'm paying customer also. There is a time and place for feedback, negative ones at that NOT when he is trying to clear the air on current issues. :rolleyes:
I didn't trash his apology, I trashed the company's selective enforcement of exploiting. It wasn't just "garbage 2 years ago" it was in affect an ongoing policy position never contradicted for over 2 years to not enforce players exploiting Dev coding errors. It is absolutely germane to ask now why is this Dev coding bug being considered an exploit while all along the only mention from a Dev on the issue that I'm aware of gave players a cart blanche to exploit away?
The only answer I can think of is $$$, which is what I really take issue with. If they held themselves to a higher standard to begin w/and enforced their ToS all along the quality of their QA/QC would've been forced to improve to avoid this stuff going live and wasting their resources. Notice they haven't even fixed the bugs, they just shut off access to the content.
[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
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.
Average PuG player STF DPS pre DR = 2k-3k (so say 2.5k)
Top Tier DPS Channel STF DPS pre DR = 40k?
40/2.5 = 16
Top tier players completing content to get rewards 16x faster has been par for the course mate. Should everyone in the DPS channels be banned for exploiting?
This entire 17x faster argument fails to appreciate the details using a number that exaggerates the severity of the design oversight now labeled as an exploit. Please stop focusing solely on it.
Uh, how is me stating that grinding something that is giving 17 times the normal exp is an exploit a strawman argument?
EP said that people were leveling 17 times faster than elsewhere, not that the mobs gave 17 times more XP. A big difference. Of course a 5-man group with e.g. 20k average DPS is going to level up a LOT faster than a solo player who can barely do 3-4k.
The idea that this was found on Tribble and reported to the Devs, just reinforces my reasons for no longer agreeing to test their content on Tribble.
Our beta feedback often means nothing.
Why should I test their work for free and not get paid for it? Even worst, why should I test their work for FREE and then get ignored in the end?
I still disagree vigorously with the characterization of the leveling as abusive or unreasonable. To my view, the only thing that rises to that standard is the action taken by the game runners, abusing the power imbalance that's intrinsic to any MMO to punish some players.
But at least nobody can claim at this point that the position of the game runners hasn't been expressed clearly and unambiguously. The communication is appreciated; it gives we players the clarity to make an informed decision about how to react. We now understand where the line is. So thanks, at least, for that.
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?
no you are not the only one. except the fanbois, I think there is no one who realy consider this as an exploit, but cryptic needs an excuse. they need to blame it to someone else. its simple as that, realy.
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 was playing 'Shutdown' (near DS9). It seems they're now saying we should have known those NPCs were paying out too much. Why?! It's been years since I missioned there! On Elite, these missions really are considerably harder too. It made perfect sense to me that these NPCs bosses would go down for like 1,000 XP. For comparision, the bosses in the current DR patrol missions went for about the same. And do you know how long it takes to kill a Vaadwaur boss on Elite? The, what, 900 or so points they gave, iirc, seemed absolutely appropriate (and still does).
I still feel very groggy about this. Not in the least because I realize I'm SOL. The CEO posted, and did an excellent job of it. Game Over. I'm now left with determining whether I'm really willing to go on, having to grind another few months or so, just to get back what I was rudely robbed of. And all, it seems, because I had the 'exploitative' audicity to play on Elite, something I did for no greater reason than why I also played STFs on Elite. You, Cryptic, assumed blanket malice, and accordingly lashed out harshly and disproportionately.
The webpage at http://www.arcgames.com/supportredirect/app/ask?returnTo=0&error=1 has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer.
Learn more about this problem.
Error code: ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS
So after trying to figure it out, I decided to give up and email you. This was the result : BN1BFFO11FD052.mail.protection.outlook.com rejected your message to the following email addresses:
customer.service2@perfectworld.com
A problem occurred during the delivery of this message. The mail routing configuration for this recipient may be producing a mail loop. This could be a temporary situation. Please try to resend the message later. If the problem continues, contact your helpdesk and refer them to the DSN code 5.4.6 in Exchange Online article for tips on how they can resolve this issue.
BN1BFFO11FD052.mail.protection.outlook.com gave this error:
Hop count exceeded - possible mail loop
Please note that I checked my sent email folder and it shows I correctly sent this to the email you linked. So. How can I talk to you guys? I cant get through to you through your website, I can't get through to you through your email. Please help.
I agree with this point.
If a developer has something to say, he/she can do it under their own account, and be man/woman enough to take the flak for it.
Not hide under "Q", which could be anyone. That's very dodgy.
So you say 300 chars (250 accounts) were exploiting to a serious extent. Why then does it look like far more than that have had spec points pulled (ie. they were exploiting)?
Whoever posted under the 'Q' account the the other day needs to be spanked and spanked hard. This has been my biggest issue and it now has to be taken as company gospel. Blanket accusation of exploiting to cover your hides for your mistake is unprofessional and stinks of "saving face" in front of your superiors.
Please see the light on this. You are alienating your playerbase.
I'm glad to see this and explained what happen. And how it went down and handled. This was the best response on this subject that created a mass uproar.
I'm glad it got fixed before it got out of hand. And really messed up players. And so others can have a fair chance on the game. Where others took full advantage of it. And there are many players who would.
I didn't get a chance to do patrols when it went down since I only play on weekends. Other than a quick log on during the week to collect R&D points, Doff assignments, and Reps turn in.
Granted some players might left, but that is how it goes.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
People exploited, I get that. They got penalized, I get that.
But according to the EP, there was a leeway involved. That through the penalization it was decided on a curve, with many players getting what they were not intended to get, and getting off without a hitch.
Personally, I think this was one of the right decisions made. And if people really want to quit the game over this, I wish them luck on whatever video game they choose to play next.
Please check my ticket. You will find I did not exploiting and taking TWO points of THIRTEEN is just petty, malicious, and considering the money I spend on this game, infuriating.
You can bet your TRIBBLE I'm gonna talk about it to my gamer buddies who run a few site.
You can bet if this isn't reversed and players WRONGLY accused of EXPLOITING, when they clearly arent, (in a sophomoric attempt to deflect the responsibility of your actions onto the community in a divide and conquer manner) arent offered an apology you will see the end of my playing this game or any cryptic product for that matter.
Also I will be finding out if I can have action taken due to XP boosts being purchased and then taken back without a refund.
Its hard to satisfy everyone. To me they should have tested the expansion out more before releasing. And they should have come out and told better before it got out of hand. However if people leaves over a TRIBBLE up. Then thats them. Things happen, we all learn, get over it, and move on.
I plan to keep on playing. Cause we are only human and we make mistakes.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Comments
Exactly. I appreciate this post and don't understand why people are STILL giving them TRIBBLE about this whole thing. I've been speculating what the EP laid out and have said these things in the Dev's defense (i.e., what the definition of the word exploit is ) online and in-game, so I'm glad to have some official corroboration.
I think this is a case of fair assessment and reasonable action taken.
No where in my post(s) am I whining or saying that I'm going to quit. And yes, it is their game, but to arbitrarily say "this is not intended" frankly isn't good enough. If they decide the style that you play isn't as they intended and decided to change it on you without so much as a warning, you would be upset too.
Did I power-grind, yes, was it or was it not intended, who knows. But as far as I'm aware, grouping up for content, and fighting the highest level of mobs possible for the highest xp reward in any MMO is standard practice. If I want to not run their story content and just kill a mob 6 levels above me, for xp, in most MMOS that I have played, that is okay.
That may not be how you CHOSE to play, but it is how I CHOSE to play. What I do with my time is my own concern.
I know people that lost 6-7 points and all they did was stuff in the PVE queue, I'm sure in your narrow definition, they cheated too, right?
Excuse me? Go do a ctrl + f and look up Tau Dewa on the EPs post. You'll find nothing. All the EP said was that they "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". He did not specify where or what the exploit was, only that it was not operating as intended. So, yeah, sorry bud, read it again instead of jumping to your own conclusions.
Not really. The EP ordered the change but it's not his fault a dev screwed up and put in a /2 instead of an *2.
Huh ? ... What are you supposed to get after 2 months ... no idea what it is, but I hope you enjoy it ... after all it'S 2 months of your time ...
If you don't like the service why trash his apology, stick to the topic at hand not some garbage 2 years ago. He just took his position this year. Ultimately if you don't have an issue, on this topic or was affected by it why post, and yeah I'm paying customer also. There is a time and place for feedback, negative ones at that NOT when he is trying to clear the air on current issues. :rolleyes:
You seeing the pattern yet?
If getting to level 60 is supposed to be 2 months of work then we have BIG problems in this game considering the devs have created less then 1 week of content.
Our beta feedback often means nothing.
Additionally, the communication and PR around the whole thing was handled absolutely terrible.
Much as the marketing for Season 9.5 and Delta Rising were embarrassing at best.
Cryptic and PWE need to work on their PR and Marketing Departments.
That's my disappointment with the situation.
I was not affected, by the rollback, punishment, whatever.
I've been happy to take DR slowly, so 55 is my highest level.
From my perspective ...
Horrible communication led to angry players.
Angry players honestly, acted out like a bunch of preschoolers who didn't get their snack.
Some of the things people have said , and attacks in words they made against people are despicable.
I also, disagree with many of the things in D'Angelo's letter to us.
And disagree with their handling of the entire situation.
Especially considering that "the dev team became aware of this wednesday morning" when (I believe) it was reported on tribble during the testing for the expansion.
But I do thank him for coming here and at least saying something.
As I understand it, it takes a lot to get D'angelo to come talk to the players.
I hope that out of this the Cryptic and more specifically STO team learns how to communicate with their playerbase. I also hope that they take a good long look at the internal failures they made that led to this entire situation. From the top down. Start to finish.
Why wasn't this addressed when reported on tribble?
which designer decided to ignore the reports?
That person should be shown the door.
Right up through, the way the exploit was finally dealt with in such a Draconian fashion when it was finally dealt with.
Now, like the rest of you. I face the choice of will I keep playing or not.
The answer is yes. I'm a Foundry addict, and you should see some of the new updates.
But except for a handful of Devs I actually like, Cryptic just lost the last bit of trust and faith I had in them.
The last of my ***ks has been given.
- HippieJohn -
Way more Angry than you'd think.
I might have agreed with you 10 years ago . Back when you had to work for everything. But now anyone with a credit card can be just as bad TRIBBLE as me.
Look at some of the stuff gulberat's posted on this issue.
He crunched the numbers and figured that the nerf was the result of a simple grammatical error.
And no, I do NOT believe that the nerf was intended.
people maxing all specialization which got rolled back.
I didn't trash his apology, I trashed the company's selective enforcement of exploiting. It wasn't just "garbage 2 years ago" it was in affect an ongoing policy position never contradicted for over 2 years to not enforce players exploiting Dev coding errors. It is absolutely germane to ask now why is this Dev coding bug being considered an exploit while all along the only mention from a Dev on the issue that I'm aware of gave players a cart blanche to exploit away?
The only answer I can think of is $$$, which is what I really take issue with. If they held themselves to a higher standard to begin w/and enforced their ToS all along the quality of their QA/QC would've been forced to improve to avoid this stuff going live and wasting their resources. Notice they haven't even fixed the bugs, they just shut off access to the content.
Random Quote from Kerrat
"Sumlobus@****: your mums eat Iced Targ Poo"
C&H Fed banter
Average PuG player STF DPS pre DR = 2k-3k (so say 2.5k)
Top Tier DPS Channel STF DPS pre DR = 40k?
40/2.5 = 16
Top tier players completing content to get rewards 16x faster has been par for the course mate. Should everyone in the DPS channels be banned for exploiting?
This entire 17x faster argument fails to appreciate the details using a number that exaggerates the severity of the design oversight now labeled as an exploit. Please stop focusing solely on it.
EP said that people were leveling 17 times faster than elsewhere, not that the mobs gave 17 times more XP. A big difference. Of course a 5-man group with e.g. 20k average DPS is going to level up a LOT faster than a solo player who can barely do 3-4k.
Why should I test their work for free and not get paid for it? Even worst, why should I test their work for FREE and then get ignored in the end?
What is Tribble used for again?
http://sarcasm.link/en/s/7adea4.jpg
Point being : It's neither worth anything nor "content"
But at least nobody can claim at this point that the position of the game runners hasn't been expressed clearly and unambiguously. The communication is appreciated; it gives we players the clarity to make an informed decision about how to react. We now understand where the line is. So thanks, at least, for that.
no you are not the only one. except the fanbois, I think there is no one who realy consider this as an exploit, but cryptic needs an excuse. they need to blame it to someone else. its simple as that, realy.
I was playing 'Shutdown' (near DS9). It seems they're now saying we should have known those NPCs were paying out too much. Why?! It's been years since I missioned there! On Elite, these missions really are considerably harder too. It made perfect sense to me that these NPCs bosses would go down for like 1,000 XP. For comparision, the bosses in the current DR patrol missions went for about the same. And do you know how long it takes to kill a Vaadwaur boss on Elite? The, what, 900 or so points they gave, iirc, seemed absolutely appropriate (and still does).
I still feel very groggy about this. Not in the least because I realize I'm SOL. The CEO posted, and did an excellent job of it. Game Over. I'm now left with determining whether I'm really willing to go on, having to grind another few months or so, just to get back what I was rudely robbed of. And all, it seems, because I had the 'exploitative' audicity to play on Elite, something I did for no greater reason than why I also played STFs on Elite. You, Cryptic, assumed blanket malice, and accordingly lashed out harshly and disproportionately.
So I am truly having an issue contacting CS. When I go to this website :
http://support.arcgames.com/app/games/detail/a_id/4423/p/100
and click the Submit A Ticket button, I get sent here :
https://www.arcgames.com/supportredirect/app/ask?returnTo=0&error=1
and get this error message :
The webpage at http://www.arcgames.com/supportredirect/app/ask?returnTo=0&error=1 has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer.
Learn more about this problem.
Error code: ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS
So after trying to figure it out, I decided to give up and email you. This was the result : BN1BFFO11FD052.mail.protection.outlook.com rejected your message to the following email addresses:
customer.service2@perfectworld.com
A problem occurred during the delivery of this message. The mail routing configuration for this recipient may be producing a mail loop. This could be a temporary situation. Please try to resend the message later. If the problem continues, contact your helpdesk and refer them to the DSN code 5.4.6 in Exchange Online article for tips on how they can resolve this issue.
BN1BFFO11FD052.mail.protection.outlook.com gave this error:
Hop count exceeded - possible mail loop
Please note that I checked my sent email folder and it shows I correctly sent this to the email you linked. So. How can I talk to you guys? I cant get through to you through your website, I can't get through to you through your email. Please help.
If a developer has something to say, he/she can do it under their own account, and be man/woman enough to take the flak for it.
Not hide under "Q", which could be anyone. That's very dodgy.
I'm glad it got fixed before it got out of hand. And really messed up players. And so others can have a fair chance on the game. Where others took full advantage of it. And there are many players who would.
I didn't get a chance to do patrols when it went down since I only play on weekends. Other than a quick log on during the week to collect R&D points, Doff assignments, and Reps turn in.
Granted some players might left, but that is how it goes.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
This is my response to that.
People exploited, I get that. They got penalized, I get that.
But according to the EP, there was a leeway involved. That through the penalization it was decided on a curve, with many players getting what they were not intended to get, and getting off without a hitch.
Personally, I think this was one of the right decisions made. And if people really want to quit the game over this, I wish them luck on whatever video game they choose to play next.
Please check my ticket. You will find I did not exploiting and taking TWO points of THIRTEEN is just petty, malicious, and considering the money I spend on this game, infuriating.
You can bet your TRIBBLE I'm gonna talk about it to my gamer buddies who run a few site.
You can bet if this isn't reversed and players WRONGLY accused of EXPLOITING, when they clearly arent, (in a sophomoric attempt to deflect the responsibility of your actions onto the community in a divide and conquer manner) arent offered an apology you will see the end of my playing this game or any cryptic product for that matter.
Also I will be finding out if I can have action taken due to XP boosts being purchased and then taken back without a refund.
Fix this **** or I will.
Its hard to satisfy everyone. To me they should have tested the expansion out more before releasing. And they should have come out and told better before it got out of hand. However if people leaves over a TRIBBLE up. Then thats them. Things happen, we all learn, get over it, and move on.
I plan to keep on playing. Cause we are only human and we make mistakes.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Bye.