leveling up at a rate so ridiculously out of proportion with any and all of the other content in the game should have been a really REALLY big clue
Leveling up in general is ridiculously fast in this game. It's not a good metric.
As for certain areas being more 'profitable' than others, simple.
Bad design in the risk/reward/time ratios.
Very nice, can you explain to me,cuz I don't have a clue.
People found a map with ships that hadn't been updated to be in line with all the other DR ships so they exploited this in teams to gain massive amount of special points. Is that it?
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."
Of course they were exploiting. That is why they updated NPCs with high shields and hull points so their runs are now 4~6min long. Frankly, I don't understand why they didn't take away their dilithium.
Nope it's still done in 3 minutes on advance now. Actualy 2m48s.
Those dirty exploiters deeps peeps. Cryptic, I formally request you multiply the current HP/Res values by a factor of 10.
Wait...didn't they just do that with advanced vs the old elites?
Heck, seeing how I don't play advanced, sure why not...be my guest and go ahead and multiply it by a factor of 100, just so it makes the deeps crew happy! :rolleyes:
Beats me. If that's indeed what happened, did those people know about this lack of scaling? Cuz, believe it or not, I don't particularly pay attention to how much expertise I'm earning when I play stuff. I can't imagine that I am the only one.
I imagine it would be hard not to notice. The pre Delta ships went down in 3 or 4 shots. The new more like 30 or 40. I would guess that was what caused the excitement (which might be an indicator that the new massive HP ships are not the way to go).
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'm still not getting it. I play defera instead of no win scenario for fleet marks, cuz it's easier. Heck, sometimes I would play infected space elite, instead of into the hive to get that tasty dilithium (actually I completely ignore the hive maps for the sake of my sanity). Does that mean I exploited?
Bad news, playing space in general instead of ground is a 10x+ exp exploit multiplier. I'd recommend trying to sell the account now before it's banned
Of course they were exploiting. That is why they updated NPCs with high shields and hull points so their runs are now 4~6min long. Frankly, I don't understand why they didn't take away their dilithium.
"Of course they were NOT exploiting" is what I hope you meant to say.
I have to laugh at this based on my own experience. I leveled to 60+7 fairly quickly simply by doing the episodes on elite along with the odd PvE queue map, no exploits needed, and yet I still had seven specialization points vanished with no explanation. If I was ever on an exploitable map, it was't obvious to me since I wan't really paying attention, I just wanted to complete the storyline, and I certainly never ran the same map over and over just to grind levels. I'd like to see the logs that prove I was using any kind of exploit.
I submitted a GM request and a Bug report and have yet to hear anything other than that the devs may or may not ever fix the problem and return the specialization points and to not expect to hear back either way. If I hadn't run across this post by accident, I may never have known what had happened. Very frustrated and I doubt I am the only one. Really crappy way to treat your players, Cryptic.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I exploited nothing yet I am being punished for playing the game enthusiastically enough that I leveled faster than the average (it took me four days of almost constant playing to hit 60 and then a specialization point or two per day after). I'm pretty sure there was no detailed analysis of player behavior but just an arbitrary threshold for an allowable rate of leveling; it's difficult to explain my case otherwise.
leveling up at a rate so ridiculously out of proportion with any and all of the other content in the game should have been a really REALLY big clue
I submit to you, that YOU are 'ridiculously out of proportion!' And the reaon we're allegedly leveling 17x faster than you. Get with the program, so we won't be labeled exploiters any more!
The man had the game rigged, so that we all would buy our collective behinds off, upgrading all to Epic Gold. So we did (as reasonably close to it). And now we did too much DPS?! Lolwut?!
while i applauded them for finally coming out and giving us an official statement on this matter ( and i still do) i must also wonder about the reasoning behind it when compared with things other devs have said.
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?
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.
Stephen DAngelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
now as this was not prevented in the game no person had an advantage over any other unless they were botting or something. but some fat slob smoking 3 packs with a 2 liter of dew and sweaty armpits grinding for a full week ( took a week for it to stop ) was he really cheating? or even exploiting just going by your lose definition.
now in comparison i can think of A2B it would fall into this definition as not all ships can even use it. ( not sure why many would want too but thats besides the point) If something in the game happens that was unintended and only certain people can use it, unlike this mess where every player COULD do it, then A2B would actually be an exploit.
"Chance of X when Y" has always been a core design concept of Duty Officer active roster abilities. Exceptions have been made over the ~1.5 years since the system's introduction, but we haven't thrown out the rule. Doffs are intended to be fun, extra effects to existing abilities. Not game-changing, build-altering abilities. The existence of A2B Technicians (and their ilk), and the resulting builds they have spawned, are an anomaly that was never intended to happen in this system, and which we don't intend to repeat.
this clearly states it is an anomaly that was not intended to happen yet it is still persistent.
but one thing that really tops all this off. this Power LvLing issue was reported in tribble , yet it remained. now if it is know that it is reported and your team does not fix and or acknowledge that its a know issue, players are going to assume that it was then working as intended and part of normal game play. So more Information on these type of things would do allot to solve problems even if your team thinks it is not important.
Trophies for killing FEDS ahh those were the days.
Everytime you gain a level you have to complete a 20 hour research project with your engineer.
It's funny how one system has a blocked timegate, then another a timegate you buy your way through - where is the consistency.
Then leveling which seems to be the intended content for the next 6 months imperative or paramount to stall the players, to last longer has NO timegate.
With 600 replays of story missions to max it, it's obvious they wanted it to be gameplay for years.
Well isn't that exactly what reputation and fleet system timegates were for?
They have already been using features in their game to control player progression, it's been in the game for years.
Not that I am a fan of any of those decisions or would like to play under such a regime, I am just saying since the leveling meant so much to them, they probably should have done it properly.
Another problem with the leveling is the passives are more or less pointless.
Theoretically it might be okay to work for weeks on just 1 point if it was worth it but really the current specialization passives are not worth the effort spent in japori at 17x speed hacking with macros.
I stopped leveling in japori a week before the nerf because there wasn't 1 single passive I wanted.
And you know what, I didn't bring any other characters in because in my opinion the entire level cap is essentially worthless.
The development team became aware of a potential leveling exploit on Wednesday morning this week. ......
Stephen DAngelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
Thanks for the explanation and info. 17x would be epic, TOR is only offering 12x for their expansion, but i do understand your position.....but im not going to lie, i wouldve used it too if id been there
many of us arent actually trying to cheat the company...we had already hit end game levels and achievements, earned/purchased gear included. But we are all different, im a social gamer i like to get past all that now that ive done the game every possible way leveling over a dozen toons, just for team ups and joining friends for rp missions
Exactly how and where do we file these tickets? I want to be sure I do it right to get my spec points returned to me. I was in Japori only briefly before I determined it wasn't rewarding as much as it should have and stuck to Argala for all of my significant levlling.
im not sure myself, ive been filing bug reports and bothering GMs for years now....nothing, none of em even showed up on their boards they mentioned....unfair to cats i say!
14 levels gained, all solo play, no teaming. At most 1 level achieved in Tau Dewa patrols (was trying to see for myself what the hype was for, ended up seeing the time spent/xp ratio was worse than Argala, so I left) and I'm being generous.
All the remaining xp was gained in Argala, new story missions, some doffing probably.
If you insist on taking 3 out of the 14 spec points, it means almost all I did was an exploit, definitely solo playing Argala and probably even playing the story missions. If that ain't absurd, I don't know...
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
I did Japori too, and Beta Thoridar and to those who would now wish to label me cheater or exploiter, well TBH I had no idea it was an exploit especially after the double XP fortnight the previous two weeks. Funny enough I had done the first mission with a mate who then didn't reach level 51 after all the patrols and stuff at the beginning. He got the ****s and left, saying that this grind would only get worse and made the game utterly pointless.
He was right it does. The game progresses so slowly now that a Glacier would beat it in a 10,000m race.
I then heard that Patrols were giving better XP when grouped together. So off I went and had a go at the Patrols in Tau Dewa. Not because I didn't want to do the patrols in the DQ, but more that I knew the TD ones from previous play. The whole issue of an exploit then got totally lost on me, mainly because the game suddenly started being a lot of fun, I teamed up with people I didn't know and we did some Patrols, sometimes the levels were easier to reach than others, but in the end even with an all 60 group it wasn't too bad. Drops were reasonable, the fights in a lvl 50-59 zone weren't off the charts impossible and the biggest part was it was fun to play.
That really hit a high for me, as most of this game had been a bit flat in comparison to the World Boss events in Guild Wars 2 or the Random Zone events in Rift for instance, however this gave me that feeling of enjoyment of working together to succeed and get rewards that were meaningful.
I comprehend pacing and design schema, but when the playerbase are enjoying an exploit 100x more than the design schema you were working to, isn't there something a little off in your calculations Cryptic? Oddly enough I think that if the upgrade system cost 200 dil per Superior upgrade instead of 2000, you'd find people would be using it left right and centre. People would be trying different combinations and working on making different builds for their ships they paid for (in a lot of cases). Most players have given up getting Mk14 UR or Epic on anything other than their main, if that. The others become unused dil farmers. Some are even just deleting them as the grind is that boring.
Seriously Cryptic, these people want to be your friends, the people who support you, but with the current attitude and inflexibility more explosions like DR's release are all I can see in the future.
I really like the way you worded your post. This is exactly the sentiment being echoed in my fleet atm. We lost 4 people yesterday who said they were taking a break from the game till they hear things have been fixed. I have 7 characters 6 of which are nearing 54 or at 54. Sadly, they are just dil farmers now. I cannot even begin to afford to setup my main character yet and will more than likely give up half way through because of how overly expensive and tedious it is.
It really is crazy that Cryptic is so out of touch with what it is to be a gamer rather than a game developer that they think "this design schema & progression, etc is ok. Seriously, get a clue Cryptic. You should realize this "exploit" should be what the game is like normally. That SHOULD be the reward rate for both XP and Drops. Not over the top but certainly enough to be fun. What it is now, what you deem to be "acceptable" is ridiculous, and damn near insulting.
The only reason I haven't left yet is I can still do Doff assignments to keep Dilithium coming in as well as XP while I wait to see if Cryptic mans up and fixes this catastrophe called an expansion pack.
A lot of us read his post .
From the mostly clueless players , to the High Math guys in the DPS channels .
Most of us came to nearly the same conclusions ... namely that we were wrongly accused on two counts :
1) Of knowingly cheating .
2) Of not playing "as intended" while using the very mechanics that were put in game by Cryptic , such as teaming , playing at high difficulty levels and using XP boosts that Cryptic sell .
Most of us also think that we were wrongly accused to make Cryptic look good (instead of the other way around) , and most of us see the XP nerf as the proverbial Arrow to the Knee in DR leveling .
... but you keep drinking the Kool Aid ...
Errm, dude, I agree with what you said, I was talking about the shill called ummax who seems to have trouble discerning the difference between an actual exploit and a failure to test their own damn code, even after bug reports about the very issue they are claiming is an exploit.
I think you might be targeting the wrong guy...
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
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
Considering that you have been told about tau dewa before DR's release... No, you do not get an excuse.
Comments
Leveling up in general is ridiculously fast in this game. It's not a good metric.
As for certain areas being more 'profitable' than others, simple.
Bad design in the risk/reward/time ratios.
Were people exploiting when they cleared elite STFs in 2-3 minutes? If the answer is 'no' then your point is moot.
... see the post title for reference ...
People found a map with ships that hadn't been updated to be in line with all the other DR ships so they exploited this in teams to gain massive amount of special points. Is that it?
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Nope it's still done in 3 minutes on advance now. Actualy 2m48s.
Specially when it's an illustrious Post Number Two. Before even reading it, the whole thing smacks of a Sermon From On High.
Wait...didn't they just do that with advanced vs the old elites?
Heck, seeing how I don't play advanced, sure why not...be my guest and go ahead and multiply it by a factor of 100, just so it makes the deeps crew happy! :rolleyes:
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
I imagine it would be hard not to notice. The pre Delta ships went down in 3 or 4 shots. The new more like 30 or 40. I would guess that was what caused the excitement (which might be an indicator that the new massive HP ships are not the way to go).
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Bad news, playing space in general instead of ground is a 10x+ exp exploit multiplier. I'd recommend trying to sell the account now before it's banned
"Of course they were NOT exploiting" is what I hope you meant to say.
And just think how much harder it is to get artifacts and neural processors on Normal than it is on Elite!
I'd guess that people playing STFs on Elite are progressing at 500x or more the intended rate!
I have to laugh at this based on my own experience. I leveled to 60+7 fairly quickly simply by doing the episodes on elite along with the odd PvE queue map, no exploits needed, and yet I still had seven specialization points vanished with no explanation. If I was ever on an exploitable map, it was't obvious to me since I wan't really paying attention, I just wanted to complete the storyline, and I certainly never ran the same map over and over just to grind levels. I'd like to see the logs that prove I was using any kind of exploit.
I submitted a GM request and a Bug report and have yet to hear anything other than that the devs may or may not ever fix the problem and return the specialization points and to not expect to hear back either way. If I hadn't run across this post by accident, I may never have known what had happened. Very frustrated and I doubt I am the only one. Really crappy way to treat your players, Cryptic.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I exploited nothing yet I am being punished for playing the game enthusiastically enough that I leveled faster than the average (it took me four days of almost constant playing to hit 60 and then a specialization point or two per day after). I'm pretty sure there was no detailed analysis of player behavior but just an arbitrary threshold for an allowable rate of leveling; it's difficult to explain my case otherwise.
I submit to you, that YOU are 'ridiculously out of proportion!' And the reaon we're allegedly leveling 17x faster than you. Get with the program, so we won't be labeled exploiters any more!
The man had the game rigged, so that we all would buy our collective behinds off, upgrading all to Epic Gold. So we did (as reasonably close to it). And now we did too much DPS?! Lolwut?!
Read the quote:
now as this was not prevented in the game no person had an advantage over any other unless they were botting or something. but some fat slob smoking 3 packs with a 2 liter of dew and sweaty armpits grinding for a full week ( took a week for it to stop ) was he really cheating? or even exploiting just going by your lose definition.
now in comparison i can think of A2B it would fall into this definition as not all ships can even use it. ( not sure why many would want too but thats besides the point) If something in the game happens that was unintended and only certain people can use it, unlike this mess where every player COULD do it, then A2B would actually be an exploit.
here is a Quote from another dev on A2B:
this clearly states it is an anomaly that was not intended to happen yet it is still persistent.
but one thing that really tops all this off. this Power LvLing issue was reported in tribble , yet it remained. now if it is know that it is reported and your team does not fix and or acknowledge that its a know issue, players are going to assume that it was then working as intended and part of normal game play. So more Information on these type of things would do allot to solve problems even if your team thinks it is not important.
Everytime you gain a level you have to complete a 20 hour research project with your engineer.
It's funny how one system has a blocked timegate, then another a timegate you buy your way through - where is the consistency.
Then leveling which seems to be the intended content for the next 6 months imperative or paramount to stall the players, to last longer has NO timegate.
With 600 replays of story missions to max it, it's obvious they wanted it to be gameplay for years.
Well isn't that exactly what reputation and fleet system timegates were for?
They have already been using features in their game to control player progression, it's been in the game for years.
Not that I am a fan of any of those decisions or would like to play under such a regime, I am just saying since the leveling meant so much to them, they probably should have done it properly.
Another problem with the leveling is the passives are more or less pointless.
Theoretically it might be okay to work for weeks on just 1 point if it was worth it but really the current specialization passives are not worth the effort spent in japori at 17x speed hacking with macros.
I stopped leveling in japori a week before the nerf because there wasn't 1 single passive I wanted.
And you know what, I didn't bring any other characters in because in my opinion the entire level cap is essentially worthless.
Thanks for the explanation and info. 17x would be epic, TOR is only offering 12x for their expansion, but i do understand your position.....but im not going to lie, i wouldve used it too if id been there
many of us arent actually trying to cheat the company...we had already hit end game levels and achievements, earned/purchased gear included. But we are all different, im a social gamer i like to get past all that now that ive done the game every possible way leveling over a dozen toons, just for team ups and joining friends for rp missions
im not sure myself, ive been filing bug reports and bothering GMs for years now....nothing, none of em even showed up on their boards they mentioned....unfair to cats i say!
14 levels gained, all solo play, no teaming. At most 1 level achieved in Tau Dewa patrols (was trying to see for myself what the hype was for, ended up seeing the time spent/xp ratio was worse than Argala, so I left) and I'm being generous.
All the remaining xp was gained in Argala, new story missions, some doffing probably.
If you insist on taking 3 out of the 14 spec points, it means almost all I did was an exploit, definitely solo playing Argala and probably even playing the story missions. If that ain't absurd, I don't know...
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
I really like the way you worded your post. This is exactly the sentiment being echoed in my fleet atm. We lost 4 people yesterday who said they were taking a break from the game till they hear things have been fixed. I have 7 characters 6 of which are nearing 54 or at 54. Sadly, they are just dil farmers now. I cannot even begin to afford to setup my main character yet and will more than likely give up half way through because of how overly expensive and tedious it is.
It really is crazy that Cryptic is so out of touch with what it is to be a gamer rather than a game developer that they think "this design schema & progression, etc is ok. Seriously, get a clue Cryptic. You should realize this "exploit" should be what the game is like normally. That SHOULD be the reward rate for both XP and Drops. Not over the top but certainly enough to be fun. What it is now, what you deem to be "acceptable" is ridiculous, and damn near insulting.
The only reason I haven't left yet is I can still do Doff assignments to keep Dilithium coming in as well as XP while I wait to see if Cryptic mans up and fixes this catastrophe called an expansion pack.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Campaign: The Battle of Neverwinter - NWS-DOQXFA4ZD
Prologue: A not so simple plan - NW-DCJG75B9D
I think you might be targeting the wrong guy...
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
Considering that you have been told about tau dewa before DR's release... No, you do not get an excuse.
Whooppss .... sorry about that !