I farmed Tau Dewa like mad during The DR launch. I didn't do it with the goal of gaining levels or even with the knowledge of the incorrect AI Levels. I simply would rather join my fleet in whatever they are doing rather than play on my own or pug STFs.
During this time I racked up 25ish speck points putting me in cryptics hit bracket yet I was untouched by the reset.
My girlfriend on the other hand who was very behind in story content raced though the episodes like a woman possessed so she could get to the DR story and managed to rack up a rather impressive 20 Spec points. During the roll back 10 of them were confiscated.
We have been scratching our heads over this for some time untill someone asked us a question that seemed rather silly at first.
Which one of you spends the most money on the game.
Being a collector I buy almost every Non science ship cryptic puts out at least for the fed faction Naturally that means I have spent quite a bit.
My girlfriend on the other hand has never spent a penny on the game getting all her zen from Dil.
Now this could be a coincidence but I would like to see if there are any similar cases.
The boss being a gigantic Winter Epohh Researcher. As you lay waste to the Epohh Horde, she can occasionally cry out things like, "Didn't you want an Epohh friend?"
There seems to be little rhyme or reason to the hits reported. I'm thoroughly convinced whatever method they used to enact the rollback was fatally flawed.
Cryptic's bugtesting and QA has a long history of being pretty awful, so this isn't really surprising. I wind up defending them a lot on most other things, but this... this is absolutely not one of those things.
There seems to be little rhyme or reason to the hits reported. I'm thoroughly convinced whatever method they used to enact the rollback was fatally flawed.
Cryptic's bugtesting and QA has a long history of being pretty awful, so this isn't really surprising. I wind up defending them a lot on most other things, but this... this is absolutely not one of those things.
Problem is the pool of people being 2 is way too low to get an accurate statistical analysis.
From reading the forums a lot the collation of data on who did or did not get hit by the nerf bat is random at best and just pretty incompetent at worst.
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."
Anyway, out of the two of you guys who have paid zen (one was touched, the other wasn't). Which one of you bought XP boosts, specifically the small ones for 3000XP@200zen?
Anyway, out of the two of you guys who have paid zen (one was touched, the other wasn't). Which one of you bought XP boosts, specifically the small ones for 3000XP@200zen?
At level 60, I went to tau dewa, put the difficulty on elite and started to do japori patrol mission over and over again on my own.
Because I do 25k+ dps, I kill VERY fast. And because I kill VERY fast I get xp VERY fast. Apparently that's very suspicious! Because I'm good at this game, I got labelled as a cheater by de developers and punished.
Thanks a lot.
Edit for clarification:
I don't even know what bug happened. Was it mobs stuck at lvl 50? I read that somewhere. Thing is, that still happens in battlezones.. Also, I don't check what level mobs are, haven't done so in years. I was under the assumption when playing that things, you know, work..
I lost 17 points dropping me back to 15 spec points I have every ship rom/fed as well as all costumes. Worst part is I played Tau Dewa for maybe 3 hrs total and then went on to DR content and I barely logged in the first 4 days (complete missed the 1st day) due to work. So why did I get the NERFBAT? Cause cryptic randomly swung the bat blindfolded and claimed anyone who got hit to be exploiters and the job was done that's why!
It goes to prove my guess that the "metrics analyzed" were really not detailed or cogent in the first place. I know many people that lost who were not in the area and others like me who were that lost nothing.
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
the money thing is probably might be a factor...or might not
what is known about cryptic is they cannot code a script to do things properly...period.
a proper one would factor in only accounts with characters 60
the rest without a 60 would be ignored, that narrows the field
next, playtime and this cannot be averaged as their are those that only play a few hours or less and those that can play much longer. ESPECIALLY ON WEEKDAYS. so time period matters as well. so of those 60 eliminate those that can or do only play for a few hours so that you can accurately compare those with a similar amount of playtime vs levels/spec points gained.
if you compare vs casual players or all other 60's there is OF COURSE going to be a huge difference in leveling rates.
this all of course is dependent on cryptic for once actually making a script that works. they can't even get the game to work properly so them spending a few days, pounding out what they claimed was a perfect method for finding 'exploiters' when factoring in they can't even get the game to work properly.
yeah, they might as well have just thrown dice for everyone above 60 by a certain margin. i've seen how many bugs and glitches through the years are in this game, how many unfixed or bugs that get brought back...them claiming they have a perfect and accurate method in a few days to detect 'exploiters' i ain't buying it.
moral of the story, buy boosters, buy zen, play the game the way cryptic wants you to, don't grind, don't farm excessive amounts of either could get you labeled as an exploiter.
and btw, i wasn't affected by the spec point rollback, 60+5 levels on one character, 54, 55, and 51 on 3 others. none were touched. i was in tau dewa, did run japori though briefly (3 runs in a group, several solo), went to beta T and started running it solo. i'm easilybored by grind, got it burned out of me in one of the classic grinders or i could have leveled a lot more even solo as i have plenty of free time (retired) which would have most likely dumped me into the exploiters bracket...even doing it solo.
Dr. Patricia Tanis ~ "Bacon is for sycophants and products of incest."
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
Could you ask your gf if she bought any of those xp boosts from the exchange?
Even if she did, XP boosters are Zen-items, sold for the *exact* purpose of, you know, boosting XP. Penalizing people for using them (I never did, btw) is tantamount to fraud (it's like selling ppl a Zen ship, but then taking back the ship without restitution).
I farmed Tau Dewa like mad during The DR launch. I didn't do it with the goal of gaining levels or even with the knowledge of the incorrect AI Levels. I simply would rather join my fleet in whatever they are doing rather than play on my own or pug STFs.
During this time I racked up 25ish speck points putting me in cryptics hit bracket yet I was untouched by the reset.
My girlfriend on the other hand who was very behind in story content raced though the episodes like a woman possessed so she could get to the DR story and managed to rack up a rather impressive 20 Spec points. During the roll back 10 of them were confiscated.
I think your story sums up nicely how incompetently, and arbitrarily, Cryptic has handled this. It underlines how D'Angelo's claims of deep investigations are totally bogus. I mean, if two people, in the same household, are leveling up fast, one doing Tau Dewa, the other just storyline missions, and Cryptic steals from the person only having done the latter, whilst leaving the one 'exploiting' Tau Dewa untouched, then you know they are just full of it.
I am probably what is considered a whale in this forums. I did some Argala and Japori, maybe getting 8-10 levels out of it and I didn't lose any points after the patch. But I remember that statement of the EP said that they leave up to 10 points and cut only the excess.
So or so, I find the cut back is wrong. Instead of making a big deal out of it they should have only adjusted the XP in the patch and write in the patch notes "Sorry, we overlooked the XPs in Tau Dewa and now we fix it." End of story. That would have saved this forum a lot of megabytes of outcry.
I know two people who spent $125 on the Ops Pack and farmed the Delta Quadrant patrols- not TD- with a high-dps team, who lost points. I know someone who farmed TD to level 110+ and started farming dil, who was rolled back quite a bit... but not all the way. And I know many TD farmers who got many extra points and didn't lose any of them.
In other words, I don't think they put very much thought into it, and you shouldn't read much into one person being affected and not another.
Not wanting to stand out as a voice of reason, but I'd like to just point out one little thing missed by many.
I would think that most big spenders have spent out on the likes of either gold membership, LTS membership, or xp tokens or packs containing these. All of which increase the pace at which you gain xp and sp. So it would be pretty blinkered of Cryptic/PWE not to take this into consideration when using server stats to attempt to acertain who to roll back and who not to.
Heck, on a smaller scale, you can even say that those using C-Store ships/T5U/T6 etc are likely to level faster also, purely because their ships will be slightly more powerful than freeby ships, allowing them to progress through content and a slightly faster pace also.
So to be perfectly honest, I would be more surprised if they DIDN'T take purchases into consideration, given as the types of data available from the server wont be as exhaustive as some think (I doubt very much that the server records who has been where at what time and for how long for example). The most likely model they are using is a simple formulae of time+sp/xp gained - mitigating factors (better ships, factors increasing xp/sp gain) to calculate who to remove points from and who not too.
Far too much paranoia, and too many conspiracy theories floating around right now, in the face of the far simpler and logical possible explanations.
So or so, I find the cut back is wrong. Instead of making a big deal out of it they should have only adjusted the XP in the patch and write in the patch notes "Sorry, we overlooked the XPs in Tau Dewa and now we fix it." End of story. That would have saved this forum a lot of megabytes of outcry.
^^ This.
An XP table needing some adjusting should have been a wholly insignificant matter (to be solved entirely behind the scenes). It's not like people were unduly getting free Zen or something. Instead they went with a gross overreaction, griefing their loyal customers, and breaking the unwritten rule that, in a P2W model, player progess can never be undone.
Also, just to add, the odds are the forumla will also contain a calculation of the quantity of dilithium gained, given that this was a far larger factor than actual levels from my understanding of what their problem was actually with.
I know two people who spent $125 on the Ops Pack and farmed the Delta Quadrant patrols- not TD- with a high-dps team, who lost points. I know someone who farmed TD to level 110+ and started farming dil, who was rolled back quite a bit... but not all the way. And I know many TD farmers who got many extra points and didn't lose any of them.
In other words, I don't think they put very much thought into it, and you shouldn't read much into one person being affected and not another.
Also, "small group of people" = lol
Well this merely means the whole retro-nerf hissy fit was simply a case of sheer incompetence delivered with breathtaking arrogance by the EP, and not an actual case of "who's paid us" which would have put a much nastier spin on this whole sorry business.
Comments
Cryptic's bugtesting and QA has a long history of being pretty awful, so this isn't really surprising. I wind up defending them a lot on most other things, but this... this is absolutely not one of those things.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
If this is true, then then whole incident is not just disgraceful but an outright scandal.
I think this post pretty much sums it up.
i have most of the fed ships and costumes and am a lifer
From reading the forums a lot the collation of data on who did or did not get hit by the nerf bat is random at best and just pretty incompetent at worst.
"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."
Anyway, out of the two of you guys who have paid zen (one was touched, the other wasn't). Which one of you bought XP boosts, specifically the small ones for 3000XP@200zen?
i only buy ships
Could you ask your gf if she bought any of those xp boosts from the exchange?
Because I do 25k+ dps, I kill VERY fast. And because I kill VERY fast I get xp VERY fast. Apparently that's very suspicious! Because I'm good at this game, I got labelled as a cheater by de developers and punished.
Thanks a lot.
Edit for clarification:
I don't even know what bug happened. Was it mobs stuck at lvl 50? I read that somewhere. Thing is, that still happens in battlezones.. Also, I don't check what level mobs are, haven't done so in years. I was under the assumption when playing that things, you know, work..
sig
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It is a peculiar phenomenon that we can imagine events that defy the laws of the universe.
Honestly curious.
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
what is known about cryptic is they cannot code a script to do things properly...period.
a proper one would factor in only accounts with characters 60
the rest without a 60 would be ignored, that narrows the field
next, playtime and this cannot be averaged as their are those that only play a few hours or less and those that can play much longer. ESPECIALLY ON WEEKDAYS. so time period matters as well. so of those 60 eliminate those that can or do only play for a few hours so that you can accurately compare those with a similar amount of playtime vs levels/spec points gained.
if you compare vs casual players or all other 60's there is OF COURSE going to be a huge difference in leveling rates.
this all of course is dependent on cryptic for once actually making a script that works. they can't even get the game to work properly so them spending a few days, pounding out what they claimed was a perfect method for finding 'exploiters' when factoring in they can't even get the game to work properly.
yeah, they might as well have just thrown dice for everyone above 60 by a certain margin. i've seen how many bugs and glitches through the years are in this game, how many unfixed or bugs that get brought back...them claiming they have a perfect and accurate method in a few days to detect 'exploiters' i ain't buying it.
moral of the story, buy boosters, buy zen, play the game the way cryptic wants you to, don't grind, don't farm excessive amounts of either could get you labeled as an exploiter.
and btw, i wasn't affected by the spec point rollback, 60+5 levels on one character, 54, 55, and 51 on 3 others. none were touched. i was in tau dewa, did run japori though briefly (3 runs in a group, several solo), went to beta T and started running it solo. i'm easilybored by grind, got it burned out of me in one of the classic grinders or i could have leveled a lot more even solo as i have plenty of free time (retired) which would have most likely dumped me into the exploiters bracket...even doing it solo.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
Even if she did, XP boosters are Zen-items, sold for the *exact* purpose of, you know, boosting XP. Penalizing people for using them (I never did, btw) is tantamount to fraud (it's like selling ppl a Zen ship, but then taking back the ship without restitution).
I think your story sums up nicely how incompetently, and arbitrarily, Cryptic has handled this. It underlines how D'Angelo's claims of deep investigations are totally bogus. I mean, if two people, in the same household, are leveling up fast, one doing Tau Dewa, the other just storyline missions, and Cryptic steals from the person only having done the latter, whilst leaving the one 'exploiting' Tau Dewa untouched, then you know they are just full of it.
So or so, I find the cut back is wrong. Instead of making a big deal out of it they should have only adjusted the XP in the patch and write in the patch notes "Sorry, we overlooked the XPs in Tau Dewa and now we fix it." End of story. That would have saved this forum a lot of megabytes of outcry.
I was nowhere near Tau Dewa either. Still got 6 points stolen from me, regardless.
In other words, I don't think they put very much thought into it, and you shouldn't read much into one person being affected and not another.
Also, "small group of people" = lol
I would think that most big spenders have spent out on the likes of either gold membership, LTS membership, or xp tokens or packs containing these. All of which increase the pace at which you gain xp and sp. So it would be pretty blinkered of Cryptic/PWE not to take this into consideration when using server stats to attempt to acertain who to roll back and who not to.
Heck, on a smaller scale, you can even say that those using C-Store ships/T5U/T6 etc are likely to level faster also, purely because their ships will be slightly more powerful than freeby ships, allowing them to progress through content and a slightly faster pace also.
So to be perfectly honest, I would be more surprised if they DIDN'T take purchases into consideration, given as the types of data available from the server wont be as exhaustive as some think (I doubt very much that the server records who has been where at what time and for how long for example). The most likely model they are using is a simple formulae of time+sp/xp gained - mitigating factors (better ships, factors increasing xp/sp gain) to calculate who to remove points from and who not too.
Far too much paranoia, and too many conspiracy theories floating around right now, in the face of the far simpler and logical possible explanations.
^^ This.
An XP table needing some adjusting should have been a wholly insignificant matter (to be solved entirely behind the scenes). It's not like people were unduly getting free Zen or something. Instead they went with a gross overreaction, griefing their loyal customers, and breaking the unwritten rule that, in a P2W model, player progess can never be undone.
Well this merely means the whole retro-nerf hissy fit was simply a case of sheer incompetence delivered with breathtaking arrogance by the EP, and not an actual case of "who's paid us" which would have put a much nastier spin on this whole sorry business.
That's a plus, I suppose.
I would have quit the game if they did that to me... And told em where they can put those 6 stolen points.