Bloodspeaker

I think it's also fair to say that most of the folks that continue to lobby for this have specific names in mind... and keep hoping they'll become "free".

I don't really notice the softly burning hands nearly as much as I notice dancing on a box of lit road flares, but yeah.

I don't have the hard data that the devs do, though some players have ferreted that data out out. A good player to possibly PM about this would be Arcanaville. She's the generally accepted Quintessential Numbers-Nut around these parts.

However, generally speaking, there were changes (reductions) in how xp was awarded for custom enemies (to prevent players from creating and filling mishes with flightless melee enemies and then air-ganking them) and general "faction structure" (for example a faction composed entirely of bosses).

Known bugs that were corrected (iirc): certain standard (non-custom) enemies were awarding incorrect, inflated xp (Zig Prisoners and Rikti Comm Officers come to mind).

Just the stuff I can remember off the top of my head, but I don't keep track of every change that's been made.

No, this is one of the system's rabid detractors spouting their battle cry again.

Seriously, while I could go on at length on the system, its uses and misuses, I'll tell you up front: this thread is yet another AE Flame War waiting to happen. There are people who LOVE the system, and people who HATE the system. And they are...

Never

Going

To See

Eye-to-Eye

Ever

Primarily because there are too many children-in-adult-clothing on both sides who've allowed themselves to become emotionally charged over the whole thing.

But, in the interest of actually providing you SOME insight, before this thread is consumed by a whirlwind of ire and vitriol, I will say that yes, there were and remain rewards for running the missions built with it, and yes, in the early days, people found ways to abuse the system. Since it was largely the first of its kind, this didn't really surprise, or even upset, anyone with a modicum of sense. The developers have since taken numerous incremental steps to prevent blatant abuse, but PLers will be PLers. If they can't or don't use the MA (Mission Architect) for it, they will still find a way... largely by resorting to most of the methods they used prior to its existence.

I personally enjoy the MA. I support the idea behind the UCG (yes, I play STO as well, and you can look me up there as @Captain_Thiraas ). I enjoy telling stories. Such tools allow me to do so. The mileage of others will, of course, vary... vastly. You won't find many here who choose to calmly weigh the pros and cons.

It doesn't, if the new posts are relevant to the original purpose of the thread.

Somewhere along the way, they've pretty much said that would never happen again.

This thread's very existence would cast doubt on the permanence of that stance. However, there's been no discussion of such a move being part of the Going Rogue release.

Edit: Well I'll be damned - my 666th post...

Well, I can readily see several fallacies with this, from an RP perspective.

1) It would necessarily be the most heavily scrutinized and regulated business in the history of human endeavor.
This makes the assumption that an item put on the market in Atlas Park is the EXACT same item that someone buys in St Martial. You're apparently not allowing for the possibility that said item is reduced to its raw materials and reassembled at the other end... possibly as one or more entirely different items. For the sake of this argument, I'm assuming that said raw materials are NOT "salvage" of any kind, but rather something more fundamental, like hydrogen, etc.

2) This is in a world with people who can read minds, see through walls, predict the future, etc.
And who apparently, by your reasoning, have nothing better to do with their time than follow market trails. Never mind the civil rights violations involved with doing the first two without the necessary authorization and the inadmissibility as evidence of the first and third.

3) It's utterly absurd to think there could be an open pipeline of goods flowing through Went's to and from the Rogue Islands without anyone knowing about it.
My rebuttal of the first point should make it easy to assume that such a pipeline is not even remotely "direct." With that in mind, there is no way for anyone to know about it.

4) In order for this state of affairs to persist, it must be the case that Wentworth's is openly corrupt...
By that logic, if (for example) Campbell's soup uses inks on their soup can labels that contain graphite that was salvaged from pencil stubs from Syria and then sold on the open market... Campbell's soup is openly corrupt.

5) It doesn't make much sense that heroes would knowingly market their Weapons Of Mass Destruction components through a company known to be doing business with superhuman terrorists, either
No, it doesn't. The Devs might be applying simplified comic-book universe marketing to this whole change. I openly ignore idiotic canon in favor of something that has a bit more reality applied.

They will rue the day!

Hmmm, I'm prolly skrood, then. 2/3 of my characters are villains, and all but maybe 1 or 2 of them are NOT headed for lolredemption when GR goes live.

I don't refer to "good retcons" as retcons at all. They're an in-story realization that what we as readers have seen on the page isn't necessarily the entire story. Filling in the gaps can put an entirely different spin on what we believed to be the "truth" and expand a character.

"Bad retcons", by my definition, are just retcons - a thinly veiled attempt to alter a character or characters for various bad reasons; attempts to change the target market, endorse products, political agenda, the personal beliefs of the writer. I saw far more of the latter than the former.

Everyone lives within their own personal illusion.

In mine, I'm blind and deaf to that topic.

Are you certain?

Or Marcian Tobay, for that matter.

"Well I'm proud to be an A Marican!.."

LIES!!! Llamas don't come from Germany!!!

The brain bleach, it does nothing!!!

Fortunately, being wrong is free.

Heck, I thought that was part of the welcome package.