Feycat
-
Posts
1165 -
Joined
-
Nope. I have all of them except the Party Pack and that one didn't go half price.
-
When it comes to "immersion," I feel that rain that doesn't puddle/change the sky color/make the leaves move and snow that doesn't accumulate/change the sky color/happens with bright green trees and grass is ANTI immersion. If you want weather effects, I want seasonal and environment effects to go with them, otherwise it makes things WORSE, imo. And if one bit of fluff is worth it, for the sake of RP/immersion, they both are.
I don't want to see the devs do a half-***** job with it like other MMOs do, and I think that's all MMO devs are willing to commit to these days. -
Quote:Oh my good gravy, THIS.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
actually, as long as they refuse to deploy a useful definition of "exploit" for players to follow there's plenty of room to argue.
The dictatorial "They're whatever we say they are" approach doesn't carry any water with me. Yeah, they can do it, but that doesn't make it an acceptable way to treat your customers.
Seriously, I know Posi thinks that if he gives us an actual definition of exploit that we'll use it to weasel (50 in 5 hours? Nay, I got it in 6!) out of having technically exploited, but seriously, it's a pile of rubbish. It's nonsense to hand out punishments to people without DEFINING what it is they're being punished for. And "for being bad" doesn't hold water.
I would be FULLY and COMPLETELY in support of banning everyone who entered the monkey farm, even for curiosity (as I did on Freedom, just to see what everyone was chattering about - and I don't play on Freedom, so I got nothing out of it except a level 17 defender sitting unleveled in a server I don't play on) IF the devs had put an announcement in the MOTD flat-out stating it was an exploit and that everyone who goes in there from here-on-out risks serious account action. I'd stand up and cheer for that.
Not everyone is going to be able to say "wow, that's clearly an exploit." Is it an exploit to fight Council instead of Fifth? (for some reason, Fifth KICK MY BUTT and Council remain turkeys) Or to fight Freaks instead of Nemesis? That's definitely changing the risk-vs-reward ratio. And there's lots of that built into the game. -
Quote:That's not true. Some of us remember "exploits" going back to the dawn of the game that they had to change the game to fix. Purple patch, anyone?Originally Posted by Psychic Guardian
And to answer the title question; as long as the AE exists.
The answer is that the "exploits" will continue as long as the devs keep deciding after the fact that X is no longer a valid playstyle. It doesn't have to involve AE at all. It could be herding an entire outdoor map with one tank and then having a couple of blasters set off their nukes. Or it could be running a freakshow map over and over. Or it could be stuffing bad guys in a dumpster. Winterlords, anyone? All those things were eventually considered "exploits" and the game was fixed to stop it from happening - but in none of those cases did anyone lose levels or characters over it.
This. Positron said that he KNEW this was going to happen, yet this stuff gets rolled out constantly. And monkies aren't the first - and aren't even the current only - mob that is giving out possibly-excessive xp in exchange for the risk. But the players didn't program that in there.Quote:Originally Posted by Major_Control
But the devs ARE responsible if sloppy coding or system design allowed these exploits to exist - and not just the once. And the company IS responsible if those exploits once identified are not removed quickly. If you run a 24/7 365 day service then you need the resources in place at all times to deal with urgent issues.
I also REALLY WISH people would stop drawing the line where "farming" and "exploiting" and "powerleveling" are the same thing. They're not.
Exploiting is breaking a rule that is in place, hacking, or otherwise deliberately breaking the game for your own quick profit.
Farming is simply doing a map or set of maps that give good physical rewards quickly for less risk than another map but NOT breaking the game to do that. Farming is for drops, influence and/or tickets.
PLing is just running something in a way that levels up a character quickly. XP is the goal, and it may or may not involve an exploit.
But at the base, these things are not always equivalent and I wish people would stop tying them together as if they are. Exploiting is against the rules - the rest is not.
I have a couple of farm missions in AE. They don't involve any exploit (unless the devs change their mind at some point and decide they are, I guess) it's simply a map full of mobs and ambushes that my farming character finds easy to defeat. I run it til my tickets max and reset. I use the tickets and influence to make IOs for my stableful of characters. I have on occasion brought my gaming partner or husband's lowbies along to move them over a hump to SOs or Stamina or side-switching or whatever. Do the purity police think that I need to be moved out of the game as well?
I like the way Sam thinks.Quote:Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Just want to restate that I am NOT in favour of banning people or taking away their stuff. This is a BAD way to do things, one which the developers ought to have been burned by last time. It will do little to "discipline" people, were discipline even relevant in the context, and it will just make the Architect even more useless for its intended purpose than it already is, and that's saying something.
I don't feel people should be punished. If anything, I feel a "good game" is in order. Good job, guys. You found the exploit, you exploited it, you grabbed your earnings. Party's over now. Move along. Go back to the game, and we'll try to plug these things up faster in the future.
I tend to adopt a "no harm no foul" policy with these things. Yes, an exploit is harmful while it's actually active, but the solution is not to punish people but to fix it. No, the developers can't predict every exploit which might happen, but they should still close them down as they come up. Nobody has to lose and nobody has to leave angry.
Truth be told, I have nothing but sympathy for the people who got levels off these bugs. So long as the exploiters did so with the full knowledge that it wouldn't last forever, I bear no ill feelings towards the guys and gals. Let 'em keep their stuff, now that they already have it, so long as they aren't big babies about a clear exploit being closed up.
*edit*
I.e. if you got "toons" deleted, I would moan about it
-
Quote:I can't decide which part of this is sarcastic and which is serious, lol.Originally Posted by RadDidIt
Yeah, like after the Comm Officers when people got their toons deleted. Whambulance incoming.
Have people actually been rolled back ASIDE from the occasion of Posi's rant-a-tron? -
Quote:Hey now! The only reason I even HAVE a Shield character is because I saw one of the shield designs and instantly had a character for it!Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Power customization is cool for practically EVERY character, unless you pick Shield Defence and a weapon.
-
Quote:Oh, you're right then. That WOULD be a bummer if that's all I got! I mean, I *might* slot it in my Elec/Elec dom's Static Field, but she's quite a ways off 50!Originally Posted by Chaos Creator
Unbreakable constraint is the hold, Grav is an immob set. Fortunata is a sleep while Coercive is the confuse.
-
Quote:I'm sure that once it's my job, I'll get right on that. But it isn't. It's theirs.Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Please let us know when you come up with a way to simultaneously track and correct floating values of "appropriate" across a complex database. It must come with a negative feedback loop that will prevent the programmers from inputting inappropriate data, either accidentally or on purpose. Indeed, it must be impossible for them to input any data at all unless it's been crosschecked against ALL of the several million variables in which it could occur.
-
Quote:I agree with this. I wouldn't want an "insta-50" button, but I can't see the harm in, as a 6 year vet, having my character pop instantly to 22. That's all I want. The pre-22 game - even with Stamina now included - is dreadful to me. It feels like I'm just playing to put powers on the table, scraping my way up to being able to efficiently frankenslot with 25 IOs. That's when things get fun for me. I know how to play the game, I've got some of every AT (I've tried every AT at least, there are some that just weren't my cuppa.)Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
One of my favorite characters is an AE Mito-farm baby. She didn't get to 50 in there, but she powered past the pre-Stamina stuff and that is good enough for me.
As far as the "instant level 50 button".... I'm an extremist. I think that should be a vet reward. You are here long enough, you get to bypass all the crap and focus on tricking out your new fifty. Say once a month you should be able to do this. I can imagine the screams now, were this to happen. LOL. Drama!
New players doing this, while sad, doesn't freak me out. I agree it's bad for the game, it's bad for them, and it's bad for the people who have to try and play with them on PuGs when they don't know what their powers do and never knew how to slot or fill their slots. But I don't PuG, so selfishly enough, they can have their fun without ruining mine.
The bottom line for me is: this is the programmers' fault. This is what, the third exploit of this type that needs to be fixed since GR went live, or just before it? Whoever is tweaking the AE code keeps screwing up and putting in mobs that are worth more than they should be. PLAYERS are not hacking the servers and putting these exploits in. The devs are. And now they are ignoring the multiple reports I'm sure they've had on this, just as it took weeks to fix the spiders and who knows how long to fix the one before that.
So really... the exploits will go on until someone in Paragon decides quality control is a priority. -
Quote:Actually, two of my 50s actually have confuse powers, so I'd use them. 2 of my 50s are Darks with holds, so I've been collecting Grav Anchors too. Basically, I'm perfectly happy with the "cheap" purple sets, since the majority of my high level characters are support and not DPS.Originally Posted by Canine
I can't remember who said it, but I seem to remember reading somewhere on these boards that on average you'll get a purple recipe drop every 1500-2000 mobs defeated.
The 'on average' bit is the killer, as we all know how nice and friendly the Random Number Generator can be when it's in one of its moods
Keep fighting 47+ mobs and you'll get purple recipes eventually. Of course, then you start getting Fortunata Hypnosis drops and wonder why you bothered, but that's another issue entirely
-
Quote:Huh. My drop luck is just abysmal then! LOLOriginally Posted by Organica
47+ meaning any enemy that can drop a level 50 recipe.
Thank you! -
Can't seem to find this info on Paragon Wiki so I thought I'd throw it out here, apologies for being something probably answered many times. Do Purple recipes drop from enemies 50+ or 51+?
Thanks! -
Quote:http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=241464Originally Posted by Days_
Also, Fourspeed. You are right, it does sound terribly counter-intuitive and I would be interested in hearing the argument about flippers being stabilizers ( a quick search revealed nothing to me, but I am not entirely certain what I should be searching for).
Here's a good one!
-
Quote:Oh, they give tickets. I've heard a lot of people using it to solo farm, not xp but tickets. A front-loaded ambush will max out your tickets in about 5 minutes, then you reset and leave.Originally Posted by SilverAgeFan
The market certainly is buggered currently. Many uncommon salvage bits are coming close to outpricing rare bits.
One thing I've wondered about those monkey farms, do they not award tickets? Or does this new round of AE babies not even know how to use the ticket reward interface and simply buy or random roll some of the other salvage bits?
The problem is that pretty much no one uses their ticket rolls for salvage of all things. Not to sell anyway. They use it for recipes, and may use tickets for the salvage to make THOSE recipes, but not one's wasting tickets on gobs of salvage. -
Quote:That's... insane. What? Were you in AE or WW? Pretty often I've had to gently discourage folks from venting about the spammer with... err, highly colorful language, since the spammer never responds, all it does is clog up the channels MORE, and then people can get reported for using vile language. But I can't IMAGINE anyone actually sticking up for an RMT spammer.Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
Imagine my, well...shock, when about a dozen plus people laid into me DEFENDING the RMT people. I was told that I was worse than they were, repeatedly, for (translating from the ae monkey-farming speak) "criticizing new players."
Maybe if you were in AE they thought you were just talking about all of them farming monkies in general? -
Nope, Malta Action Figure is an auto-drop for me, too. I just have no patience for the "cheating" mechanics of spawning ambushes (each containing at least one sapper) right on top of me, one after the other, and making them aggro me at the door if I have to come back from the hospital. That's not fun.
-
This is why my DS MM is petless, lol. I love the powerset but I can't STAND the pets!!
-
Quote:That depends.Originally Posted by Steel_Shaman
Let me ask this question: if someone you don't know sends a tell asking if you'd like to team up, is that spamming? And if not, what's the difference? Both situations involve a complete stranger asking you a question completely unsolicited by you. Have we really gotten so insular as a community that all communication must be a certain way or it upsets us?
Am I standing around doing nothing at the time?
Am I soloing?
Am I LFT?
Do I have my LFG flag specifically set to not teaming?
Am I already on a team?
Those factors will completely change my response to the tell asking if I want to join a team. Just looking in the search window will tell someone if I'm on a team or not LFT. I tend to get a little shirty, yes, in those situations.
If I'm just tooling around, or soloing? Well, I wish people wouldn't bother me when my flag isn't set to LFT, but a simple "No, thank you," is more than sufficient in those cases. No harm, no foul.
Am I LFT? Then hallelujah for getting a tell instead of just a blind invite!
Sending out mass-produced tells to people already in SGs is analogous to the first situation; it's tiresome and rude, and no one should expect a polite response while they're trying to shovel people they've never even SEEN into their SG. -
Thank you Forbin, appreciate it!
I really do wish the programmers would look into what is continually causing these aberrant xp issues and get these things pulled quicker before it becomes this much of an issue. -
Quote:Not everyone has been here forever. If they do not address each NEW exploit that their faulty programming creates, then people cannot be expected to simply extrapolate.Originally Posted by Ironblade
This is not the first time that AE has been EXPLOITED in this manner. The devs previously explained what was considered an exploit, and what consequences the exploiters might suffer.
It's not their fault if people have short memories.
Also, would you link me to that post or page please? -
Quote:It seems to me like it shouldn't be impossible to just let us edit whatever powers we've gained once we visit the tailor. So I pick Hasten. I can choose to leave it at the default appearance, or head over to the Tailor and set it to "No/Minimal FX" and turn those godawful pompoms off forever.Originally Posted by Camper
Probably because it would require a significant rework of either the character creation screen to allow you to costumize power colors for powers you might not ever pick at character creation (ie. to allow customization of pool powers at character set up), or some kind of new character creation system that would dynamically allow the character creation screen to add new new pool/epic/patron powers as you selected them, so you could then head over to the tailor and get your new colors.
If you look at how color customization works now, specifically how the creation screen works and how it flows at character creation, it's pretty clear that there's a non-trivial amount of back end updates needed to add this feature.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see it, but it does look like a fairly big update to a number of systems to me.
I'm not saying it would be supereasy or whatever, but it's been quite a while since the power customization got added to the game, and it doesn't even seem like this is in the active works. -
Quote:This.Originally Posted by GhoulSlayer
If it were me I would be pissed at you too. To me this is just as annoying as a telemarketer. When I do spam for SG recruits I shout in broadcast 1x per zone. There is no reason to go begging individually like that.
I have answered in EXACTLY that way before, too. It's bad enough that random people I don't know at all are looking to milk me for prestige, but the fact that I get these whispers when I'm already in an SG and they're not even in the same zone? Wow, they really don't care what particular meat they're scooping into the chute. Not only do they not know me, they haven't even laid eyes on me! That's taking impersonal to an extreme, and impersonal is not something I want in an SG! -
They're actually doing it in AE now too - not too surprising!
-
Just to play devil's advocate: if the dev's refuse to address what is/is not an exploit, then punishing it falls into a murky area. You can't just say "well, EVERYONE knows what an exploit is," because no, everyone doesn't. Some people consider selling an IO off-market for more then 2billion an exploit. It's the job of NCSoft/Paragon to SAY if something is an exploit, prevent and fix it.
This is a programming error, one assumes. The table of xp vs strength somehow got messed up. And somehow this keeps happening. It seems like every other patch, they're having to deal with some minion that's somehow giving out boss xp, or overpowered helpers, or something like that. It is the responsibility of the game's programming staff NOT to keep introducing bugs like this and to THOROUGHLY check the content to make sure these things don't exist.
And it's the responsibility of the PR team to be letting folks know what is and is not an exploit. Yes, if they announce that the Rikti Monkey thing is a bug, it MIGHT draw more attention to it. But really, anyone going to Atlas Park on any server knows it's there. And once they've SAID "X is an exploit," then I'd fully support them nuking characters at will. But until that point, I don't. But until that point, it's people taking advantage of something that NCSoft put in the game and haven't announced is an exploit, and haven't fixed even though it's, what, a month old now?
And if it IS an exploit, its their job to fix it promptly. If they can't fix it, then lock down that mob type from AE. Or even lock down AE. I'm sure everyone who uses it legitimately would survive it being locked for a couple of weeks in order to clear all exploits and thoroughly test to be sure they're not inserting new ones.
And really, how is any AE exploit any different from a sewer team, a 50 farm map with a load of lowbies, or any of those other activities? The goal is the same: to bypass levels as quickly as possible. The penalities for new players are the same: they're not going to know how their character plays if they joined a team at level 1 and came out at the end of the play session at 12, 20, or whatever level. There were actually people in Atlas today complaining that the monkey farm was killing sewer teams. Well, what's the difference between the goal of the monkey farm PL and the sewer team? It's still about leveling as fast as possible. I've never done a sewer team just for that reason - I'm not interested in the bum's rush.
Until someone comes out right and says "we consider this an exploit, stop doing it," and puts some sort of proper internal testing in place so they can stop introducing these bugs over and over, I can't support punishing the playerbase for it. -
Yes.
I was playing my mind/storm troller today. All her powers have been recolored in cool blues and greys. She has the psychic APP. And the bright pink scribbles that surround her whenever she's wearing her epic armor literally makes me rage. I don't even want the power on, so it's a waste of a power and good slots and a good IO set. It looks like some toddler came in and scrawled all over a work of art with a crayon. Neither my powers nor any of my costumes come anything close to matching those hideous pink scribbles.
And that's not even mentioning the Hasten that I've just tried to train myself to pretend isn't there.
Pool customization needs to happen NOW.