[ QUOTE ]
Oh, and dont go and try the newspaper trick on Ms. Liberty. I made that up as an extreme example. I am sure some of you are going to try it anyway, though. All you will end up doing is putting a slot into Rest while reading a newspaper.
[/ QUOTE ]
*Goes to Galaxy City*
Hey Backalley Brawler!
/em newspaper
Ya gotta wonder how many people will STILL try it.
TYVM for the info, Posi.
[ QUOTE ]
*Goes to Galaxy City*
Hey Backalley Brawler!
/em newspaper
[/ QUOTE ]
No no, it's doing the robot dance while talking to Luminary!
EVERYONE knows that!
Home: Virtue
Moonlyte Shadow lvl 50 dm/regen scrapper
Snowdaze lvl 50 ice/energy blaster
Lord Veovis lvl 50 bot/bub MM
Boy Molar lvl 50 SS/invuln tank
Dusk Serpent lvl 50 spines/dark scrapper
A "pure" exploit, behavior that only would be done to achieve an invalid reward and where the fix is tightly focused on changing that pure exploit, you can justify not including it in the patch notes.
The problem is that in some cases, either the fix isn't tightly focused, or the question of whether it's really an exploit comes into play.
Two examples...one was the removal of XP from the portals summoned by Rikti Comm officers. Now it turns out there was an exploit of "get rikti in the rwz to summon the portals, nick them, wait for the groups to despawn, collect xp and influence". But the fix negated what we were given when rikti that come through the portal lost their rewards. So the standard (if you could do it) was allow the comm officers to summon, and take down the portals. That behavior, rational and non-exploitive, was made not to work it only after people were reporting it as a bug was it revealed it was "working as intended".
I'm guessing the brainstorm conversion was another example. Except that it was part of the discussions about removing base salvage. And if you were really surprised how easy it made the badges to get for a brief time...you really didn't think that through did you? It was the only bit of silver lining in the dark cloud that was thrust upon players as a fait accompli of "we're killing the usefulness of your base salvage and putting basebuilders into competition with the io crafters", and was expressed as so.
So nope, I don't think "well, it's an exploit" is enough to say "naw, we don't have to tell the players this". Because very often, non-exploitive gameplay is affected by these fixes, and what was once "used as intended" gets recast into an exploit. The barrier for "let's not tell people" needs to be very high.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
I disagree.
Players should not be alerted to the future nerfing of a possible exploit, even if the exploit is more commonly used in some game-intended way. That only encourages abusing the exploit.
When there is time, the exploit should be fixed in a way that impacts the non-exploitative uses as little as possible. But if time is short, or if an elegant fix is not possible, the problem still has to be fixed, even if by stealth.
The altenative is announcing the exploit and then spending a lot of time trying to weed out those who 'innocently' exploit it from the intended exploitations and banning accordingly, which would be even worse than stealth fixes.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
[ QUOTE ]
I disagree.
Players should not be alerted to the future nerfing of a possible exploit, even if the exploit is more commonly used in some game-intended way. That only encourages abusing the exploit.
When there is time, the exploit should be fixed in a way that impacts the non-exploitative uses as little as possible. But if time is short, or if an elegant fix is not possible, the problem still has to be fixed, even if by stealth.
The altenative is announcing the exploit and then spending a lot of time trying to weed out those who 'innocently' exploit it from the intended exploitations and banning accordingly, which would be even worse than stealth fixes.
[/ QUOTE ]
So, screw the honest players if there's any chance of someone getting more reward than they should? That's exactly the wrong mindset. The exploiters will just find the next exploit (or just go back to the farming missions, teaming, whatever), maybe be a bit slower in rolling up the rewards, but the normal players are left high and dry.
And I'm not saying lay out exactly the exploit, just the change. For example, with the Rikti Portal issue, they wouldn't say "well, you see, people are getting massive XP by nicking portals in the RWZ", they'd just say "Rikti portals summoned by lieutenants give no XP, influence/infamy, prestige, drops, or merits". People will ask why, some people might even figure out the exploit, but so what? There are always exploits people are using. And maybe we could have gotten a better solution like, you only get proportional reward based on the damage you did. Or at least, immediately, we might have gotten Comm Officers to con as lieutenants.
Now clearly, severity has to be an issue about the exploit as well as impact. If it's an exploit that lets you grief others (like the change they made to keep people from stealing stuff out of base storage), that has a higher justification for secrecy. But "oh noes! They are getting more xp than they should be getting!" is a lousy excuse to screw up the legitimate rewards of the normal players.
And even if you can make a case for not documenting on the training room, there is ZERO excuse for not documenting it when they go live. Part of the process of saying "OK, this doesn't go into the training room patch notes" has to ensure "it will be highlighted in the live patch notes". The problem is that most things that are withheld from the training room patch notes don't make it to live either.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
Hm...looks like Virtue is already up to 5 instances of Atlas Park already.
Thanks, Positron 
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
English does not borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar.
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[ QUOTE ]
So, screw the honest players if there's any chance of someone getting more reward than they should? That's exactly the wrong mindset. The exploiters will just find the next exploit (or just go back to the farming missions, teaming, whatever), maybe be a bit slower in rolling up the rewards, but the normal players are left high and dry.
And I'm not saying lay out exactly the exploit, just the change. For example, with the Rikti Portal issue, they wouldn't say "well, you see, people are getting massive XP by nicking portals in the RWZ", they'd just say "Rikti portals summoned by lieutenants give no XP, influence/infamy, prestige, drops, or merits". People will ask why, some people might even figure out the exploit, but so what? There are always exploits people are using. And maybe we could have gotten a better solution like, you only get proportional reward based on the damage you did. Or at least, immediately, we might have gotten Comm Officers to con as lieutenants.
Now clearly, severity has to be an issue about the exploit as well as impact. If it's an exploit that lets you grief others (like the change they made to keep people from stealing stuff out of base storage), that has a higher justification for secrecy. But "oh noes! They are getting more xp than they should be getting!" is a lousy excuse to screw up the legitimate rewards of the normal players.
And even if you can make a case for not documenting on the training room, there is ZERO excuse for not documenting it when they go live. Part of the process of saying "OK, this doesn't go into the training room patch notes" has to ensure "it will be highlighted in the live patch notes". The problem is that most things that are withheld from the training room patch notes don't make it to live either.
[/ QUOTE ]
I agreed with GadgetDon, particularly his last point.
If secrecy is indeed essential in closing a particular exploit, then it is imperative that the secrecy be dropped when the danger has passed. Otherwise, it becomes too easy for that secrecy to obscure mistakes in the patch notes system, and that is in no one's interest.
-D
[Editted for better phrasing]
Darkonne: Pinnacle's (unofficially) mighty Dark Miasma/Radiation Blast enthusiast!
Be sure to check out this mighty Arc:
#161865 - Aeon's Nemesis
[ QUOTE ]
Using the /em newspaper emote while talking to Ms. Liberty and putting an enhancement slot into Rest will no longer level your character to 50.
[/ QUOTE ]
Ooh, is this how you unlock the Jedi AT?
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
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So, screw the honest players if there's any chance of someone getting more reward than they should?
[/ QUOTE ]
I apologize if this sounds harsh, but if you (general you, not you specifically) are using an expoit, knowingly or not, then you are wrong.
Just wrong. Period.
It's not up to us as the gamers to decide what is or is not an exploit. It's up to the developers. It's their game, and they get to decide such things.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So, screw the honest players if there's any chance of someone getting more reward than they should?
[/ QUOTE ]
I apologize if this sounds harsh, but if you (general you, not you specifically) are using an expoit, knowingly or not, then you are wrong.
Just wrong. Period.
It's not up to us as the gamers to decide what is or is not an exploit. It's up to the developers. It's their game, and they get to decide such things.
[/ QUOTE ]
If badge credit for crafting base salvage into brainstorms was an exploit, then crafting base salvage into anything else should have been considered one too.
People used base salvage to continue getting the same reward towards a badge as before, but suddenly it's an exploit, even though most viewed it has one last reward for holding on to base salvage?
As far as the topic goes, the reasoning for stealth fixes and their notes is fine. But the way it was handled with crafting, by issuing a stealth nerf and then a few days later slapping a sentence in the GMOTD to explain it away seemed like a way of saying "Oh whoops, did we not mention that? Our bad," when it clearly meant "Deal with it."
QR-
Just wondering, but did the Devs actually come out and say that the change to the crafting requirements was an exploit fix, or are we just assuming that it was because there was no patch note for it, and everything that doesn't make the patch notes must be an exploit fix?
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So, screw the honest players if there's any chance of someone getting more reward than they should?
[/ QUOTE ]
I apologize if this sounds harsh, but if you (general you, not you specifically) are using an expoit, knowingly or not, then you are wrong.
Just wrong. Period.
It's not up to us as the gamers to decide what is or is not an exploit. It's up to the developers. It's their game, and they get to decide such things.
[/ QUOTE ]
You misunderstand me. Many of their "fixes" for exploits have real impact beyond just closing the exploit. And other things only become exploits after the fact, "wow, they're doing what we said they could"
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
I'm at a cross roads. Mostly because I did use the "brainstorm' as a "get-a-round"... but isn't a get-a-round an exploit?
So they decided... and now that I put some real thought into it and not thinking selfishly, do right? If you really didnt think it was going to happen your fooling yourself. Hell, I thought about it as I was doing it.
If its broke, don't fix it... I like the chaos!
Actually, the thing I was thinking about as I converted all that bleeping base salvage POWER had into Brainstorms so we could open up access to the storage to most members, is something that couldn't be said in game without risking its T for Teen rating. To the extent that it occurred to me, "at least you're making progress to Fabricator", my response would have been a rather hollow laugh.
Trust me, I was well aware of the use of conversions to badging, and did just about anything I could to stop that illthought trainwreck of a change. To now be told that during the hours I was converting salvage, just click click click click go refill click click click click, that I was engaging in some exploit, is really rather insulting.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
[ QUOTE ]
It's not up to us as the gamers to decide what is or is not an exploit. It's up to the developers. It's their game, and they get to decide such things.
[/ QUOTE ]
Kinda makes one long for the days when you bought a computer game and then you'd play it how you decided to without having to worry about Devs force-feeding you patches to screw up your gaming experience.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
[ QUOTE ]
Were not out to screw you, were just trying to preserve the integrity of the game, and sometimes we can be a little overzealous when it comes to that.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is a fine point. I indeed want you to maintain the integrity of the game as much as you can.
The point that has yet to be addressed is this: The players are yet still getting screwed. What are the players supposed to do? As the party causing the screwing you arguably have an obligation to address that don't you? It seems like you're almost taking the tone that the burden of dealing with the problems the screwing is causing is wholly on the players and not on the devs, not even in any small way.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that the magnitude of the current screwing is super-large, or that it's dominant over all aspects of the game. There's still a lot of fun game in CoH that isn't impacted by the current problems, and people are finding ways to get to those fun parts despite the problems.
I'm just saying there are certain significant problems impacting the players. The devs caused them and are choosing to be stealth about them. The players are thus left in a void and can do nothing but try to make up the difference through sheer random endurance. This is a bad thing.
Let's take your example for example:
[ QUOTE ]
For example, if the Training Room patch notes had the following:
Using the /em newspaper emote while talking to Ms. Liberty and putting an enhancement slot into Rest will no longer level your character to 50.
You can bet that on each and every Live server there would be 20 instances of Atlas Park with characters talking to Ms. Liberty that very night.
[/ QUOTE ]
'Betting' on the negative influences in your audience seems to be a practice that undermines the integrity of the game. Wouldn't you agree? If you're conducting your work assuming that your audience in some form are just itching to screw you how does that put you in a good position to nurture the growth of integrity in the game?
How about we take a much-closer-to-home example:
An ouro flashback arc was incorrectly assigned five times as many reward merits as was originally intended. As merits are basically high stakes to everyone's needs to play the game (unlike /em newspaper), and as merits are basically so hard to get the game to dispense, no one needs to 'bet' on what the players will do.
Should the devs disclose this information? The game has set players up into a position where they are desperate for a specific aspect of the results of this bug (merits have large positive impact on fundamental abilities to play the game, merits are dispensed at a relatively tiny rate by the game except by this bug). This bug is not hidden and is fact relatively exposed to the playerbase, (as soon as one player stumbles over it, it will not take long for the majority of players to learn of it).
The devs disclosing it will indeed increase the speed with which the majority of players will learn of the bug, and given how the game is significantly undermining the players' ability to improve their gameplay outside of this bug there's no need to place any bets as to what the future trends will be.
On the other hand the devs choosing not to disclose it will be an action that the players will significantly notice once they learn of the bug for themselves. The players are just as capable as the devs to project out the future trends of how the playerbase will react to knowledge of this bug. Once the players learn of the bug, and they realize the devs have said nothing about it, the players will know exactly why the devs have said nothing about it: the devs are indeed assuming that the players are bad in the disputable sense that the integrity of the game must be protected from the bad.
This is why stealth fixes harm the game. It is an expression of an insult the devs (probably only subconsciously) intend to the players. On some subtle but profound level, the devs unreasonably assume the players are bad and the game (and thus themselves) is good.
Now personally, I don't dislike the devs, or think that they're less than good, even great, people in general, (there certainly are players who think in those terms though). I consider them cool and skilled, and I willingly defer to their authority over CoH. But I don't believe they're in any way infallible. And I don't believe they're really acting in the best interests of me as a player, as they tend to impose their interests in their vision of game integrity over my interests. But I concede that CoH is their game and not mine, and it would be unreasonable for me to insist they forego their interests just to cater to me.
Where that leaves me is to balance my life between enduring these and other problems I'm having in engaging CoH, and choosing to spend my endurance in other endeavors. As CoH is still providing me fun in various ways (I was fortunate to get in on a zombie invasion team last night and had lots of fun spamming Dragon's Tail everywhere ) it seems like I'll still be trying often to endure the problems.
But I'm not going to accept that 'integrity of the game' actions is a logical substitute for 'helping the players overcome problems' actions. It simply isn't. Players using exploits may cause harm, but being stealth about exploits is causing harm too. Devs have shown much more interest in addressing the former than the latter. Players don't have to agree that that's correct. Devs don't have to capitulate to players on that point.
That right there is the state of the game.
In the case of base salvage, crafting it WAS WAI. Then they changed their minds.
That's not "using an exploit". That's a nerf. Plain and simple.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
You SHOULD get badge credit for crafting base salvage into brainstorms! It's still crafting and it's not an exploit. The Devs make mistakes and this is one of them.
I'm holding onto my base salvage in hope that this nerf is undone!
Part of the problem is that there are three things lumped under the name "exploit".
One, the clear-cut case, is where there's a bug that allows people to do things that clearly were not intended to work that way. For example, there used to be holes in the walls in the Eden trial that would let you just move past them instead of taking them down. This case is easy, no notice is necessary, fix the bug and give a general patch note ("Close holes in maps for Eden trial")
The second is where there's an existing behavior that, in a specific situation, causes rewards that anyone would know shouldn't work. Example: Rikti Portals that are damaged but only despawn instead of being defeated still grant full rewards. Not sure if this was intended (you don't want someone fighting a portal, working it down, and see it go away withouth a reward because the comm officer was killed) or just "well, no big deal, they still have to be in battle and take down the comm officer", but it was known, talked about. Only when the RWZ was added and people could go from spawn to spawn, triggering portals and nicking the portals and then pull back, waiting for the portals to despawn, that it was a big issue. I still think they went for the wrong solution, that instead a despawning portal should give no or partial rewards, but so be it. For these cases, where they're changing a known behavior that people encounter to fix a specific situation, I think they generally SHOULD document the behavior they are changing, unless the situation is so game-breaking that a few more people doing it will do real damage (the situation allows griefing, like the use of confusion to allow people in non-PVP zones to be killed, it gives a huge disparity in PVP, or similar issues).
The third type of "exploit" is where people are taking the game as it came, in the normal situations, and devs go "ZOMG! They're making mad expees and drops from this! We gotta change this or this game is going to the Americas!" For example, the discovery that people would farm foes that summon killable foes (the Rikti that come through portals, the Zombies raised by Death Shaman, etc.). Or for what I think is an example, people actually were working on crafting badges by converting base salvage to brainstorms or brainstorms to invention salvage. In this, I'm calling bull on the description of these as "exploits". I'm not saying the devs can't choose to say "OK, the rewards are out of whack, we're changing this". But it's a balancing change (common parlance: nerf), it's not fixing an exploit.
And when Positron talks about "the integrity of the game"...when it comes to speed or effort to level up or gain influence/infamy, the game really doesn't have that much integrity. Even though I choose not to, I know enough farmers and power levelers that I could create a character today and have him to 50 for a hami raid this weekend. As for Influence/Infamy, I know of people who create tons of Inf by just playing the market, something I neither have the desire nor patience to engage in. I also don't farm, but I know people who do and they've got so much more influence than I do. And then there's the wild variance on drops from the RNG...a few prime purple drops, and in a single ITF you can get more than weeks and weeks of non-stop TF running with less luck. The "integrity" of the game is a game that is fun, reasonably fast active combat, and living out fantasies of being a superhero. Positron GOT that, when he talked about giving players what they want within reason. But I13 seems more like "giving the players what they want so long as it's what we want them to want."
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
Wow. I'm just not seeing why it's as big a deal as you're making it out to be. I have no problem with the Dev team getting rid of exploits however they see fit. Sure, admittedly they sometimes are a little overzealous. They're human after all. It's hard sometimes to read tone in one's posts, but yours came across as angry and bitter. I understand it's just a game....but that works both ways. Why take it so personally?
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Wow. I'm just not seeing why it's as big a deal as you're making it out to be. I have no problem with the Dev team getting rid of exploits however they see fit. Sure, admittedly they sometimes are a little overzealous. They're human after all. It's hard sometimes to read tone in one's posts, but yours came across as angry and bitter. I understand it's just a game....but that works both ways. Why take it so personally?
[/ QUOTE ]
My disagreement with so many of the so-called exploit changes is that most send to either involve collateral damage or "that's better than we thought, we'll call it an exploit". One thing we're always told about changes on the test server is, "Remember, it's only on test, it still could change" and some things have changed based on feedback...but when things aren't on the patch notes, there's no chance to say "Look, this is why it isn't a problem" or "Look, this is the impact of that, how about this instead."
More...in most cases, the things that are left off of the patch notes on test, are left off of the patch notes when it goes live. So people who have come to expect a game to operate in a certain way, make choices based on that, are wondering why it doesn't work that way any more. And that's just wrong.
I'm not angry or bitter. I'm just explaining why I think what Positron has said is wrong.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
Fair enough. As I said, it's often difficult tell the tone of a post. My apologies for the implication.
[ QUOTE ]
One, the clear-cut case, is where there's a bug that allows people to do things that clearly were not intended to work that way.
[/ QUOTE ]
I found one of those in December (not a map hole). I did report it via /bug and by PM to Ex Libris. While someone did try a couple of times, they couldn't reproduce it and I was asked for a bit more info. I gave it, but I think it might have gotten lost in the shuffle again.
I can reproduce the situation at will now (on both live and test), and I know for a fact that using this would be considered an exploit. Which is why I have only did this on the test server after the first time (accident the first time, but after I knew what was happening I kept it to the test server).
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
Several players have noted that some patch notes do not show up on the Training Room and somehow the fixes themselves make it to Live.
We have the ability to mark some patch notes as Exploit Fixes. What this means is that the patch note is suppressed on training room, but revealed when the notes are posted when it hits the live servers.
Why?
Its simple. Even though there might be exploits, and you know about them, and you think EVERYONE knows about them, thats not always the case. There are some exploits that only one or two people have discovered and reported (it usually earns them the Bug Hunter badge for doing so). For example, if the Training Room patch notes had the following:
Using the /em newspaper emote while talking to Ms. Liberty and putting an enhancement slot into Rest will no longer level your character to 50.
You can bet that on each and every Live server there would be 20 instances of Atlas Park with characters talking to Ms. Liberty that very night.
Now marking something as an Exploit is a judgment call from the person writing the patch note. Weve gone to great lengths to ensure players are as informed as possible, but we usually err on the side of caution, especially when we dont know how long a patch will be sitting on Training Room before hitting live. Were not out to screw you, were just trying to preserve the integrity of the game, and sometimes we can be a little overzealous when it comes to that.
Oh, and dont go and try the newspaper trick on Ms. Liberty. I made that up as an extreme example. I am sure some of you are going to try it anyway, though. All you will end up doing is putting a slot into Rest while reading a newspaper.
Positron
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