Base salvage being crafted into component salvage gave progress toward crafting badges, before I13.
Component salvage being used to build base items = crafting badge progress, as well.
Base salvage being used to craft empowerments also went toward crafting badges.
Why not brainstorms as well? Was it because (gasp!) no one was crafting at the same rate as the base salvage drop rates before? or was it that no one was crafting empowerments, or ubercool base components (that they had not the prestige to place)?
Brainstorms cost NO inf to craft. They are a 1:1 ratio to base salvage. This is why there was the sudden rush in crafting badges - Crafting became cheap, and thus people were CRAFTING.
And because the supply of base salvage was rendered finite, the trend would taper off as all the base salvage was converted over. So this is a long-term 'fix' to an extremely temporary economic situation.
In other words, if this is an 'exploit', I'll eat my shoes.
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I'll add one more thing...if the devs saw a sudden rush of conversion of base salvage to brainstorms, it WASN'T "ZOMG! I can get those crafting badges now!" In most cases, it was "Damn! I have to convert all this stuff to brainstorms now, so my storage isn't pilfered by someone who wants random rare salvage!"
Leading up to I13, I had really locked down the storage in the POWER base, because the previously-nearly-useless base salvage became a target. I don't know that anyone in POWER would have stolen it, but I don't know everyone personally. This meant that most members were blocked from the inspiration storage (we have a lot of inspiration storage units, including third tier inspirations for tough tfs). So, when I13 first went live, I spent a couple exceptionally boring hours converting all that base salvage and component salvage into Brainstorms. And trust me, there was no rubbing of my hands thinking "Mua ha ha ha ha, crafting badges, you are mine!" But once that work was done, I was able to give access to storage again.
And on other characters, when I saw they had base salvage, I converted it, just to get it over and done with. Just to simplify my "all salvage" tab.
The problem with datamining is that it tells you what was done, not why.
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I agree with Positron about preserving the integrity of the game.
I really get a bit of a sick feeling when I play things straight and and see folks get the same rewards I get for doing a tenth of the work (or play as it were). I do have a tendency to skate uphill on certain things however, believing that my journey makes the destination all the sweeter, and that my reward includes not only the easily seen shiny, but a good deal more. That generally does prove to be true.
I also agree with what some here have said concerning "not feeling that gaining crafting progress from base salvage conversion should be thought of or treated as an exploit". (Is that what we are talking about Positron?) Much like many, I don't want to think of myself as a cheater.
I will state that I have felt a bit conflicted about this. My super group is old, and we had a lot of spare base salvage like many groups. There are probably a lot of those pieces sitting on characters in our group too. Even at the rate of one to one however, I noted that converting almost our entire stores to salvage was not going to get me to the badge, and the rest of the group was not going to see ANY benefit to their own characters other than the salvage stores. Something does seem wrong in this area.
What I think might put things on the level as it were, and also potentially satisfy 'some' folks in this is a compromise.....
Let the base salvage conversions accrue crafting badge progress at a diminished rate? A rate that might take some of the sting of "Crap, those badges were supposed to be hard to get!" out of it for development, but also make the actual crafting "WORK" (yes players ARE expending time and effort here to help do away with the dead weight of base salvage that Development has decided to streamline out of the flow) count toward something it really "OUGHT" to count for? 2:1? 3:1? 5:1? There has to be a mathematical mean here that is fair to everyone and still preserves game integrity.
That is my $.02. I hope someone is listening.
That all we get posi? srsly?
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
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I'm holding onto my base salvage in hope that this nerf is undone!
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When has any nerf EVER been undone in this game?
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This springs to mind.
The situations with Brainstorms ar mistakes on the part of the Devs, as they admitted.
The Crafting system was designed wih a rate of reward gain in mind, at the degree to which the 'maximum intended reward gain speed' was exeeded by using brainstorms was huge enough that they actually did something about it.
So they made a mistake when they designed the badging system in the first place, then compounded it by not thinking the fix through, as they admitted.
Demonstrably, stealthing the change was a mistake in that we just found out about it instantly, making the stealth moot.
But it should not have been announced prior to go live in any case. That would have undermined what they were intending to fix in the first place. They might as well say, "Everybody craft Brainstorms now on Live, they are going away in the next patch." Which would eliminate any datmaing they could do on the impact of the change. What they should have done, IMHO is put in a patch note that reads something like:
"Datamining shows that we accidentally set some rewards far higher than intended. The rewards for those activities have been removed temporarily until a better solution can be found. Specifics on which activities will be released with the live patch notes."
Heck, maybe they should append that note to the bottom of all future patch notes.
Hmmm: what if they kept a list of the Closed Beta testers from each patch, and ran ideas by those people secretly, under an NDA, when they pick up on stuff like this? "Hey guys, we just discovered that Brainstorm farming is giving way bigger rewards than it should. It HAS to be nerfed because of upcoming changes to the badging system. How should we go about it?"
Maybe they do this already...dun dun DUN!
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The situations with Brainstorms ar mistakes on the part of the Devs, as they admitted.
The Crafting system was designed wih a rate of reward gain in mind, at the degree to which the 'maximum intended reward gain speed' was exeeded by using brainstorms was huge enough that they actually did something about it.
So they made a mistake when they designed the badging system in the first place, then compounded it by not thinking the fix through, as they admitted.
Demonstrably, stealthing the change was a mistake in that we just found out about it instantly, making the stealth moot.
But it should not have been announced prior to go live in any case. That would have undermined what they were intending to fix in the first place. They might as well say, "Everybody craft Brainstorms now on Live, they are going away in the next patch." Which would eliminate any datmaing they could do on the impact of the change. What they should have done, IMHO is put in a patch note that reads something like:
"Datamining shows that we accidentally set some rewards far higher than intended. The rewards for those activities have been removed temporarily until a better solution can be found. Specifics on which activities will be released with the live patch notes."
Heck, maybe they should append that note to the bottom of all future patch notes.
Hmmm: what if they kept a list of the Closed Beta testers from each patch, and ran ideas by those people secretly, under an NDA, when they pick up on stuff like this? "Hey guys, we just discovered that Brainstorm farming is giving way bigger rewards than it should. It HAS to be nerfed because of upcoming changes to the badging system. How should we go about it?"
Maybe they do this already...dun dun DUN!
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Or maybe what they should have done was
(a) Say "OK, we told people that Brainstorm conversion would count, there's a finite amount of old base salvage that could get turned into brainstorms and then to salvage, and it's just a badge, it's not giving them free purples or anything, so we'll go by what we said and let it count"
or
(b) Realize while still planning I13 that people would be quickly converting base salvage, and maybe done something clever like shelve the whole illthought trainwreck of an idea as it was.
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
Weird. I got the badge on a couple of characters for boringly converting brainstorms . I rember when the badge popped up and thinking big deal - throw me a bone for cleaning this mess up. Oh well .In fact I might have deleted that character already. I must need exploit practise.
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(b) Realize while still planning I13 that people would be quickly converting base salvage, and maybe done something clever like shelve the whole illthought trainwreck of an idea as it was.
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this.
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Ok, just my opinions:
1) I've never seen patch Notes come out before a patch. Heck, sometimes they don't come out the DAY of the patch. Bad planning IMHO but hey, it's an established practice by now so leave that alone.
2) The Devs changing their minds about how something works when it's WAI is NOT, never has been and never should be an exploit. Tankers being able to aggro a whole map was not an exploit....they built the game that way. Instant Regen being a Toggle was not an exploit...they built it that way. Converting Salvage to Brainstorms for badge credit was NOT an exploit...they designed it that way. Therefore technically speaking 'fixing' it, whether by stealth or no, is a nerf. Case closed on this point IMHO.
3) Jesus Thundering Christ in a taxicab it's just a freaking BADGE! It has NO bearing on combat, grants so particularly awe-inspiring Powers, and was not even KNOWN by some who 'exploited' it!
If the Devs want to own up that they did something wrong (and they do but not often enough IMHO) then fine but when the problem has a finite limit (as the Base Salvage had...since it stopped dropping) then suck up the mistake, let a few lucky players get the badge and MOVE ON. Man but I'm tired of wasting Dev time running down PERCEIVED problems when they could be chasing REAL ones! How much meeting and coding time was wasted figuring out that
A) Crafting is suddenly on the rise.
B) The most likely cause is that we forgot that Salvage conversion counted towards Crafting Badges.
C) This is WAI but we still screwed up and now it HAS to be fixed or heaven forbid more players will have *GASP!* Crafting Badges!
D) Ok ladies and gentlemen, we have the problem nailed down so how do we fix it?
E) Implementing, testing, debugging and finally going live with the fix.
If the Crafting Badges gave some powerful Accolade like +5% Health and End or something then I'd be worried too. But what can you get with the Crafting Badges? More Salvage slote? maybe a portable crafting Table? SO WHAT?
Had I been there the solution would have been simple:
A) Ok, WAI but not really. How many pieces of Base Salvage are in the system as of right now? Fourteen million (way guessing here)? Ok, divide that by the number needed to get the top Crafting badge...10k is it? Alright...so taken on an average 1400 more characters are going to have the top Crafting Badge. That's out of some million and a half characters right (again, guessing)? So less than 1% will actually be affected to any real degree and most won't be affected at all?
B) Ok sounds like the problem is resolved who wants doughnuts?
Seriously people when a perceived problem is going to have a finite and probably very short duration let it go and do something useful with your time like giving us more Team Window Options or an AT or Powersets or maybe even...I pray for this every night before bed...NEW MISSION MAPS!
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I'm holding onto my base salvage in hope that this nerf is undone!
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When has any nerf EVER been undone in this game?