New Level Pact Squad to face the Toughest in CoH
By
10100101,
Posted on: 2009-05-22 19:36 in The Market and Inventions
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I wouldn't attribute too much to it.
I appreciate Smurphy's thought and effort. But if I was a dev and I had a speed limit I didn't want anyone to know about, then I probably wouldn't post it and I probably would avoid becoming a datapoint in Smurphy's experiment.
In other words, we can't really tell if they experiment failed to trigger the RED ALERT siren or if they simply chose to ignore it.
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This.
Now, people will hand wave it away. Or try and turn around and say it proves something about the Devs.
All it proves is they wouldn't be suckered into playing this little game, or that they don't care about people triple-boxing 1-50, or they're more concerned with it becoming a mass activity that any individual character can perform by themselves.
There's lots of things that this "experiment" could prove, which is why it a poorly designed experiment if that is what it is supposed to be. It purports to take data on its subjects by reading their minds.
Sounds like science to me.
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I don't think it was supposed to be science. Its pretty clear that its meant to be some sort of enterprise, I guess the inf exchnge business is slow. The leadup about confrontation and seeing where the limits are seems like just so much barnum
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In other words, we can't really tell if they experiment failed to trigger the RED ALERT siren or if they simply chose to ignore it.
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Due to dev reticence to provide meaningful guidelines, we don't know the process the black box goes through. it either acts or doesn't and we don't know why.
We must assume actions that don't trigger a hostile response have not crossed any of their invisible boundaries.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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In other words, we can't really tell if they experiment failed to trigger the RED ALERT siren or if they simply chose to ignore it.
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Due to dev reticence to provide meaningful guidelines, we don't know the process the black box goes through. it either acts or doesn't and we don't know why.
We must assume actions that don't trigger a hostile response have not crossed any of their invisible boundaries.
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Or that the black box runs only periodically.
Or after the level pact screwup they stopped running it.
Or they have exemptions built into it that this triggered.
Or ...
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Or ...
Ogon was right about this really not being science on the baords.
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We must assume actions that don't trigger a hostile response have not crossed any of their invisible boundaries.
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Do you know what happens when we ASSUME? It makes an [censored] out of U and ME. 
50s: Inv/SS PB Emp/Dark Grav/FF DM/Regen TA/A Sonic/Elec MA/Regen Fire/Kin Sonic/Rad Ice/Kin Crab Fire/Cold NW Merc/Dark Emp/Sonic Rad/Psy Emp/Ice WP/DB FA/SM
Overlord of Dream Team and Nightmare Squad
when we collect more data points, we can make more solid assumptions.
For now, a high profile challenge the devs failed to respond to leads to certain fairly obvious conclusions.
I'm guessing they've recovered from their temporary MA-induced insanity and will respond to this thread the traditional way- by changing the rules to make it impossible without lining players up for the guillotine.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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when we collect more data points, we can make more solid assumptions.
For now, a high profile challenge the devs failed to respond to leads to certain fairly obvious conclusions.
I'm guessing they've recovered from their temporary MA-induced insanity and will respond to this thread the traditional way- by changing the rules to make it impossible without lining players up for the guillotine.
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To state that the conclusions are "fairly obvious" is flat-out ridiculous.
First of all, this is posted in the MARKET forum, not the AE forum. If it were a true "challenge" to the people in control, it should've been posted in the category where Mod 8 would most likely be the first to see it.
Secondly, to pretend like this power-leveling is some bold challenge is fallible. People are still power-leveling every hour of every day in Mission Architect. It may have slowed down after Positron dropped the proverbial hammer, but when I see broadcasts asking for "boss farms" anytime I leave a mission door, that tells me all I need to know about whether people are still doing it.
Third, the big technical debate wasn't over people leveling fast. It was over people using ABUSIVE missions, such as the crazy-XP trial comm officers, imps, and bomb-clusters in order to minimize the risk while maximizing the reward. People will always find ways to level quickly, and nothing they do is going to stop that. What the devs are trying to do is stop the exploits and minimize the "easy-route" to 50. It's a daily struggle, as people are ALWAYS looking for the easy route.
And finally, if this were a true challenge, the exact technique and mission arc numbers would be posted. I understand the problem with doing so, because it would get insta-reported by the volunteer AE-police (players), but it would offer us, the observers of this experiment, full transparency and not just status reports.
In parting, I want to say that I actually have no opinion as to whether or not this exercise is good for the people or just some elaborate troll attempt. The only reason I'm responding at all is because people on both sides of this argument are drawing the conclusion that they want to. If you want an actual conclusion to an actual experiment, the obscurity has to stop.
PS - The argument over the definition about "direct" and "directly" was a waste of everyone's time and bandwidth.
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when we collect more data points, we can make more solid assumptions.
For now, a high profile challenge the devs failed to respond to leads to certain fairly obvious conclusions.
I'm guessing they've recovered from their temporary MA-induced insanity and will respond to this thread the traditional way- by changing the rules to make it impossible without lining players up for the guillotine.
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To state that the conclusions are "fairly obvious" is flat-out ridiculous.
First of all, this is posted in the MARKET forum, not the AE forum. If it were a true "challenge" to the people in control, it should've been posted in the category where Mod 8 would most likely be the first to see it.
Secondly, to pretend like this power-leveling is some bold challenge is fallible. People are still power-leveling every hour of every day in Mission Architect. It may have slowed down after Positron dropped the proverbial hammer, but when I see broadcasts asking for "boss farms" anytime I leave a mission door, that tells me all I need to know about whether people are still doing it.
Third, the big technical debate wasn't over people leveling fast. It was over people using ABUSIVE missions, such as the crazy-XP trial comm officers, imps, and bomb-clusters in order to minimize the risk while maximizing the reward. People will always find ways to level quickly, and nothing they do is going to stop that. What the devs are trying to do is stop the exploits and minimize the "easy-route" to 50. It's a daily struggle, as people are ALWAYS looking for the easy route.
And finally, if this were a true challenge, the exact technique and mission arc numbers would be posted. I understand the problem with doing so, because it would get insta-reported by the volunteer AE-police (players), but it would offer us, the observers of this experiment, full transparency and not just status reports.
In parting, I want to say that I actually have no opinion as to whether or not this exercise is good for the people or just some elaborate troll attempt. The only reason I'm responding at all is because people on both sides of this argument are drawing the conclusion that they want to. If you want an actual conclusion to an actual experiment, the obscurity has to stop.
PS - The argument over the definition about "direct" and "directly" was a waste of everyone's time and bandwidth.
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Smurphy changes his single mission to suit his desires for the moment. Telling you today he is killing Fake Nems tomorrow you might load up a bunch of carnies.
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PS - The argument over the definition about "direct" and "directly" was a waste of everyone's time and bandwidth.
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Actually, that is part of the funny.
The person who tried to claim that the Devs were never directly adressed in the OP, is now using the idea that they must have known about this as part of their central argument for why it is important.
Or perhaps there is yet another fine spin someone would like to put on that.
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To state that the conclusions are "fairly obvious" is flat-out ridiculous.
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Here is a short play to help you understand the point you're oblivious to:
An MA Tale
Starring
Smurphy, a dirty farming PL'er
The Devs, all-powerful creators.
Smurph (addressing the Devs on high from their temple):
I'm going to PL a bunch of characters using MA without any of the "exploits" you've deplored in the past.
Smite me with lightning if I am doing wrong!
Devs:
(silence)
Smurph:
Okay, here we go!
(strolls over to the MA with his crew)
Devs:
(silence)
Smurph, exiting MA in a cloud of brimstone:
Wow that was fast, we hit 50 in a couple of hours!
Devs:
(silence)
The End
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First of all, this is posted in the MARKET forum, not the AE forum. If it were a true "challenge" to the people in control, it should've been posted in the category where Mod 8 would most likely be the first to see it.
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The 'report' button doesn't care where a thread is posted, and this one was turned in long ago.
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Secondly, to pretend like this power-leveling is some bold challenge is fallible. People are still power-leveling every hour of every day in Mission Architect.
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There's a world of difference between recruiting a farm team in broadcast and directly challenging the devs in the forums.
It takes an inspired effort to confuse the two actions.
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Third, the big technical debate wasn't over people leveling fast. It was over people using ABUSIVE missions, such as the crazy-XP trial comm officers, imps, and bomb-clusters in order to minimize the risk while maximizing the reward.
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It was absolutely 100% about leveling fast.
If the 'broken' stuff in MA hadn't resulted in super efficient leveling, they wouldn't have freaked out about it.
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People will always find ways to level quickly, and nothing they do is going to stop that.
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They could stop it tomorrow if they wanted.
It would probably be fatal to the game, but it's very do-able.
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And finally, if this were a true challenge, the exact technique and mission arc numbers would be posted. I understand the problem with doing so, because it would get insta-reported by the volunteer AE-police (players), but it would offer us, the observers of this experiment, full transparency and not just status reports.
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Smurph has given us all the information we need to access his experiment.
The devs see all, and chose not to react.
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In parting, I want to say that I actually have no opinion as to whether or not this exercise is good for the people or just some elaborate troll attempt.
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Your powers of observation and judgment are exactly what I'd expect given the rest of your post.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
The people who run the forums are not the devs, but the mods. That is not a mere semantic difference. When you report a thread, it notifies the mods and if violates the rules of posting, it will get edited or deleted. Repeatedly getting moderated may result in loss of posting privileges.
The mods, I assume, read the OP after someone reported it, saw no violation of forums rules, and carried on. They may or may not have passed the information to the devs or to customer service (the GMs).
The devs or GMs may not care about Smurphy's experiment, or they may not have heard about it yet, or they may be giving it a tacit vote of approval. Know one knows which.
To assume differently is pure folly.
I personally think that leveling quickly is tolerated on the fringes. As long as it's only a handful of folks and it doesn't involve an exploit, I don't believe the devs or GMs will crack down. When hundreds or thousands of players level at the speeds Smurphy is reporting I predict you will see a crackdown which may include nerfs, discipline, and stern posts from on high. But I don't have any particular empirical evidence for my prediction other than past history.
50s: Inv/SS PB Emp/Dark Grav/FF DM/Regen TA/A Sonic/Elec MA/Regen Fire/Kin Sonic/Rad Ice/Kin Crab Fire/Cold NW Merc/Dark Emp/Sonic Rad/Psy Emp/Ice WP/DB FA/SM
Overlord of Dream Team and Nightmare Squad
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To state that the conclusions are "fairly obvious" is flat-out ridiculous.
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Here is a short play to help you understand the point you're oblivious to:
An MA Tale
Starring
Smurphy, a dirty farming PL'er
Smurph (addressing the audience from the town square):
I'm going to PL a bunch of characters using MA without any of the "exploits" the devs have deplored in the past.
Devs, smite me with lightning if I am doing wrong!
Okay, here we go!
(strolls over to the MA with his crew)
Wow that was fast, we hit 50 in a couple of hours!
Now buy my product! You know you want it!
The End
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Fixed.
I can make you a very tough arc if you really want it but i'm not responsible for debt or quitters you said you wanted the hardest well i'm here to deliver 
The team hit 31 today in another hour of playing or so.
Chaos_String
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Here is a short play to help you understand the point you're oblivious to:
An MA Tale
Starring
Smurphy, a dirty farming PL'er
Smurph (addressing the audience from the town square):
I'm going to PL a bunch of characters using MA without any of the "exploits" the devs have deplored in the past.
Devs, smite me with lightning if I am doing wrong!
Okay, here we go!
(strolls over to the MA with his crew)
Wow that was fast, we hit 50 in a couple of hours!
Now buy my product! You know you want it!
The End
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I think your interpretation of events is more accurate.
Reborn_Midnight
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I can make you a very tough arc if you really want it but i'm not responsible for debt or quitters you said you wanted the hardest well i'm here to deliver
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I'm not interested. Thanks for the possibility though.
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Fixed.
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good point- I forgot to include TEH EEEBIL in my first draft.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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The people who run the forums are not the devs, but the mods. That is not a mere semantic difference. When you report a thread, it notifies the mods and if violates the rules of posting, it will get edited or deleted. Repeatedly getting moderated may result in loss of posting privileges.
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From what I recall of past job listings mods have to clock in at Dev HQ and have assorted other company duties besides wrangling us malcontents. So they're hanging with the 'big boys'.
And I'm assuming this joint runs like every other forum in the world, i/e mods deal with little stuff, admins deal with the bigger stuff that gets kicked up the food chain and the head admin/site owner deals with the rest.
I have a tremendously low opinion of the NC reps on the boards, but even the dullest pencil in that shopworn box would know enough to kick this thread up the chain of command.
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To assume differently is pure folly.
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As an admin for a busy forum for a web based business, I don't agree.
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When hundreds or thousands of players level at the speeds Smurphy is reporting I predict you will see a crackdown which may include nerfs, discipline, and stern posts from on high. But I don't have any particular empirical evidence for my prediction other than past history.
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you're not going to see hundreds or thousands of people doing what Smurph is doing because it takes dedication and a large up-front investment in IO's.
I think they'll 'correct' this 'problem' in the traditional way- quiet rule changes, no punitive treatment of players.
It's an approach that's historically worked fine and generated far less hostility and drama than the 'new way' they tried to pave in I14.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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I think they'll 'correct' this 'problem' in the traditional way- quiet rule changes, no punitive treatment of players.
It's an approach that's historically worked fine and generated far less hostility and drama than the 'new way' they tried to pave in I14.
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I hope you are right. Although I am sometimes miffed at some nerf or other, I usually realize when something is too good and realize (once I calm down and get rational) that it's a necessary change.
Removing the comm officer and super imp XP was necessary. The stern discipline wasn't.
50s: Inv/SS PB Emp/Dark Grav/FF DM/Regen TA/A Sonic/Elec MA/Regen Fire/Kin Sonic/Rad Ice/Kin Crab Fire/Cold NW Merc/Dark Emp/Sonic Rad/Psy Emp/Ice WP/DB FA/SM
Overlord of Dream Team and Nightmare Squad
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Removing the comm officer and super imp XP was necessary. The stern discipline wasn't.
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agreed.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
See, what this thread really "proves" is that an enterprising player can make a billion infamy in just a few hours of gameplay without tying up any investment capital other than the IOs he would have slotted into his character's powers anyway--and purely as a tangent to powerleveling his own toons.
gg Smurphy.
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Typically these systems quantify challlenge by levels or "challenge ratings". The wider the gap between a character's level and the level or challenge rating of something they overcome, the more progress they make towards their next progress threshold.
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I think you misunderstand me. If a character undergoes two encounters, they should definitely earn more XP from the more difficult one, assuming other factors are equivalent.
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But that's not the assertion that led me to launch into the background of the systems. Specfically, it was the assertion that the character who's better at something should get the greater reward for it.
...
Under your principles, the level 45 Scrapper should make more progress towards being level 46 in that encounter than the level 41 one should, even though (as the game stands), he's facing significantly less threat.
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I seem to have misspoken. What I meant was that the character who's better should get the greater proportion of the reward. And when I say that I have a specific mathematical formula in mind, where XP is generated and then divided proportional to relative level differences, so it's probably not surprising that I confused everyone since I didn't actually state the formula.
One other factor is that I'm primarily concerned with reward rates, and only care about rewards per encounter to the extent that they contribute to rate (the other part of the equation being the encounter rate, i.e. defeat rate, obviously).
Hang on, I'm about to respond to an earlier point of Arcanaville that will hopefully clear the air, because I suspect we're all actually in violent agreement with each other.
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
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What the current reward system does is basically state that the overriding requirement is no teaming penalty. In other words, under as many conditions as is possible to account for, a player should never earn *less* XP when on a team than when solo, when performing at basically the same activity level (unless they are above the combat level of the targets, where its possible due to saturation).
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It's fascinating to me that you made this statement, because that's exactly the principle I was trying to get at with the 2-scrapper experiment. If you run the experiment, you'll find that the higher level teammate is always penalized relative to what they can earn solo. The fact that the 2-scrapper experiment fails tells me that under most circumstances the whole system fails. The exceptional case involves buffers, where their contribution to the team may not be significantly diminished by their lower level due to buff mechanics.
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
Smurph, sorry for the huge threadjack. Hopefully it's been entertaining, or at least thought provoking.
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
Ding 38, about to be 39. I took them on an Imperious Task Force where they stood at the door and malefactored some 50s down to 38. Essentially it was a 5-man Invincible Players Debuffed spawned for 8 ITF. We mauled it. Though only got about 1 level worth of XP for the Pacters.
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Ding 38, about to be 39. I took them on an Imperious Task Force where they stood at the door and malefactored some 50s down to 38. Essentially it was a 5-man Invincible Players Debuffed spawned for 8 ITF. We mauled it. Though only got about 1 level worth of XP for the Pacters.
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Good lord, Smurph.
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Ding 38, about to be 39. I took them on an Imperious Task Force where they stood at the door and malefactored some 50s down to 38. Essentially it was a 5-man Invincible Players Debuffed spawned for 8 ITF. We mauled it. Though only got about 1 level worth of XP for the Pacters.
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Good lord, Smurph.
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This.
Also:
So when are you going to solo the RSF?
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But that alone proves something. It makes it all the more evident that they don't give a [censored] [censored] about how they handle this. They retroactively punish, punish the wrong people, ignore their customers screaming for clarification, THEN they make exceptions cause it suits them????? Sorry your going to make something bannable then define it and enforce it evenly no exceptions.
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I don't know that the points you raise needed this experiment for proof. We have thousands and thousands of posts of the forums begging for clarification and the best we have gotten is a faulty traffic analogy.
What the MA mania has shown is, is that the devs really don't listen much to their customers and are willing to walk off a cliff even when people are shouting there is a big drop