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If you zip to 50 inside of 2-3 hours, you'll likely raise some eyebrows.
If you play efficiently (read 'playing smart within the confines of the game and your archetype), there should not be any issues...
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That's an awfully large grey area there.
Be well, people of CoH.
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The Devs aren't going to tell you specifically what exploitive behaviour is, as they do not wish to encourage it.
This is a monthly subscription MMO.
It's better for them if you spend MORE time doing tasks and levelling than spending LESS time.
If you zip to 50 inside of 2-3 hours, you'll likely raise some eyebrows.
If you play efficiently (read 'playing smart within the confines of the game and your archetype), there should not be any issues...
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Not to put to fine a point on it thats wrong. The problem is there is no line.
This Post
Over on the market forum demonstrates the complete lack of a line. There has been nothing talked about as an exploit that couldn't be equaled by good play.
8 hours 1 to 50 is doable without using MA at all. Shaddowstepper cited a case where his SG did just that for a member.
Hitting the ticket cap in under 15 minutes. No problem takes nothing at all.
Destroying the 3.5 minute/merit metric. I do it and I am not particularly fast. ITFS get run in 28 minutes, posis multiboxed in an hour and small change.
Now we have the devs talking about imaginary lines and moral compasses, while rules abiding players get the boot ?
We have faulty logic, that telling people what the limits are will encourage them to exceed them ?
Most people want to play by the rules of the game, many in that group also want to know how far they can take the game. People who solo AVs, Multiple AVs, Giant Monsters, the mothership are by nature pushing the bounds. Beating up an endless swarm of bosses is not violating any kind of risk/reward ratio. What it may be is just playing the game to well.
The devs really need to clarify what their vision is, because the situation thats been created is really poisonous.
For that matter, if the devs provide a hard definition for exploitive behaviour, people will then go right up to that limit and claim they're somehow being not exploitive. If they say 'earning 5,000 tickets in one mission is exploitive' people will go up to 4,999 and stop, even though they are still exploiting the system to get values that high. So they either set the bar so low that players who are just legitimately good at the game get penalised, or they provide no hard definition and ignore the kind of whiny prats who don't understand the point I just made.
5k the limit you don't want make the stated limit 4.5 k
Boy that was hard to think of
<QR>
So, basically, the only way you seem to have fun is to try and push the rewards of the game to the limit.
Apparently you are not alone.
It seems many of the players that feel this way also have no ability to police themselves to not break the intended system. Seen that for years in gaming, I get it.
These same players don't like the actions taken to stop said behavior.
Like you, many of them are determined like some sort of 60s sit-in protest, if they keep making noise, it will change something.
Did I miss anything?
Now, my rebuttal.
Get over yourselves. You don't run the game, you have to abide by whatever those that do see fit to impart to the players. If that is not fun for you, then stop playing.
If you don't want to stop playing, then find another form of fun within the game, because pushing the numbers to the limit is simply not what those who run the game intend to be the center of it's draw.
For those of you that cannot grasp this, I really no of no other way to explain it.
"The side that is unhappy is not the side that the game was intended to make happy, or promised to make happy, or focused on making happy. The side that is unhappy is the side that is unhappy. That's all." - Arcanaville
"Surprised your guys' arteries haven't clogged with all that hatred yet." - Xzero45
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My bad.
I fell for it.
Nope, no definitive definition of exploitive here.
Move along please.
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As far as I can tell there isn't one anywhere. That is a problem.
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Um... Don't make and play Mieow farms or whatever the makers rename them to? Isn't that a definitive definition? And don't tell me they're not obvious. They are.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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In tandem with the thread title, I decide that this subject is beaten beyond plausible recognition already.
Comparing an obvious oversight and exploitative feature (enemies without ranged attack) and a time-honored feature (amassing +Def to increase survivability) is preposterous, and completely non-conducive to any rational discussion. Really, it's that simple.
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My bad.
I fell for it.
Nope, no definitive definition of exploitive here.
Move along please.
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As far as I can tell there isn't one anywhere. That is a problem.
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Um... Don't make and play Mieow farms or whatever the makers rename them to? Isn't that a definitive definition? And don't tell me they're not obvious. They are.
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If you mean rikti comm officer farms they are supposedly now working as intended.
Everything that has been cited as egregious exploitation in other threads can be done through good play.
This is the problem with defining by effect.
QR to the OP - I'm staying out of the mess that followed.
You had two examples: A Blaster that took one power at level 6 and became invincible (Hover blaster in a pre-nerf custom melee farm), and a character that made several power picks, collected several sets, and fine-tuned a spefic build, all with the a specific goal in mind.
One took 5 clicks. The other took hours of farming and/or marketeering and probably a respec or two.
Which do you think the devs are OK with? Is it really so hard for you to see the difference?
Oh, this belongs in the Official Farming Thread. I'm sure Mod8 will be along shortly.
@Roderick
I laughed about bannings because I believed Positron was blowing smoke.
Then I heard about a character lock. I laughed about that, assuming everyone that got a character locked/deleted would be able to laugh it off as easy come/easy go.
And then I started hearing about reports of folks getting both. Not just a small handful of people here or there, but large numbers of people. Apparently some who shouldn't have been tagged.
The laughter became a chuckle. That nervous chuckle of a man realizing that his favorite dev team had fallen off into the deep end.
And then one of my longest term running buddies sends me a tell explaining that he'd been banned for the last 3 days and had a character deleted. He then informed me this was the final straw for him and his sub was already canceled. He won't be back, and I can't blame him.
If it had just been a character deletion, he probably would have laughed it off.
I told him I understood why he was pissed. I understood why I would be pissed were I banned from logging in for any period of time.
It's called theft. We pay for the service in advance. When you're banned from logging in, the money used for that time period is theft. You're not locked out for maintenance. You're not locked out for throwing around racial slurs.
You're locked out because you leveled too fast.
The bannings should not have happened. I will miss running around in game with my friend. He's a good person. His wife played for several years as well. He wouldn't be in my ever decreasing circle of in game running buddies if he wasn't.
Oh well... just another 4-5 year vet gone.
As Statesman said, "It's an MMO, people come and people go."
It's too bad that the devs decided to help speed up that going process.
Be well, people of CoH.
It's not theft, you don't own anything in the game. You pay NCsoft for the privelege of using it, and the EULA means they have the right to do whatever they want with what you make.
The in-game moderators made some mistakes. Big deal. People make mistakes, they can be rectified. Positron didn't manually delete every character, some people got caught in datamining oversights, and should be able to petition support to have it rectified.
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It's not theft, you don't own anything in the game. You pay NCsoft for the privelege of using it, and the EULA means they have the right to do whatever they want with what you make.
The in-game moderators made some mistakes. Big deal. People make mistakes, they can be rectified. Positron didn't manually delete every character, some people got caught in datamining oversights, and should be able to petition support to have it rectified.
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Oh really? And will those people be reimbursed the 1.50 that was stolen from them?
Nope.
Theft is theft. It doesn't matter how small the amount is.
Be well, people of CoH.
Bill, you should really re-read the EULA. Theft, in the case you pointed out, would be payment without service. However, suspension for service used irregularly (and I agree we can stretch this definition quite a bit) is another one.
It's akin to going to a nightclub, paying admission, being a jerk and then calling them thieves for stealing the admission money after being thrown out by security. I understand that lots of people got personal about this. But that's no excuse for mixing things up.
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would be payment without service.
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Which is exactly what a banning is.
Using your analogy, the person in question got kicked out of the club for dancing too fast.
Be well, people of CoH.
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would be payment without service.
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Which is exactly what a banning is.
Using your analogy, the person in question got kicked out of the club for dancing too fast.
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...haha, no.
Yes. Banning is one thing, theft is another. Service was being provided until the rules got broken.
Did the staff overreact? I do think so. But I think that most problems arising from bans and deletions could be solved with some level-headed discussion with the support team. People have had bans lifted and characters back.
Not offering any form of defense would be good reason for getting riled up. And, as far as I know, that's not what's going on, now.
After all, no one likes a break dancer at a waltz ball =)
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Yes. Banning is one thing, theft is another. Service was being provided until the rules got broken.
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What rules ?
The unposted speed limit ?
The developers nebulous intentions for the Mission Architect ?
Above there is a guy who seems to think its alright if you have been around awhile to do these things, but if you are new its not. Well there have been one heck of a lot of people in PI just shouting LFF. I hardly see the difference
These rules, taken from their support site, for instance:
Policy on Using and Exploiting Bugs
Question
What is NCsoft's policy on the use of bugs and exploitation?
Answer
NCsoft does not allow any use of bugs or exploits. Any such activity may lead to a temporary suspension of an account. Repeated or serious violations may result in permanent termination of the account.
If you feel that another player is taking advantage of a bug or exploit, please contact our support staff by submitting a petition. For information on how to do this, please click here. Be sure to include the character's name and a description of why you believe they are violating the rules.
If you find a bug in the game, you can notify our Quality Assurance department by submitting a bug report. For information on how to do this, please click here.
However, there's an even better set of rules, called common sense. And that's what's missing here. Games stand upon a balance of the sum of its contents. Disrupt the access people have for, say, Infamy or rare IOs, and this balance is disrupted. As such, the company decided to act upon it before the problem escalated to a more grievous level.
Again, we can discuss about the methods, etc. They could have done it differently, for better or for worse. I'm positive that some people were shafted without abusing. However, there are methods to contest this decision, on an account level.
I'd rather play a game where the devs act fast on their mistakes and rectify them than to simply let it slip. In the end of the day, any decision affecting more than one person will be bound to dispute and misunderstanding.
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I'd rather play a game where the devs act fast on their mistakes and rectify them than to simply let it slip.
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Then you're playing the wrong game considering everything that was abused on live was known about on test.
Be well, people of CoH.
Since I'm not privy to what transpired between end of test and live implementation, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
What I do know is that I consistently refused Comm and meow farm invites when they were being abused. I guess it paid off.
Lots of people used tons of exploits, including rikti comms and imps, and advertised farms in broadcast (something that was actually banworthy according to the rules when I14 went live) , they weren't banned.
Other people used rikti comms but no other exploits, stayed to themselves and didn't talk about it, did it solo, they were banned.
Do you want to know the difference ? Leveling speed. That's it.
Now, you can stick your fingers in your ears and pretend you didn't hear this. That's fine. Per forum rules, we're not allowed to discuss specifics about bans, so it's not like I can add anything.
Let's not fool ourselves here, it's not about rules or ethics. It's about people leveling too fast in a MMO that, like many other games in the same genre, bases its business model on a certain number of hours needed to reach max level.
And it's not like there's anything wrong with that ! The only wrong thing here is people buying the PR crap and chanting "egregious ! egregious !". Despite looking complicated and all, it isn't a magic word, people who powerlevel aren't children-eating ogres and we aren't living in a magical fairy world where money rains from the trees. It makes sense the devs take whatever steps they feel are necessary to ensure their business keeps running, but please, stop insulting your own intelligence by believing this is about ethics or rules. This is about what the devs feel they need to do in order to ensure an enjoyable experience for the majority and to keep the game running.
*"You", in all this post, refers to nobody in particular.
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Let's not fool ourselves here, it's not about rules or ethics. It's about people leveling too fast in a MMO that, like many other games in the same genre, bases its business model on a certain number of hours needed to reach max level.
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Yes and if that is actually the case, they need to state that and implement code in the game to make it impossible to "Level to Fast" and be done with it. The whole business about moral compasses and you know it when you see it has been little more than insults.
What truly kills me is banning people so they don't burnout.
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"You know it when you see it"
Thats what I keep seeing on the boards, its pretty much their position with the moral compass and reckless driving analogies.
I must be stupid because I really can't tell.
We had ranged weapons added to every group in MA because hoverblasting mobs that couldn't hit back was aberrant play.
I'd call that sensible play. The same way taking a melee character into mobs that have lots of mezzing attacks is a sensible play. The mezzes really cant affect the melee character and they are wasted attacks.
So the Hovering Blaster hitting at mobs with no ranged attacks was a bug that was fixed.
So taking this blaster into that same map would now be what smart play or abusive play?
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/
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It has a softcapped range defense and for all intents an purposes the mobs mulling below at the aggro cap wouldn't be able to do anything to it. Whatever damage did get through could be easily countered with a couple of oranges and picking mobs that had cold based ranged attacks.
There is essentially zero risk for this with virtually unlimited reward. In my terms, I still have no idea what the devs ideas are . It can also achieve its rewards quickly and efficiently. So in terms of rewards per unit time its also very good.
Is it just smart play or not as the developers intended ? I have no damn Idea.
Can you tell?
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Sure I can.
YouGiveCCIGiveInf Man, level 1 and fresh off his 6,342nd account being banned for spamming, wouldn't be able to create such a blaster.
Whereas he'd be able to make a generic hover-blaster in no time.
What people call "farming" is more properly called "reward-focused play". Actual "farming" is done either by automated tools or people following precise scripts who may as well be automated tools.
And there's your mark. Can your strategy be mimicked by an otherwise clueless fresh account?
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
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YouGiveCCIGiveInf Man, level 1 and fresh off his 6,342nd account being banned for spamming, wouldn't be able to create such a blaster.
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Walks to peregrine island.
Starts spamming LFF.
If he knows anyone in the game.
/t @random_pwr_lvlr, hook me up bro
The Devs aren't going to tell you specifically what exploitive behaviour is, as they do not wish to encourage it.
This is a monthly subscription MMO.
It's better for them if you spend MORE time doing tasks and levelling than spending LESS time.
If you zip to 50 inside of 2-3 hours, you'll likely raise some eyebrows.
If you play efficiently (read 'playing smart within the confines of the game and your archetype), there should not be any issues...
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
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