Question about MA and farming/bannings
By
BashfulBanshee,
Posted on: 2009-06-04 16:57 in Player Questions
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Why is the first instinct of so many on this forum to go running to mommy?
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And once again, the person reporting a problem becomes the problem and is "running to mommy". I guess you're unable to comprehend that serious exploiting and unacceptable behavior hurt the entire community and there are people who are (gasp) actually willing to make an effort to help the game and the community as a whole.
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There's something else that they tend to overlook. We have been told that the GM's can flag an MA mission/arc as unbannable if they determine nothing is wrong with it, and that flag remains on the arc until the next time the player edits it.
The GM's aren't going to wait for an arc banned by mistake to use that flag. They are going to minimize unnecessary work by putting the flag on any arc that they review and determine to be fine. That way it will cut down on griefing and they can focus on arcs they haven't already reviewed.
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Why is the first instinct of so many on this forum to go running to mommy?
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And once again, the person reporting a problem becomes the problem and is "running to mommy". I guess you're unable to comprehend that serious exploiting and unacceptable behavior hurt the entire community and there are people who are (gasp) actually willing to make an effort to help the game and the community as a whole.
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Some people are far too quick to dive on the report button, not everyone that Reports, but enough.
Some GMs act on reports in a rash or even almost lazy manner. We know this from the people that have petioned to have GM actions reversed.
IMO, we'd all be better if we left the Report buttons for truly innappropriate activity. The devs can find the blurry issues with their datamining. I've only reported players or missions that left NO doubt in my mind that ANY GM responding would clearly need to take action.
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If your level 45 character gets 3 levels in one run of one mission, or you regularly get the "ticket cap" message, you're probably in an inappropriate mission. Finish it once then report it in the window that pops up.
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Please don't do this. The quisling recommending this is obviously working on his hall monitor badge, and wants to grief players that don't play the way that he wants them to. If you find yourself hitting the ticket cap or gaining lots of levels , I recommend repeating the mish a few times. If there is no EXPLOIT, like the rikti comm officers, everything is OK. I've repeated such missions several times, and have never had a problem. Don't let those who don't like farming conflate teh ideas of farming and exploits. They just want to criminalize playing the game efficiently.
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This is a perfect example of the "chicken little/exploiter" mentality. This person is trying to confuse farming with exploiting.
See how he starts off using the insult "quisling" in a veiled attempt to make the person asking the GM's to check out a possible exploit as the bad guy.
Players DON'T have the ability or authority to determine if an MA mission/arc is an exploit. Only the GM's can do that.
Notice how he encourages you to run mission/arc several times rather instead of notifying the GM's and letting them do their job. He wants you to do that because the more often you run a questionable mission/arc the more likely the GM's will see you as having dirty hands and punish you as well as the mission/arc creator.
Finally notice how he is attempting to blur the lines between farming and exploits by implying that farming is seen as bad, and using exploits is playing efficiently.
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Personally, I find it humorous that he makes a "hall monitor badge" reference like it's supposed to mean anything. The guy made such a claim against me in a thread about Trademark/Copyright Infringement. He's clearly the type that thinks his game works in a vacuum and his actions affect no one but himself. His attempt at word play, while obvious and ineffective, was also humorous. Trying to mix up "Farming" and "Exploiting"... classic.
Many of these people forget that an exploit, by definition, has to be allowed by the game code to occur. This should be obvious, but they often use that as a defense when they're caught. See: "The game allows it, so I shouldn't get in trouble over it!" The problem is, it's not their game to decide what's reasonable use of game code and what isn't, and when they cross the line that the devs set, they'll get knocked back to the other side. Forcefully. Input comment about "we don't know where the line is until we cross it!" "defense" here.
Actually, don't bother with that. It's painfully obvious if you're exploiting the game code, and that's ignoring the fact that if such a hard list were created all the exploiters would make their missions a few millimeters off the "line". It's left vague for a reason, and many rules are intentionally vague specifically so they can catch more people under its umbrella while not appearing to be contradicting themselves when they punish certain people.
To end, I find posters like the one you quoted to be hilarious. This "fight da powa!" mentality always makes me laugh.
Main Hero : Annilixxion -- Lv50 Blaster
Main Villain : Menkaura -- Lv41 Mastermind
@Laxx
"You will bend to my will, with or without your precious sanity." --Dragon Mage
Here's my take on the whole mess. Posi said "Only the worst of the worst, exploitive, powerlevelled characters will be removed from the game." It is unlikely you qualify. Posi refused to quantify what really was abusive, but based on the accidental bans of level pacted chars it appears to be simply training up to 50 without having played the character long enough. I've heard the time of ten hours tossed around, but I have no idea if that's accurate.
Now there are some obvious exploits. If you can get under the map and attack mobs without them attacking back, that's an exploit. If you get Boss level XP from a Minion without any good reason, that's an exploit. Rikti Comm Officers (Minions) give Lieutenant rewards due to the chance that they'll summon reinforcements, and that was working as intended. But only a single Comm Officer per spawn will try to summon reinforcements, so logically only a single one per spawn should be worth the higher reward. So fighting spawns entirely composed of Rikti Comm Officers seems like an exploit to me. And the level 42 ones gave significantly higher rewards than any others, so that was pretty clearly an exploit to me.
The biggest problem with this is intent. Most people probably didn't know that only a single Comm Officer per spawn would summon reinforcements, and that was the basis for their XP bonus. And most people probably didn't know there was anything special about the level 42 ones. So a LOT of people used Meow farms to level REALLY fast without anything screaming OBVIOUS EXPLOIT. Well, other than the leveling speed.
I suspect the bannings were intended for people who powerleveled using the Meow farms while knowing exactly what they were doing. Those people probably could and did go from 1 to 50 really fast. And those people probably paid the price.
Now there are a WHOLE LOT of tactics that appear to be valid without being obvious exploits. The MA lets you make allies, so it doesn't seem like an exploit to use them. You can fight mobs that do damage you significantly resist, and you can fight mobs that are vulnerable to your damage. People do this in non-MA missions all the time. You can get fillers so you get more mobs in your mission, and that doesn't seem like an exploit. After all, you're still going to fight them. You can fight mobs like Freakshow who give more XP than normal mobs, but that's because the Devs have determined that the Healing and Rezzing they do makes them more dangerous. If you stick to these tactics, you're probably safe. You'd have to be really good to level too fast. But then you're not good, you're bad. Very bad.
Meh, it doesn't matter. The Devs aren't saying what qualifies as an exploit. No one here can tell you either. LOTS of people were asking these sorts of questions during the bannings, but posts and entire threads simply disappeared. So the only thing I can say is don't exploit, and don't be TOO good.
Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.
I've moved on to Diablo 3, TopDoc-1304
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The Devs aren't saying what qualifies as an exploit. No one here can tell you either.
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Posi has a very good reason for not giving us an absolute definition of what qualifies as an exploit.
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Q) Are you going to give us an absolute definition of what abuse is?
A) I know a lot of you want to know an exact definition to see if you were actually abusing the system, or just playing the game, but I dont want to be set up in a situation where our definition of abuse is abused. For example, if we say that the definition is you gained 4 levels in under 30 minutes, then someone will make sure that they gain 4 levels in 31 minutes, so they can claim they were within the allowed limits and not abusing. Someone said it best that the definition of reckless driving is purposely ambiguous, being Disregard for safety. With this example, I would say that a good interpretation of abuse is Disregard for the risk and/or time to reward ratio.
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We all know the exploiters would jump on that excuse.
The only exploiters that I have seen here in three years are RMT'ers. They need to finish banning them because my toons' mailboxes are under a constant spam attack. Those people hurt the game more than any normal player paying their 15 quid a month IMHO.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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The only exploiters that I have seen here in three years are RMT'ers. They need to finish banning them because my toons' mailboxes are under a constant spam attack. Those people hurt the game more than any normal player paying their 15 quid a month IMHO.
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It doesn't really matter what you claim to have no knowledge of, nor is anyone forcing you to participate in the petition process. If you want to bury your head in the sand like an ostrich and pretend the MA fiasco never happened that's fine by us.
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After reading this thread up to Phillygirl's response, I felt there was something that needed to be said...
If you feel a mission is exploitive, report it. If a GM feels the arc is exploitive they'll pull it. IF it isn't they won't. Pretty simple.
We as players cannot ban arcs. Only the GM's/devs can do that.
[/ QUOTE ] Problem is, I strongly suspect that not very much evaluation occurs. It seems that if a mish crosses a complaint threshold, it is auto-banned.
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And what are you basing this on? Fabricated statistics again?
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The only exploiters that I have seen here in three years are RMT'ers.
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The you haven't been paying attention.
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Hm, this thread got modsmacked. Presumably one of the 'the rules don't apply to me' people had the rules applied to them.
I'm so going to get flamed over this.
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MA is a dilemma without a reasonable resolution.
A lot of dev time was put into MA. It's purpose to allow players with a creative side produce new content that would be a change of pace, especially if as a player you are on your 20th alt or to allow missions to be created that would challenge solo players who still find PvE at the highest level of difficulty to easy. They can't simply remove it without a lot of explaining to senior management.
If they made it so MA missions offered reduced XP to dissuade abuse, AE would have been a ghost town in two weeks. Which would also require a lot of explaining to senior management.
If they locked maps to minimum level ranges (low level characters don't normally have missions on extra large maps) it would have been said they were limiting creativity.
If they limited the number of spawns per mission based on level (to keep XP down) they would have been accused of not allowing someone to create a really challenging mission. ("I've always wanted to fight a desperate battle against incredible odds.")
As it is now, the alternate reward system of tickets have affected the market supply terribly, at least in the short term. While giving players a way to get the IO sets in high demand without endless "farming" for either Inf, random drops or merits, it prevents the market from being supplied by IO recipes that weren't useful for that character. Without a constant supply of unwanted recipes and salvage pricing goes out of whack. Prices soar and now players "farm" for the Inf to buy the once inexpensive salvage or simply go with the flow and do only MA missions for tickets so they can roll randomly for them.
They wanted to make sure there was enough AEs to satisfy the initial demand of editing or trying out missions so we have one in just about every open zone, but having them in the lowest level zones have made it so players need not ever leave those zones (except to craft and you can do that at the most modest of SG bases).
As others have pointed out, eliminating the need to travel from contact to mission and back (until you get the contact on speed dial) speeds leveling more than any previous changes to XP (reduction of max debt, 1/2 debt in missions, increased mission bonus, smoothing of XP though modifiers based on level of critter, patrol XP for the player who rotates through their alts).
The side effect of all this are newbies playing the game for the first time and simply miss out on the whole experience, at least once. I see more and more questions about how to get contacts since new players simply skip over that method of getting missions. Many simply never explored beyond Atlas and Mercy unless they joined a TF or an PUG playing an actual "normal" mission.
I'm not saying MA was a bad idea, but the unintended consequences of it have affected the "society" in the game and on the forums more so than any other feature, that the devs have added to this game. More than adding loot, more than adding PvP, more than adding bases.
It's like what would happen if we ever got the ability to jack into the internet directly with are brains. It may sound like a good idea to be able to access the collected knowledge of mankind but it'll just end up with all the guys surfing porn and the girls writing slash fiction and everyone shopping online. Nobody would be doing the work required to keep society functioning.
A long time ago the devs halved debt in missions and boosted mission XP bonus to encourage players to play the content the devs created instead of street sweeping. MA has undone all of that by providing a path of least resistance for accumulating XP. Without some kind of limiter in place to force MA junkies out of AE into the "real world" to revive the market economy and repopulate zones with players traveling to and from missions, Paragon City and the Rogue Isles will become virtual ghost towns, more so than before MA arrived. The problem is any significant change now to rewards, XP or other, would be considered the biggest nerf since ED.
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So how do you change MA so it doesn't become a ghost town overnight or a roach motel where players check in and only check out when they're Level 50?
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Thats just silly mate, take a step back and relax. I never said any of the things you are talking about.
I was here for I14 open when we told the devs that particular mobs were giving out rewards at a higher rate than normal or that things like vamp chambers and shadow cyst were giving xp and should be adjusted. Yet they went live anyway of course. I think the blame lies with the devs just like prior incidents they were told about yet pushed things to live anyway.
Currently, most people are playing story farms and there is nothing wrong with that.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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Thats just silly mate, take a step back and relax. I never said any of the things you are talking about.
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Actually you did Darth.
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The only exploiters that I have seen here in three years are RMT'ers.
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By claiming that the only exploiters you have ever seen are the RMT companies, you give the impression that you are saying you never saw anyone recruiting and looking for the MA expolit farms, or saw anyone bragging how they got to level 50 in 8 hours. No one believes that, and implying that the only people that have taken advantage of exploits are the RMTers is burying your head in the sand.
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I was here for I14 open when we told the devs that particular mobs were giving out rewards at a higher rate than normal or that things like vamp chambers and shadow cyst were giving xp and should be adjusted. Yet they went live anyway of course. I think the blame lies with the devs just like prior incidents they were told about yet pushed things to live anyway.
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And prior to I14 going live Posi told us exactly what the MA was not intended to be used for.
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Positron
I should probably take this moment to talk about what the Mission Architect is not meant for. It is not meant for easy leveling or badging or farming . Those are things that we specifically wanted the Mission Architect NOT to do.
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Seems pretty clear what type of actions would get us in trouble if we chose to ignore the warning. Oh and claiming ignorance of the rules does not mean they don't apply to you. The information was made available to everyone. The company is not under any obligation to hand deliver it on a silver platter and get a signed reciept that you read and comprehend it. (that's a generic you being used here, not you personally Darth.)
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Currently, most people are playing story farms and there is nothing wrong with that.
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That's up to the GM's to decide, not us.
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After reading this thread up to Phillygirl's response, I felt there was something that needed to be said...
If you feel a mission is exploitive, report it. If a GM feels the arc is exploitive they'll pull it. IF it isn't they won't. Pretty simple.
We as players cannot ban arcs. Only the GM's/devs can do that.
[/ QUOTE ] Problem is, I strongly suspect that not very much evaluation occurs. It seems that if a mish crosses a complaint threshold, it is auto-banned.
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And what are you basing this on? Fabricated statistics again?
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No I believe (pardon me i am way to lazy to look it up) it's 5 complaints and the mish gets auto banned. As forbidden put in his posts because of this a GM can then go look at it and if it is actually ok they flag it so it can't be auto banned.
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After reading this thread up to Phillygirl's response, I felt there was something that needed to be said...
If you feel a mission is exploitive, report it. If a GM feels the arc is exploitive they'll pull it. IF it isn't they won't. Pretty simple.
We as players cannot ban arcs. Only the GM's/devs can do that.
[/ QUOTE ] Problem is, I strongly suspect that not very much evaluation occurs. It seems that if a mish crosses a complaint threshold, it is auto-banned.
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And what are you basing this on? Fabricated statistics again?
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No I believe (pardon me i am way to lazy to look it up) it's 5 complaints and the mish gets auto banned. As forbidden put in his posts because of this a GM can then go look at it and if it is actually ok they flag it so it can't be auto banned.
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Prove it. I haven't seen anything from the devs saying 5 complaints = autoban.
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By claiming that the only exploiters you have ever seen are the RMT companies, you give the impression that you are saying you never saw anyone recruiting and looking for the MA expolit farms, or saw anyone bragging how they got to level 50 in 8 hours. No one believes that, and implying that the only people that have taken advantage of exploits are the RMTers is burying your head in the sand.
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Actually, no it does not mean I buried my head in the sand. What it actually means is "I" am not about to call players that identified and notified the devs of outta whack xp/inf givers in open beta that were ignored exploiters.
The devs knew about these issues and decided not to fix them until welcome back weekend was over. They have pushed known expoits to live a number of times and to expect/think/hope/desire that people would ignore these once live hit is the best example of one burying their collective heads in the sand that there has ever been.
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Currently, most people are playing story farms and there is nothing wrong with that.
That's up to the GM's to decide, not us.
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Yeah I know thats my whole point about story farms not being banned.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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By claiming that the only exploiters you have ever seen are the RMT companies, you give the impression that you are saying you never saw anyone recruiting and looking for the MA expolit farms, or saw anyone bragging how they got to level 50 in 8 hours. No one believes that, and implying that the only people that have taken advantage of exploits are the RMTers is burying your head in the sand.
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Actually, no it does not mean I buried my head in the sand. What it actually means is "I" am not about to call players that identified and notified the devs of outta whack xp/inf givers in open beta that were ignored exploiters.
The devs knew about these issues and decided not to fix them until welcome back weekend was over. They have pushed known expoits to live a number of times and to expect/think/hope/desire that people would ignore these once live hit is the best example of one burying their collective heads in the sand that there has ever been.
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Where do you get the idea that anyone here is calling the people that reported issues during beta testing exploiters?
That's as pathetic as trying to scare farmers into thinking the devs equate all farming as exploits.
It is not the responsibility of the devs to enforce the rules of the game that job belongs to the GM's. Each and every player agrees to play by the companies rules every time they log into the game. We all know that taking advantage of exploits can get us in trouble with the GM's.
And no it is not too much to expect people to play by the rules of a game. Just because you find a way to cheat doesn't mean that you should. The game has a teen rating. A teen is expected to know right from wrong.
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Why is the first instinct of so many on this forum to go running to mommy?
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And once again, the person reporting a problem becomes the problem and is "running to mommy". I guess you're unable to comprehend that serious exploiting and unacceptable behavior hurt the entire community and there are people who are (gasp) actually willing to make an effort to help the game and the community as a whole.
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