Best feature of the whole issue!
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
I'm pretty sure these spawning rules have affected regular missions as well.
For instance, I don't remember seeing a good 30-40 arachnos in the starting Soldiers mission, but they're there now and making it much more of a challenge than before.
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Because the current documentation states otherwise doesn't imply anything other than when it was added to the manual, it was documented incorrectly.
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And the fact that the "incorrect" info hasn't been corrected despite numerous updates to said documentation since, and that other sources saying it's supposed to be different than it's working now were added to the game itself by the devs provides evidence that it's more than just a clerical error.
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Heh? Oh. I assume you've never worked in a job that is primarily adding things, whether it's software or technical writing, to an existing "document". In short it isn't in your mandate to fix things beyond what you've been assigned to add or fix. As a matter of fact it is generally frowned upon with extreme prejudice by your boss. You do your job with as little interaction with the rest of the document as possible. The more that's modified, the more proof-reading (software testing in the case of code) that is required and that is generally someone else's job and they aren't scheduled to do work beyond the estimate based on your original mandate. That's how technical writing and code development has worked everyplace I've been in my 25 year career.
In short if they weren't modifying the section that includes incorrect information, nobody will proof that section for correctness beyond spelling and grammar (and sometimes not). If some fact in the manual is incorrect and they aren't aware of it or it isn't considered significant enough to schedule someone to go in and fix it, it will remain indefinitely.
I can imagine how this error was created. When the manual was being updated a tech writer went to a developer to ask what were exemplaring rewards. The developer tells the tech writer that XP debt gets paid off twice as fast and if paid off the character get Inf instead of XP, now shoo. The tech writer goes back to their cubical look up XP debt and it says that XP debt gets paid off with half the XP earned. Since under exemplaring it gets paid off twice as fast they incorrectly assume that XP is doubled while exemplaring and if XP is doubled then when XP debt is paid off you must get double the Inf. Voila, a mistake made in good faith. And since many players already believed this to be the case, it goes unnoticed except by the few of us who end up muttering to ourselves because nobody wants to listen to the facts.
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The thing is there's been a contingent of players who never liked exemplaring going as far back as when it was introduced. They didn't see a good reason to and this was back when the debt cap was much, much higher and perma-debt was all to common. People crunched the numbers and found no advantage to their character when running in exemplar mode than not, including influence generation. But that wasn't the purpose of exemplaring, the purpose is to allow a higher level player to join a team of primarily lower level characters just as sidekicking allows a lower level character to join a team of primarily higher level characters. It was a method to facilitate teaming, nothing more.
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And it looks to me like it wasn't that they weren't at an advantage that cheesed them a little, but rather that they were at a DISadvantage that was the problem. That's shown right in the first post of the thread you linked. Social or not, there's no reason people agreeing to go down to a lowbie's level should be getting short-changed on their rewards, especially when they're already being short-changed on the power they're losing (slot-wise) when they go to a level below 32.
By short-changing people when they exemplar, aren't they really discouraging people from doing that instead of SK'ing lowbies up, which is also meant to be a "social" feature? It's really just another point that says it's not logically sound the way it's working now.
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Rewards must be somehow balanced for the level disparity. Sidekicked and exemplared characters earn XP relative to their actual level and not the level they are sidekicked/exemplared to. In the Sidekick case this prevents earning massive XP relative to what they need to level. In the Exemplar case it is a proxy used to create another reward. Now it wouldn't seem "right" for a level 40 to earn actual level 40 XP by defeating level 10 Hellions simply because they have both arms and one leg tied behind their back but for XP debt repayment, since it's not advancing you in level, was all right.
You also have to remember the intent in adding the exemplaring system to the game in the first place. Players wanted the ability to team a higher level character with a lower level team for play. The rewards were appropriate for the time since XP debt started to accumulate at level 5, the max XP debt was much higher, there was no difficulty level in the game, certain ATs at certain ranges simply could not take on a lone boss solo in mission making repeated defeats inevitable, etc. So having full XP to alleviate debt was a nice reward for "helping" some lower level characters on their mission. The conversion to influence was simply an easy method to make a reward once XP debt was payed off than receiving nothing at all.
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It just ticks me off every time someone believes that some aspect of the game (sidekicking, exemplaring, leveling pacts) should grant benefits above and beyond normal game play when such features were added primarily as social benefits.
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And it ticks me off when some people's lips are so tightly glued to the dev's backsides on some issues that they can't consider the possibility that things haven't been working correctly all along despite the previously mentioned documentation issues, the fact that it's not logically sound from a risk vs. reward standpoint, and now we just added that they're discouraging their own features by short-changing people when they use them.
I can't speak for others, but personally, when I bring this topic up I'm not looking for rewards above normal gameplay to be given, but rather I'm looking for the rewards that currently are BELOW normal gameplay to be brought up to normal level (Katze: Thank you for getting my point on this), especially now that they changed the spawning code to make more short-changing mobs spawn.
Finally, the amount of time something's been a certain way in the game means absolutely nothing-- all you have to do to figure that out is look at the arena badges, which were supposed to be in the game in something like issue 4, but were first activated 11 issues and 4+ years later.
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No need to get nasty. I'm just stating what the actual reward system for exemplaring was, the fact that it's been incorrectly documented in the PDF manual and often stated incorrectly by players before that manual was released isn't my fault or nor is it a case of me kissing up to the devs. As far as I can tell the incorrect definition was made after Issue 6 as the CoV manual only states that exemplaring (called malefactoring in CoV) only accelerated XP Debt repayment and made no mention about influence at all. The PDF CoH manual that came with the GvE box (between I7 and I8) uses the language quoted by Katze earlier in this thread. So it's been wrong for about 2 1/2 years.
As discussed in the thread that was linked, the biggest gripe then was the reduction in Inf earned. As someone cleverly pointed out, the difference between exemplaring and not, from a pure reward standpoint, was a major reduction in Inf. Again this was back at a time when reloading your enhancements every 7 levels was mandatory and once you got into SO territory, very expensive. It wasn't unusual to not be totally SOed until level 35 due to the costs involved. But it seemed that in the devs' eyes, by the phrasing used in the CoV manual, that accelerated XP debt repayment was the carrot for this system and not Inf at all.
Now since those days numerous changes have been made the XP, leveling and Inf generation systems. XP debt is nearly trivial these days so XP debt repayment isn't that attractive of a reward anymore. And Inf is no longer a problem for anyone willing to use the market to sell drops (for affording regular or common IO enhancements, not the high demand uber ones) so that aspect of the reward that wasn't a big selling point then is even less today.
So could it the rewards for exemplaring be tweaked to be more useful today as when it was created, sure. Could they adjust the XP to Inf conversion for non-minion/underlings so the Inf reward for lieutenants and up are similar to what they would reward normally, sure. But I'm just tired seeing this topic trotted out every time there is a double XP weekend announced about how exemplaring is "broken". Don't string me up because I'm simply pointing out that the manual is the thing that's "broken" not the function, exemplaring works as it always has since it was first introduced with Issue 2, with all it's problems about Inf earning, long before the first double XP weekend.
As for my rant, it simply bothers me that even after all the changes that makes it so, so much easier to level to 50 from debt reduction, reduced debt cap, patrol xp, smoothing the leveling times (done by changing the XP of critters in certain level ranges, which has been exploited to some degree by min/max MA writers) and the farming/zero travel time aspect of AE itself that there are still people who post looking for yet an even quicker way to get a 50 as if under a week isn't fast enough. I keep seeing thread after thread bemoaning the fact that it takes too long to level to 50, that player preferred rare and super rare enhancements are so expensive and tough to get (look up what 'rare' means and read about supply and demand as well as inflation due to an uncontrolled growth in the money supply, does Zimbabwe ring a bell with anybody?). So I have a tendency recently to "go off" anytime someone wonders why some aspect of the game can't be exploited for some kind of advantage for earning XP, Inf or both.
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You know, we could always ask a Dev if the documentation is right or the actual mechanic in practice is right. It's been known for one or the other (or both) to be wrong in the past...
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[ QUOTE ]
Because the current documentation states otherwise doesn't imply anything other than when it was added to the manual, it was documented incorrectly.
[/ QUOTE ]
And the fact that the "incorrect" info hasn't been corrected despite numerous updates to said documentation since, and that other sources saying it's supposed to be different than it's working now were added to the game itself by the devs provides evidence that it's more than just a clerical error.
[ QUOTE ]
The thing is there's been a contingent of players who never liked exemplaring going as far back as when it was introduced. They didn't see a good reason to and this was back when the debt cap was much, much higher and perma-debt was all to common. People crunched the numbers and found no advantage to their character when running in exemplar mode than not, including influence generation. But that wasn't the purpose of exemplaring, the purpose is to allow a higher level player to join a team of primarily lower level characters just as sidekicking allows a lower level character to join a team of primarily higher level characters. It was a method to facilitate teaming, nothing more.
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And it looks to me like it wasn't that they weren't at an advantage that cheesed them a little, but rather that they were at a DISadvantage that was the problem. That's shown right in the first post of the thread you linked. Social or not, there's no reason people agreeing to go down to a lowbie's level should be getting short-changed on their rewards, especially when they're already being short-changed on the power they're losing (slot-wise) when they go to a level below 32.
By short-changing people when they exemplar, aren't they really discouraging people from doing that instead of SK'ing lowbies up, which is also meant to be a "social" feature? It's really just another point that says it's not logically sound the way it's working now.
[ QUOTE ]
It just ticks me off every time someone believes that some aspect of the game (sidekicking, exemplaring, leveling pacts) should grant benefits above and beyond normal game play when such features were added primarily as social benefits.
[/ QUOTE ]
And it ticks me off when some people's lips are so tightly glued to the dev's backsides on some issues that they can't consider the possibility that things haven't been working correctly all along despite the previously mentioned documentation issues, the fact that it's not logically sound from a risk vs. reward standpoint, and now we just added that they're discouraging their own features by short-changing people when they use them.
I can't speak for others, but personally, when I bring this topic up I'm not looking for rewards above normal gameplay to be given, but rather I'm looking for the rewards that currently are BELOW normal gameplay to be brought up to normal level (Katze: Thank you for getting my point on this), especially now that they changed the spawning code to make more short-changing mobs spawn.
Finally, the amount of time something's been a certain way in the game means absolutely nothing-- all you have to do to figure that out is look at the arena badges, which were supposed to be in the game in something like issue 4, but were first activated 11 issues and 4+ years later.