Release Notes for Build 19.20090702.2 ~ 7/7/09

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I really don't think dropping the timer to 5 minutes is gonna offset it by any significant portion.

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I wonder if they realize by nerfing PvP drops they just buffed badge farms. It will only take half the time it did before the patch to farm rep badges.

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BS. The only people willing to put in the time farming are the hardcore PvPers. And with all the PvPers doing nothing but farming in the arena, there was NO pvp. And once all you hardcore PvPers get all your PvP IO's, the difference between casual PvPers and hardcore will be even more pronounced.
This is one instance where they need to do whatever it takes to stop the farming. People just need to PvP and accept the IO's as a reward. Not a necessity.

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. . .

From what I've seen from hardcore PvPers, there's a lot of untruth in that post. I'm hoping you were just trying to flame.

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# Fixed PvP rewards to function once again. Now, influence, inspirations, and other normal rewards occur on every PvP kill, while PvP IO recipes can only be rewarded on rep-valid kills.
# Fixed rep-validation to function in arenas, even though it doesn't give you any reputation in arenas.
# Also lowering the rep timer from 10 minutes to 5 minutes.


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so in essence, every rep-valid kill has a chance for a pvp recipe drop, but we can get this chance once every 5 minutes?

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Yes, that's what they were saying. so 12 times an hour you have a chance for 1. they were dropping 1 every 80 kills. 6+ hours maybe to get one if you farm yourself with 2 accounts.

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I would honestly like a dev comment on this. BAB's commented on the stf bug, why not a comment on this.

Questions:
1. Why was there a need for this change?
2. Did ya'll think about the casual pvp'r and low population servers?
3. If this does go into effect is the drop rate going to be increased?
4. Is this final without possible discussion to change it another way?

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here is BAB's comment on the STF bug

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Still no stf fix?

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Which STF fix were you expecting?

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Some comment right. Sounds to me they didn't know about it. I hope that is untrue.

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I really don't think dropping the timer to 5 minutes is gonna offset it by any significant portion.

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I wonder if they realize by nerfing PvP drops they just buffed badge farms. It will only take half the time it did before the patch to farm rep badges.

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...which will also be how the recipes are farmed now.

Nothing has really changed for farming them. People just have to relog a series of characters to do it. Tedious? Sure. Will it be avoided because of this change. Not a chance.

If the goal is to make PvP "equal" to everyone, then it's time to make an official PvP server with it's own rules and rewards system. Let the rest of the servers stay the same, but make the PvP server it's own special place to battle it out.

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Which STF fix were you expecting?

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Some comment right. Sounds to me they didn't know about it. I hope that is untrue.

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i know. but what i was meaning is he commented in this thread so we know a red name is reading this. I would just like a redname comment on those questions.

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Which STF fix were you expecting?

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Some comment right. Sounds to me they didn't know about it. I hope that is untrue.

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i know. but what i was meaning is he commented in this thread so we know a red name is reading this. I would just like a redname comment on those questions.

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Even if its something dumb like LoL PvP?

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Sunstorm already said that.

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I think there are two things that should be done so that the supply of PvP IOs doesn't begin to resemble most of the redside market pre-I13:

1. Increase the drop rate of PvP recipes (on valid kills) dramatically.
2. Change the rep system so that it only applies to kills, not deaths. If player A kills player B, player B will not get rep for killing player A within the next five minutes. This means if players A and B are the only ones actively engaging in PvP in a given zone, they will likely never get a drop. Likewise, if player A and B are fighting, and player C comes along and kills both of them, player C gets two kills worth of rep, but neither A nor B can get a recipe drop from any of the three players in that scenario within the next five minutes.

This change is going to encourage less PvP, not more.

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Although I'm not against the rep change by any means, I have to agree with one of the previous posters who suggested having the victim have a small chance of a recipe as well. That would definitely encourage new players to try PvP as well as prevent you from feeling totally shafted when you get nothing from revenge except well revenge

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Infatum on Virtueverse

Q/r

the simple solution was to disable wakies in a pvp zone. and maybe alter the arena so that kills done in less time than it takes to rez recluses victory and get back to atlas in the middle of the zone doesn't count.

steps to do this.
1 get killed in rv.
2 rez at hospital get back to full health and get to atlas while timing this.
3. adjust rep timer for arena only to this time

4 disable wakies in pvp zones.

this cripples farming them afk considerably and still allows low pop servers to remain unchanged for legitimate pvp

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[ QUOTE ][*]Fixed PvP rewards to function once again. Now, influence, inspirations, and other normal rewards occur on every PvP kill, while PvP IO recipes can only be rewarded on rep-valid kills.

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One issue with this is that it will discourage teaming. When someone on a team defeats another player everyone on the team gets rep but only one person will ever get a recipe.

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qft so it doesnt get lost.... this also a huge reason not to make this change

that means someone on a 8 man team has a 1 in 800 chances every 5 mins.... assuming that their team doesnt kill the taget or you dont get killed by the target within the 5 mins

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[ QUOTE ][*]Fixed PvP rewards to function once again. Now, influence, inspirations, and other normal rewards occur on every PvP kill, while PvP IO recipes can only be rewarded on rep-valid kills.

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One issue with this is that it will discourage teaming. When someone on a team defeats another player everyone on the team gets rep but only one person will ever get a recipe.

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qft so it doesnt get lost.... this also a huge reason not to make this change

that means someone on a 8 man team has a 1 in 800 chances every 5 mins.... assuming that their team doesnt kill the taget or you dont get killed by the target within the 5 mins

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^This

We already got a huge nerf to team work in i13. We dont need any more reasons to avoid teaming.

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I have never ever EVER seen the kind of crying the people do on this forum when there is a change.

Get used to the changes or play something else!! It is embarassing! All we heard was that no one would play PvP..now its hey we are all playing it but you changed it!

ACK!

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My SG and I just did the STF a few days ago and got the Master badge. Between Bonfire and Force Bubbles there were 3 tower rezzes but it didn't stop us from beating the TF and still get the badge.

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Royal Knight/Headgear
Force Field/Psionics Defender - Sonics/Traps Corruptor
Guardian Server

Founder of:
The Order of Prometheus/
Bane of Prometheus
www.baneofprometheus.net

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I have never ever EVER seen the kind of crying the people do on this forum when there is a change.

Get used to the changes or play something else!! It is embarassing! All we heard was that no one would play PvP..now its hey we are all playing it but you changed it!

ACK!

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So you come here to cry about crying?

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Why not just return the rules to the way they were? What really was the reason for the change? Was there too many PVP IOs on the market?

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From what I'm reading (and please correct me if I'm wrong) I believe their intent is to put a stop to the people sitting there with two accounts, using one account to kill off their second account, which isn't defending itself, over and over.

A few threads about this have popped up with people taking part in this practice declaring they feel this was "Working As Intended" instead of being an exploit. I'm guessing this change is meant to declare it an exploit.

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Well, as long as the new goal is to keep the supply at near-zero levels for those of us that play on small servers and don't have the ludicrous bankroll to get them in the auction house, mission accomplished.

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While not the politest post, this guy is essentially correct. Supply will drop from this patch. The primary effect of stopping afk farming also has the secondary effect of dropping supply by huge amounts. I really don't think dropping the timer to 5 minutes is gonna offset it by any significant portion.

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Yes I agree, but it's a situation where people who weren't actually risking anything were getting rewards. And then to top it all off, some were openly setting up in high traffic areas like zone entrances and then declaring their actions to be completely proper when called on it.

Um.... did anyone really think this practice was going to be allowed to stay?

And if it's been deemed an exploit, from the previous history of this game, why would anyone expect the devs will ever comment on it?

I'm in perfect agreement with anyone who feels it was dishonest at best to say that the lack of PVP rewards was purely a bug since this shows it obviously wasn't true. They should have at least owned up to it in some way, perhaps saying they found flaws in the reward system and that it needed to be revised. That wouldn't have been popular but it would have been honest.

The PVP IO supply will likely slow down quite a bit with these changes, and again, the blame falls on both the devs, for instituting a faulty system initially, and the players, who abused that system and then openly called out that they were in the right because the devs' faulty system allowed it to happen. I see the whole thing as being a lot like the early Comm Officer farms all over again, except this time nobody was threatened with retroactive penalties by an angry forum rant from Posi.

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Although I'm not against the rep change by any means, I have to agree with one of the previous posters who suggested having the victim have a small chance of a recipe as well. That would definitely encourage new players to try PvP as well as prevent you from feeling totally shafted when you get nothing from revenge except well revenge

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If this is to discourage people farming their own defenseless second accounts, your suggestion won't work, as it provides them potential rewards for both killing the defenseless target and also for being the defenseless target. If that really is what we're looking at here, I'm willing to bet that idea is a non-starter.

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Um.... did anyone really think this practice was going to be allowed to stay?

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Personally I knew it would end, but I didn't think they would nerf it into the ground like this.

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Hmm, last i saw, this was the training room, where we're supposed to test out and leave feed back on test changes. Putting up and shutting up seems pretty counter-intuitive here, GreenPiranha. If you don't want to see people leaving their feedback on upcoming patches, perhaps this isn't the forum for you.

Personally, i don't PvP, but i can still see where this would be a problem. If for some weird reason i were to decide to buy a PvP set off of WW, this has effectively killed my chances of ever doing so.

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Yes I agree, but it's a situation where people who weren't actually risking anything were getting rewards. And then to top it all off, some were openly setting up in high traffic areas like zone entrances and then declaring their actions to be completely proper when called on it.

Um.... did anyone really think this practice was going to be allowed to stay?

And if it's been deemed an exploit, from the previous history of this game, why would anyone expect the devs will ever comment on it?

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I see your point about the exploit and I agree. However, farming IN GENERAL happens. People farm for purples, they farm merits, they farm tickets, etc etc. They're making it almost impossible to farm for PO's at all. People who wouldn't normally pvp are now less inclined to do so since the chance of getting a worthwhile reward is so inexplicably small. Seems counter-productive to me, but I guess I don't know what they're actually TRYING to accomplish, only what they will accomplish.

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# Fixed PvP rewards to function once again. Now, influence, inspirations, and other normal rewards occur on every PvP kill, while PvP IO recipes can only be rewarded on rep-valid kills.
# Fixed rep-validation to function in arenas, even though it doesn't give you any reputation in arenas.
# Also lowering the rep timer from 10 minutes to 5 minutes.


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so in essence, every rep-valid kill has a chance for a pvp recipe drop, but we can get this chance once every 5 minutes?

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Yes, that's what they were saying. so 12 times an hour you have a chance for 1. they were dropping 1 every 80 kills. 6+ hours maybe to get one if you farm yourself with 2 accounts.

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It's even worse than what you're saying. Assuming a 1-vs-1 match, AT BEST you have a chance for a drop 12 times an hour. But what's really going to happen is that one of you will kill the other at least once during the 5 minute cooldown timer. Then the timer restarts for both of you regardless of who killed whom.. So the most likely outcome is one player has exactly 1 chance of a drop in that hour. The rest of the kills will get no chance at all. This is why players from low population servers are saying this change has screwed them.

This is a sad example of the devs focusing on squashing farming without considering consequences. And what really frosts me in this case is that farming was not a problem. For it to be a problem it'd have to either be demonstrably hurting PVP somehow, or creating an oversupply situation. Given that some of the PVP recipes already regularly go for over 600M inf, I can't see anyone saying with a straight face that there was oversupply.

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Freedom: Blazing Larb, Fiery Fulcrum, Sardan Reborn, Arctic-Frenzy, Wasabi Sam, Mr Smashtastic.

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Fixed punctuation issues in Mastermind Pet Response text strings.

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Huzzah! No more "I;m"

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Bolded for an amazing point. Devs, no matter what happens in this game, people will always farm. There will always be an FotM, there will always be the better mission, there will always be the better something so long as this game exists. By trying to reduce the farming, you are only creating trouble and discouraging PvP even more than you already have. This game does not need any more inflation that it already has to encounter. Please reconsider.

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The devs are trying to stop people with an unfair advantage from getting easy rewards.

A while back I read about someone with two accounts and his estimate of the drop rate for PvP recipes based on getting one every hundred kills or so. As I recall, he was getting a PvP recipe every half hour.

Now, there was no skill or risk or anything remotely resembling a game being played when he did this. He just had his two characters hammering on each other and getting some of the highest-demand rewards in the game.

This is the problem that the devs are fixing.

Is this the best of all possible fixes? It is if their target is a 1 in 100 chance of a PvP recipe drop a minimum of every 5 minutes. Did the devs do the statistical analysis to see if this is really what they want? Instead of just complaining, we should make some calculations to see if this is reasonable.

As a rough guess, if 100 pairs of players are optimally farming these recipes under the new rules there will be one drop every five minutes (assuming that the drop rate is 1%). That's 288 recipes a day for 200 players PvPing nonstop. If there were 1000 pairs of players were doing PvP nonstop, that would be almost 3000 PvP recipes a day. For a particular individual, I estimate you'll have a 50% chance of getting a PvP drop in 68 defeats. Yeah, that means you'd have to PvP with a defeat every 5 minutes for almost 6 hours to have 50-50 chance of getting a drop.

In actual play, it's unlikely you'd be getting a shot at the recipe every 5 minutes. Only cooperating groups of farmers can reach these numbers.

The real problem with rewarding PvP recipes is that they are so easily gamed. A player can intentionally throw the fight and allow the opponent to win. It's the easiest exploit in the game -- you don't need an uber build, you don't need a hokey AE mission filled with buff-bots and wimpy bosses. You just need a second account or another player to take advantage of the exploit. And so, the drop rates are low.

If we can come up with better ways for the devs to detect gaming the system, they could raise the drop rates or lower the rep timer. But that seems next to impossible. For centuries people have been doing this sort of thing -- usually in the form of betting on fixed fights or football games. We still have no way of accurately determining whether someone is "really trying" to win a boxing match. But even if we did come up with some complex algorithm that analyzes the behavior of the fighters, it boils down to a longer fight.

The rep timer does that with minimal complexity. So they just went with it.

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People who wouldn't normally pvp are now less inclined to do so since the chance of getting a worthwhile reward is so inexplicably small. Seems counter-productive to me, but I guess I don't know what they're actually TRYING to accomplish, only what they will accomplish.

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Yup. To me it makes no sense to add PO's to the game but make them essentailly unobtainable, except to the ultra-elite few. I understand you can play the game with just SOs or generic IOs. No set bonuses are literally required. But it becomes frustrating to have increasing numbers of shineys out there that aren't obtainable except but the ultra-elite or those that pay to use RMT services.

If their goal is to encourage PvP via the existence of POs, then they need to hugely increase the drop rate. If they did, then even a noob like me would figure "hey, if I spend an hour or two in a zone getting my [censored] kicked by PvPers, I'm still likely to get a nice drop if I'm on a team". Basically I could spend a couple of hours doing a LGTF or a couple of hours in zone PVP and have a decent chance at a juicy reward either way.

If they're afraid of bumping up the drop rate and then incurring player wrath by later nerfing it, they could set up an event. Call it "mega-drop week". The idea is for a week the PVP recipes would drop like crazy. The zones would be flooded. That way they could revert drop rates and it's not a nerf, it's just the end of an event. With this in place they could do it a few times a year, dramatically increasing supply (at least periodically) and it'd be likely to recruit a bunch of new folks to participate more regularly in PVP which I think was the goal for POs in the first place!

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Freedom: Blazing Larb, Fiery Fulcrum, Sardan Reborn, Arctic-Frenzy, Wasabi Sam, Mr Smashtastic.