A Rant About i16 (undocumented changes to TFs lead to bugs...big surprise)
By
Aggelakis,
Posted on: 2009-09-20 12:49 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
I dont get why they cant use global motd for things like this. Blabla this TF is broken etc.
Not everyone reads the forums.
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I was going to post something, but this fits everything I was going to say. |
Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea
I have no problem with them making changes to powers, missions, and systems for "balance" and to correct "exploits." I may ultimately disagree with the changes, but I respect their right to make them.
But I have no respect for making an unannounced change and then leaving it unfinished or broken. As much as I like this game and the dev team, there is no excuse for that. |
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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Actually, this is where your argument becomes, to use the word of those negatively repping me because they disagree with me... ridiculous.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
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The devs have a mechanism for dealing with people who can "cleverly leveraging the mechanics in a 'legal' way." It's called changing the merit reward for a TF based on median completion time. Your reasoning is circular. The reward is low making exploiting it unlikely. |
The Eden trial *was* worth more than 7 Merits, it was worth a Rare Pool C recipe which has a value of 20 Merits for a random roll (or about 200 Merits if you're buying a specific one). It is 7 now *because of the exploits*. Not only from the bugged wall you can get past (and is now fixed), but from all the other 'shortcuts'. So, the Devs massively nerfed the rewards not because the TF is designed to be a 10 minute task (it has a 4 hour timer!), but because the design is broken, and players *take advantage* of the broken design to get a reward that is far beyond what the risk and time investment would normally indicate.
This is not a case where it's simply a "good team that kills faster". The team is leveraging mechanics to avoid the series of tasks in the TF. That is the very definition of 'exploit.'
Yes, the Devs have a mechanism for dealing with *this*, whatever you want to call it -- a something for which you don't have a name. The mechanism is massively nerfing the reward because players found a way to short circuit the design; OR, to redesign the task.
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I can offer no comments on the KHTF issue, I have not done it, and have not noticed any other odd hostage behavior elsewhere.
I have, however, noticed multiple objects and map items that have apparently been shifted a few feet off of center. This is something that I have noticed periodically with various updates. This is usually patched and fixed when it occurs. I suspect, without any direct experience with what is reported here with Hess, that this is what may be going on. Nothing intentional and certainly not an exploit fix - a bug in an area of the game that missed testing, or was considered low enough impact at initial release to not hold up the date.
I am also disappointed that it turned up this way, but is certainly not game ruining (not wildly prevalent).
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This is backwards.|
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
The Eden trial *was* worth more than 7 Merits, it was worth a Rare Pool C recipe which has a value of 20 Merits for a random roll (or about 200 Merits if you're buying a specific one).
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They implemented this system because they knew that all content was not equal. They didn't want everyone gravitating only to the content which could be done most quickly, and they did not want to try to make all content take the same amount of time. Therefore, they changed to a system that allowed them to normalize rewards based on the time it took to complete them.
To declare that any TF or similar merit rewarding content is being "exploited" because it is worth less than one random recipe is, as I said, circular reasoning. It is worth less than this because it's median completion time was too short for (in the devs' estimation) to be worth a whole recipe.
They even told us this was the reasoning in the Merit Reward system.
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| The team is leveraging mechanics to avoid the series of tasks in the TF. That is the very definition of 'exploit.' |
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Got to love the men of Justice
Pum you can exploit me any time you want......
OMG I got the best negative rep ever for this post!
A Rant About i16... 09-21-2009 12:30 PM This is no place for a girl!
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Sorry, no. You are mistaken.|
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
But when a TF that is designed to be an hour's worth of work -- even for a good team -- gives the reward for an hour's worth of work; but is done in 20 minutes... then there is a exploit involved... whether through a bug, or players cleverly leveraging the mechanics in a 'legal' way, it's an exploit.
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Castle even discussed an example of this once, specifically mentioning the Repeat Offenders group of SG's. They build highly optimized superteams that can tear through any content in the game in record times. This is absolutely "cleverly leveraging the mechanics in a legal way". Note that I did not put your bogus quotes around the word legal. It's either legal, or it's not. Even Castle acknowledges that. You can build a team that leverages the mechanics and it is in no way, shape or form an exploit.
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Dev mindreading is an exploit.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
This is a very broad definition of that term, and not one I or many others will accept. It is not one the devs have provided. This is one of the things I most dislike about your forum presence: your presentation style is such that you appear to presume you speak for the devs thoughts, intentions and goals with authority.
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And for what it's worth, I fully expect the devs to quietly fix whatever's wrong (and I was on the Katie that is mentioned in the OP and can vouch for the behaviour described) and never say a word about it.
Because doing so would be to admit weakness.
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If you haven't joined a global channel, you're not really looking for team.
Sigh... I should have known that this conversation would degenerate into a question of what the devs 'intended'.
My point was/is that there are potentially game-breaking changes being made to established non-broken parts of the game that the end-users know nothing about until it hits live.
Can end-users and beta testers have a (semi)public (managed rights) access version of a bugzilla or some other logging system so that we can look at what is bugged, what is added, what is attempting to be fixed and/or what needs to be looked at before it gets pushed live?
Would it help if I said 'please'?
I know you've got one in-house...
OP, I would suggest to you that instead of ranting about bugs/undocumented changes, perhaps you should provide detailed bug reports so the devs can address your complaints, rather than rambling about irrelevant topics and calling the devs out for non-existent shadiness.
I'm still completely unclear on what the issues with the Hess TF are because instead of describing the problem in detail, you chose to make every other sentence an attack on the devs.
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Did you read the whole thread? |
Originally Posted by IanTheM1
OP, I would suggest to you that instead of ranting about bugs/undocumented changes, perhaps you should provide detailed bug reports so the devs can address your complaints, rather than rambling about irrelevant topics and calling the devs out for non-existent shadiness.
I'm still completely unclear on what the issues with the Hess TF are because instead of describing the problem in detail, you chose to make every other sentence an attack on the devs. |
They changed the maps for the hess TF on some of the missions and forgot to add the mission objectives (glowies) or the glowies were in walls
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Why instead of attacking OP you wouldn't try Hess yourself?
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Originally Posted by IanTheM1
OP, I would suggest to you that instead of ranting about bugs/undocumented changes, perhaps you should provide detailed bug reports so the devs can address your complaints, rather than rambling about irrelevant topics and calling the devs out for non-existent shadiness.
I'm still completely unclear on what the issues with the Hess TF are because instead of describing the problem in detail, you chose to make every other sentence an attack on the devs. |
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One of the reasons the merit system was implemented in the first place was to tackle the "our content isn't all the same length" issue - for example, you had Eden granting a recipe, and at the other end of the spectrum, Dr. Q granted a recipe. Obviously less people were running Dr. Q's because why would anyone take 3-5 hours to get a recipe (unless they really wanted the badge) when they could run an Eden in 7-10 minutes and get that same recipe? The merit system helps to ensure that all content awards roughly equally, because rewards for each task are based on median completion time. It also helps to ensure that the same content doesn't get repeated over and over again by virtue of the 18-hour DR timer and lower rewards on the most popular "farmed" TFs/SFs pre-I13.|
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
The Eden trial *was* worth more than 7 Merits, it was worth a Rare Pool C recipe which has a value of 20 Merits for a random roll (or about 200 Merits if you're buying a specific one). It is 7 now *because of the exploits*. Not only from the bugged wall you can get past (and is now fixed), but from all the other 'shortcuts'. So, the Devs massively nerfed the rewards not because the TF is designed to be a 10 minute task (it has a 4 hour timer!), but because the design is broken, and players *take advantage* of the broken design to get a reward that is far beyond what the risk and time investment would normally indicate.
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The requirements for the Eden trial are simple:
* Defeat 200 Devouring Earth (outdoors, in Eden)
* Defeat the Rock Wall
* Defeat the Mold Wall
* Rescue the heroes
* Defeat the Crystal Titan
Those requirements I listed are the only requirements that need to be met to successfully complete the task force. There's no "leveraging of mechanics" going on here (the only possible one I can think of is dropping the Quarries into holes before the first wall so they don't follow you the rest of the TF), only a team that skips from objective to objective without fighting any of the "filler." "Filler" is just there to make the task take longer, and a good team will realize this and skip it, since it's not required for completion. The modus operandi many Eden teams used was kill the 200 DE, then have someone with Assemble the Team recall everyone back to the mission door once that was completed. After that, the team would drop through holes to the first wall, kill it as quickly as possible, run to the second and kill it, run to the back of the map and rescue the heroes, and finally rush the Titan and drop it before the room he was in overwhelmed the team. If the melee characters on the team lacked Ambrosias, you could gather up on the bridges between the first and second wall and kill only the bosses, since they drop the inspirations, until everyone that needed Ambrosias had them.
"Completing only required objectives" is not an exploit.
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You should have just said tl;dr. |
Originally Posted by IanTheM1
OP, I would suggest to you that instead of ranting about bugs/undocumented changes, perhaps you should provide detailed bug reports so the devs can address your complaints, rather than rambling about irrelevant topics and calling the devs out for non-existent shadiness.
I'm still completely unclear on what the issues with the Hess TF are because instead of describing the problem in detail, you chose to make every other sentence an attack on the devs. |
My point again is that instead of finding 5-8 other people who want to be doing QA on live, perhaps it would be better served by documenting changes to the system on beta so people who are so inclined to help out can do so.
If you want me to do your homework for you, the least you can do is tell me what the assignment is ahead of time.
It also is the height of self centeredness to walk into a thread that has the word 'rant' in the title and somehow expect that there would be something that wasn't verbose and angry. Do your own homework and read the thread. Jumping in with your canned response about submitting bug reports etc. Is tantamount to trolling.
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Originally Posted by IanTheM1
OP, I would suggest to you that instead of ranting about bugs/undocumented changes, perhaps you should provide detailed bug reports so the devs can address your complaints, rather than rambling about irrelevant topics and calling the devs out for non-existent shadiness.
I'm still completely unclear on what the issues with the Hess TF are because instead of describing the problem in detail, you chose to make every other sentence an attack on the devs. |
Try rereading it. He references this post: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...highlight=hess as the description of the bugs.
However his point wasn't the problems but that any changes that were made weren't being communicated during beta so that it could be properly tested.
Of course any criticism of the developers is called an attack. One thing you learn when taking art classes is how to take and actually encourage critiques so that you can examine your work and make it better. That's something some people might keep in mind.
The other thing some might consider there are different definitions for exploit but none of which refer to MMO's
1 : to make productive use of : utilize <exploiting your talents> <exploit your opponent's weakness>
2 : to make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage <exploiting migrant farm workers>
The only definition regarding online gaming i found was this one from www.reference.com. So until the developers define what they consider an exploit in this game no one else should. Of course that was one of the arguments when the whole Meow thing happened but i won't get into that.
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Exploit (online gaming) In the realm of online games, an exploit is usually a software bug, hack or bot that contributes to the user's prosperity in a manner not intended by the developers. What is or is not considered an exploit varies between games and developers. The EULA (End-User License Agreement) typically states what type of gameplay is not acceptable. Thus, some developers may consider AFK gameplay to be an exploit, while others may not. Known types of exploits in MMORPG Speed Hacking/Teleporting/Subterrain Travel - If character position in an MMORPG is determined by the client side (usually not the case), it is possible for players to send out artificial positional data and be instantly transported to any part of the world or used to speed up traveling speed by increasing positional deltas. Holes - Some games may contain accidental holes in the map, allowing the player to get under the map. Holes are mostly harmless, although some use them in player vs. player situations to sneak around and get behind their opponent. Botting - A player who runs a third party program to control their character. The bot will kill monsters, loot money, mine ore, collect herbs or gain levels automatically without the player having to be in front of the computer. Duping - Duplicating, or replicating items or money. Game Mechanics Exploits / Bug Exploits - There are also other exploits involving the physics of the game, sometimes in conjunction with items. This includes using wall-walking to get into unfinished areas or abilities to make one's character unattackable by mobs or other players and sometimes are able to attack back. Data Mining - Players will try to access files not yet in game and then host them on websites to expose content not yet released (usually new zones, items, and graphics). Consequences of exploitation Depending on the EULA and the severity of the exploit, developers may do anything from simply removing the exploited material from the game, to reprimanding the players, or banning their accounts. There are only occasional rare cases of an exploiter being threatened with legal action. Miscellaneous Most companies involved in the development or maintenance of online games forbid their employees from sharing information about known exploits or bugs. Doing so is sometimes considered an exploit but is more often merely a vector by which other exploits are shared. |
Crap i forgot I am a girl and so i don't belong here.
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This is true. Nothing I've read in this thread provides me with sufficient detail to try and track down what's going on, aside from Katie's odd following behavior. I *think* I know what caused that...but there are 2 or 3 possibilities. And, for the record, none of those possibilities was intended to make the task forces any harder.
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Originally Posted by IanTheM1
OP, I would suggest to you that instead of ranting about bugs/undocumented changes, perhaps you should provide detailed bug reports so the devs can address your complaints, rather than rambling about irrelevant topics and calling the devs out for non-existent shadiness.
I'm still completely unclear on what the issues with the Hess TF are because instead of describing the problem in detail, you chose to make every other sentence an attack on the devs. |
Reposting this mostly just to sandwich castle...
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...highlight=hess
That was the bugs he refrenced.
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Copy-paste fail, Phillygirl! http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...highlight=hess
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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haha i just was about to edit and fix but TY! :P
Oh i know what i did wrong too but it's too embarasingly blonde to say....
"Play Nice and BEHAVE! I don't want to hear about any more of your shenanigans brought up in our meetings at Paragon"-Ghost Falcon @Tritonfree @Philly's 2nd Convenient CIGAL BoBC/INOANN Arts&Crafts Sporks
Average Joes FAP THE MENTOR PROJECT Justice Events
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Want an odd following behavior? Run the Barracuda Strike Force 4 times now, and on the mission where you escort Roderick Mueller, I have purposely stayed back when the team picked him up as an escort, and watched him follow some one to the closed door. As soon as I've caught up with the group, he changes to following me. This has happened every time I've run this TF, and for the most part it's always the same team, 1 or 2 switch out every run, but the core 6 have stayed constant.
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Originally Posted by Castle
aside from Katie's odd following behavior.
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In all honesty, did you actually read his post?|
Originally Posted by IanTheM1
OP, I would suggest to you that instead of ranting about bugs/undocumented changes, perhaps you should provide detailed bug reports so the devs can address your complaints, rather than rambling about irrelevant topics and calling the devs out for non-existent shadiness.
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His post isn't about the actual bugs. It's about (a) the fact that no one knew to test the TF, because it wasn't in any patch notes, ever, and (b) it escaped either with no internal testing or intolerably incompetent testing.
The actual bugs are, it turns out, a different discussion. However. in the interest of helping the actual bugs be fixed, I PM'd this to Castle. (I wouldn't normally inflict bug details about mission problems on the powers guy, but he posted here, so that's what he gets.
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Hi, Castle. Per your post in the tech forums, here's an attempt to get you guys more detail for tracking down the issue. Problem# 1 In the 3rd mission "Eliminate 1st radar station", the computer cannot be attacked directly. It can be targeted, but any attack used reports "target out of range". I am sure of this for melee attacks, as that's what I had on the TF, but no one seemed able to attack it with ranged attacks either. Untargeted AoE attacks, or those targeting nearby foes, seemed to damage it normally. Problem# 2 In the 4th mission, "Eliminate 2nd radar station", we could not find the computer. A GM responded to my /stuck petition and presented us with the computer, suggesting it was hidden in the map geometry. Other people on the team were reporting that the map was not the normal map for this mission, which may have led indirectly to this issue. Additionally, even after the GM produced the objective for us, it had the same problem seen in Problem #1 above. Problem#3 In the 5th mission, "Eliminate 3rd radar station", when some of us entered the map, we were presented with what apparently was the 4th mission instance. As you know, one cannot normally re-enter an already completed mission instance. However, upon entering we found the same map as before, devoid of all mobs or objectives and with "Mission Complete" in the mission objective GUI, complete with blue "Exit" button. After several of us quit the TF, some who remained reported that they were able to enter and find the map populated with foes and not marked as complete. I hope that helps. |
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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I had pretty high hopes that they weren't something like that, because both were just so damn strange. (Or sounded strange, since I didn't see the Katie run firsthand.) There wasn't much of "challenge" about them, just oddity.
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Originally Posted by Castle
And, for the record, none of those possibilities was intended to make the task forces any harder.
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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Again, it is in the OP, in a paragraph on its own.|
Originally Posted by Castle
This is true. Nothing I've read in this thread provides me with sufficient detail to try and track down what's going on, aside from Katie's odd following behavior. I *think* I know what caused that...but there are 2 or 3 possibilities. And, for the record, none of those possibilities was intended to make the task forces any harder.
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"We basically had the same experience as this fellow's post."
And again, this is not a bug that anyone wouldn't notice if they were on a Hess TF. It would have and should have been caught in beta if there was a way for people to check or be notified of changes to Hess TF.
I understand that you already have a process for reporting bugs, I'm just telling you that it's akin to keystone cops.
Find a better way to get the reporting system to the people who can and want to help you is my point. The fact that Hess and Katie were screwed up isn't the root of the problem, it's a symptom.
I'm not going to go through a thorough QA analysis of the Hows and Whens Katie in KHtf gets stuck because I believe this could have been caught in beta. I *could* do so if I was so inclined on live, but I'm steamed that things get screwed up when I have guests over, capiche?
If you want me to spend an entire day running KHtfs and trying to find out when and where she gets stuck, don't charge me $15/month to do so...I volunteer my time when I think it will accomplish meaningful change, and right now I want to spend that time trying to impress upon everyone here the idea that the users/players/beta testers need a better way of finding out what is happening before product gets pushed out the door.
Catch me on a better day and I might be more reasonable. Better yet, change the process to mollify me.
The devs have a mechanism for dealing with people who can "cleverly leveraging the mechanics in a 'legal' way." It's called changing the merit reward for a TF based on median completion time.
With the merit reward system, the devs no longer have to designate a TF as requiring a certain amount of time to complete. They simply assign rewards based on the amount of time it takes to complete.
Characters chock full of IOs are going to be more damaging, more endurance efficient, and safer than characters without them. This will allow them to complete combat-oriented challenges faster than people without them. The fact that IOs are optional means the devs have to account for their existence and potential, but also allow for people who don't use them. This is unquestionably part of why merit rewards are based on median completion time - so that a small percentage of players completing merit-granting content in shorter times is less likely heavily skew rewards for other players.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA