I just think this whole thing with AE would've been MUCH better-off if there were clear objectives you could/couldn't do from the very start (not talking about rules, I mean mission objectives, or things your mission couldn't do if they were concerned about farming). That way, there wouldn't be all these nerfs, changes, bans, etc. from the very start. It's like they rushed AE out on a blank piece of paper. People created their own missions on that blank piece of paper, got punished for it, and then guidelines were set up after the fact. It keeps happening. It's causing players to have the discussion about 'exploit' vs. 'you should've known better' when in reality, AE was practicly a 'free-for-all' when it came out. If there had been as many restrictions on missions from the beginning (as there are now), AE wouldn't have been abused, anti-farmers would be happy, AE would be just as they intended it, and there would be no arguments over who defines what 'exploit' is.
Oh look! A fruit basket!
From Positron, February 2009:
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From Positron, May 2009:| We've added a TON more datamining hooks exclusively for Mission Architect as well, so we can easily see spikes in aberrant behavior. Spikes point us to exploits, which points us to log files, which reveal the identities of exploiters. So if you find a really big exploit in the system, I'd encourage you to PM me or another Dev and try to get your Bug Hunter badge, as the alternative is not pretty. |
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When we created Mission Architect, the goal was to have an outlet for players to craft cool stories, using our assets, that other players could play and participate in. Other players could rate those stories and the best-of-the best would rise to the top. While we have accomplished some of those goals with the initial launch of Mission Architect, some have found ways to abuse the system we put in place. We are not blind to this happening, nor did we not expect it. However, it is time to take action regarding it, so please be aware that we are about to implement a zero-tolerance stance on the extreme abuse we are seeing in the system. <snip> Some of you have taken the stance of “how does powerlevelling hurt the game?” and “shouldn’t I be able to play the game the way that I want?” What we want to make clear is in order to keep the game fair, balanced, and challenging, we have to maintain a risk:reward ratio. This is a ratio we’ve spent years attempting to achieve. Mission Architect is not immune to this, and we are taking swift action to see that the problems players are seeing and are being exposed to are remedied. |
The problem is, the devs want to balance giving us as much freedom as possible to tell stories through MA with restricting extreme exploitative behavior. Unfortunately, there will always, always be people pushing the envelope of the exploitative behavior, causing the devs to have to crack down on them. There is no way the devs could possibly have thought of all the restrictions necessary to prevent it (some, yes, but that's another issue). On top of that, there's a whole other priority list of what needs to be worked on, so things like this (that aren't technically *bugs*) aren't at the top of the list, and it takes time and resources to fix them. Which makes everything take longer. And then people start complaining that we haven't had a new issue in a while. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Tl;dr version: Exploiters are why we can't have nice things.
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The ability to add certain mission objectives has only been a problem in two cases: adding a truckload of Kinetics allies that do nothing but buff you to high heaven to make you invincible as you powerfarm things, and adding in defend/destroy objects that let you summon enormous groups of things to mow through. All of the other major exploits have been the fault of certain NPCs giving higher-than-intended rewards for the risk involved (Comm Officers, Lord Recluse, Freakshow, this most recent one), something which is easy to glance over in playtesting when you've got a list of several hundred mobs you can spawn.
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Originally Posted by Snugs
I just think this whole thing with AE would've been MUCH better-off if there were clear objectives you could/couldn't do from the very start (not talking about rules, I mean mission objectives, or things your mission couldn't do if they were concerned about farming).
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Oh I'm sorry, maybe I misunderstood them when they say they're removing goodies for even rescuing someone in a mish. Won't this interfere with someone's mission story? Like I said, I wished they could've made this set from day 1 instead of nerfing and nerfing AE. *cricket *cricket.|
Originally Posted by Vermain
The ability to add certain mission objectives has only been a problem in two cases: adding a truckload of Kinetics allies that do nothing but buff you to high heaven to make you invincible as you powerfarm things, and adding in defend/destroy objects that let you summon enormous groups of things to mow through. All of the other major exploits have been the fault of certain NPCs giving higher-than-intended rewards for the risk involved (Comm Officers, Lord Recluse, Freakshow, this most recent one), something which is easy to glance over in playtesting when you've got a list of several hundred mobs you can spawn.
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"the AE change made it so any critter considered an ally (ie blue box) will decrease rewards
this includes:
- allies
- escorts
- captives
- ally bosses
- allies in a battle
- basically anything that has a blue box that does not attack you"
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All of those could either be used to spawn large amounts of mobs very quickly or could be used to provide an ally that would continually buff you to godlike levels, which is why they're slashing the EXP you gain dependent on how many you have in a mission. The other exploits that have produced massive amounts of EXP in the past have been based off of exploiting individual NPCs, rather than objectives. I'm of the opinion that there's better ways of implementing such a fix, but the intent is obvious.
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Originally Posted by Snugs
Oh I'm sorry, maybe I misunderstood them when they say they're removing goodies for even rescuing someone in a mish. Won't this interfere with someone's mission story?
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I want a cookie.
Your post made me break out the nutter butters. Curses! I am going to have to do another work out tonight...
@ThrillKiller