Discussion: Live Patch Notes - 4/7/10

How dare those plebeians reap massive rewards. This should only be done by the rich people who already have their soft-capped builds and billions of inf to purple out their new warshades.

I'm not personally hating on the devs, I just think there were perhaps better ways to address this issue. There are a lot of things you can look at to determine if something is an exploitive farm.

Normally the number of allies is set to the max for the map. The allies also generally take specific powersets. The arcs also tend to be short or very short.

I mean I would even be happy with this if it was a scale.

1-2 allies - Normal XP
3-5 allies - -20% XP but they can not killsteal XP.
5-6 allies - -40% XP
6+ allies - -60% XP

I mean at least with something like that we know what we're working with, similar to the number of powers a custom group has affecting their XP.

As it stands now this nerf hurts people who aren't exploiting more because the people exploiting will just do something new.

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I don't think that's true anymore. I think you're rooted for the entire animation even if you pop a BF. I'm not 100% sure, I'd have to check it again tho.

Still doesn't stop critters from killing you again before you've even had a chance to get up. I can now add this "feature" to the long list of things they can do that we can't.

The ones that just earn XP are not an issue. The ones that exploit the system and make it so you can get massive rewards with little risk are the ones causing the problems. Please do not lump those "farmers" in with the rest of us.

You do realize that even that would cause more issue for non-farmers than farmers. Not only would they have to pay more GM's to sit around approving missions, now we've just dipped into the budget for all those cool things we've been getting lately.

I recommend the non-farmers stop QQ'ing as in the end, you're only hurting yourselves. This has been proven time and time again. But alas, we both know the whining won't stop. It's too far out of character for non-farmers to mind their own business and play their own game. They absolutely must infringe on everyone around them.

Oh well. Sucks to be them!

And I'm sure by "exploiters" and "cheaters" you really mean "those that make the most out of features the devs willingly give us that weren't ever broken and/or not functioning exactly the way the devs designed them". I'm sure that's what you meant, right?

This.

Several people have mentioned "infamous" arcs that took advantage of the exploit in question. So why not UNPUBLISH THOSE ARCS, take away one of the arc slots of the players who created them, and flag their accounts so that they cannot publish another arc without submitting it for prior approval?

The exploiters will get the message real quick. And the rest of us are unaffected.

They BAN the accounts of RMT spammers. Why not take firm but much less draconian steps to go after the AE exploiters? It simply does not make sense to make such a drastic nerf while leaving those who CAUSED the nerf to become "necessary" get off without sanction.

So if I use IOs and soft cap my defense I'm somehow "exploiting" the system? After all, at softcapped defense I can fight anything with virtually no risk, both in and out of AE.

Where exactly do you draw the line between "exploiting" (which it's not in any variation of this situation) and "taking full advantage of what the game offers"?

Some of us vets like those AE farms. Want to know why? Because after over 5 years of playing this game you get sick of the grind. I've done both the CoH and CoV content so many times I'm sick of it. I love making new toons and trying them out, but 90% of builds don't start being fun till mid-late 20s (for me personally). AE is pretty nice for skipping all that boring crap. I'll totally agree that the general game IQ of high-level players is going down (thanks to AE), but AE farms aren't completely evil.

In case you think I'm just spouting in defense of AE exploits, I'm not, I've been playing since Dec '04 and have 7 lvl 50s all lvl'd through regular teaming.

And you're completely right, the devs COULD care less about farming, and I wish they did sometimes. I think you were looking for "couldn't care less" which is what the actual saying is.

Clearly too elegant a solution. "Exploit" fixes must be, by the very nature of this game, heavy-handed and brutish, and have at least 3 unintended side effects that are significantly worse than the "exploit" they seek to fix. To do it any other way would be un-Paragon!

And I do agree that it should be fixed, but I have no concrete suggestions on how to make the fix other than a total redesign of that whole map. With GR coming out and all the new maps that I am sure they are making for that, I can understand why this bug fix is put on hold.

This. With so many other MMOs vying for my time I can't and won't devote endless hours of boring repetitive gameplay trying to level up yet another character thru the same stale missions I've been doing for almost 6 years.

Seriously, be thankful I'm still playing (though I question why more and more these days).

like.... softcapping a scrapper with IOs... EXPLOITERS!!!!!!!!!

I don't like this solution because it doesn't solve the actual problem. It doesn't make an attempt to take into consideration what the pets are actually doing.

The issue is, you can make pets of varying helpfulness with an almost inversely proportional amount of experience loss. If you make a unit that's range/range, he takes all the exp he does damage with. If you however make a unit that's debuff/buff (this is possible with a primary like Earth Control doing the debuffing), he does no damage, makes everything easier for you, and takes no experience with him.

This patch is making an attempt at fixing that in completely the wrong way. It's imposing a tax on the NUMBER of allies without caring one bit what they actually do. This is like paying your employees based on how many of them there are and not, like, actually what they do or how good they are at it. Even now it's unbalanced. Take for instance:

* Scenario 1: You have only one ally, so there's no experience tax. Your one ally is range/melee. He takes experience away from you by dealing damage.

* Scenario 2: You have only one ally, so there's no experience tax. Your one ally is debuff/buff. He takes NO experience away from you, but makes your job far easier.

* Scenario 3: You have five allies, so there is significant experience tax. All your allies are range/melee. They take even more experience away from you by dealing damage.

* Scenario 4: You have five allies, so there is significant experience tax. All your allies are debuff/buff. They take no additional experience away from you, and your job is insanely easy.

Why would you take a pet that reduces your exp when you could have one that makes your job easier and doesn't touch your exp? Or even better, why have no pets at all when you could have a debuff/buff pet along with you?

The proper way to handle this is to make it so pets that are contributing in a way other than dealing damage are still subject to an experience tax. Right now, that's not happening. You just get a tax based on how many pets you have. Your suggestion would only allow a different number of acceptable buffing allies that reduce risk for no change in reward.

My suggestion? Every ally that has a buff or debuff gives -10% exp per buff or debuff. The number of pets doesn't matter. Their non-buff/debuff powers don't matter (they're taking exp away when they deal damage anyway). So for instance, you have the following scenarios again:

* Scenario 1: You have only one ally, and he has no buffs/debuffs, so there's no experience tax. Your one ally is range/melee. He takes experience away from you by dealing damage.

* Scenario 2: You have only one ally, he's debuff/buff and has 2 helpful powers (Quicksand and Dispersion Bubble) so there's an experience tax of -20%. He takes no additional exp away through attacking.

* Scenario 3: You have five allies, and they have no buffs/debuffs, so there is no experience tax. They take experience away only from dealing damage.

* Scenario 4: You have five allies, and they all have debuffs/buffs, so there is significant experience tax. They take no additional experience away from you by attacking, but your job is insanely easy, and as a result you're getting little to no experience at all.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

I remember being dragged through the Hess TF and wondering what the hell was going on. It was my first time on an 8 man team, and it was a whole new world. Thank you to the war gods of Infinity for carrying this newb through.

Scale XP to the amount of vet rewards earned!!!

No that is not an exploit because the game is designed to allow you to do that depending on your class and effort put into that toon. You pick certain powers and IOs over others for benifits you want on that toon. You decide to pick a power where you can slot certain sets even if you do not plan on using that power just to get to that soft cap. With the AE the way it was you no longer had to make those choices.

The devs changed what was offered due to those that were doing what they consider exploiting. For example taking only attakcs and using SOs and being able to solo tons of +4 mobs because you have a bunch of buff bots giving you capped resists and defense and also holding all the mobs down while you kill them. That is an obvious exploit and IMO should be fixed.

I do however, have issues with having any Ally reduce your XP. Many stories have battles going on in the background to add color and those battles do not provide any benifit to the player as far as rewards go, yet now those will either have to be removed or get low ranks because they gave crap xp.

And I agree that both should be addressed. I had not read through the thread far enough at the point I replied to this to know about this.

No, we can very well hate on the Devs for coming up with really dumb solutions that have obviously not been thought through.

I'm becoming rather glad that these people are game developers and not engineers. I'd hate to see what their solution would be for fixing a road with a few potholes in it.

Build a small cottage there.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

damn good thing we all run brutes.

Dunno yet, Eva, but we need to find this out in the PDQ.

And damn good that the devs measure things in 'risk' instead of 'time' like they do with merit rewards. ...oh wait