Discussion: Live Patch Notes - 4/7/10
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-04-07 09:43 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
As I type this, the patch notes are still not up on the official website.
Additionally a rough calculation suggests, to me, that the patch notes went up on the forum about 12 hours after the maintenance finished. That is however rough math from someone who scraped through so I'm up for correction.
I am quite happy we actually get patch notes, in some form. However I find it a bit dissapointing that despite being told they will be available, both on the website and forums at time of maintenance, that they are given to us so long after the fact.
---
All that said, I too am happy they're trying to nerf farms. I don't however see farms as an issue on the server I frequent. They haven't been since i15 and are becoming quite a lot less so as people simply get bored of them.
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Originally Posted by McNum
Between the Loyalists and Resistance, I'd be tempted to support Praetorian Hamidon.
One side uses mind police and will "disappear" you and the other uses poison gas and bombs on civilians. Hamidon? He'll just have a tree eat you. Much simpler. If we're all going to be oppressed and/or killed by someone, it might as well be the walking trees. At least they don't speak in annoying code or doublespeak. They just devour you. |
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Originally Posted by Captain Fabulous
I stopped trying to figure out what the devs of this game wanted a long time ago. I don't think they even know what they want. They tell us they hate farmers, they hate powerleveling, and that the market is out of control, yet they put items in the game that require farming to get, furthering the desire to powerlevel, and do everything they can to limit the flow of rare items that have destabilized the market.
So no, I am clearly not surprised they put buffbots in AE only to nerf them a year or so later claiming "we never intended people to use them this way". Really, well how exactly DID you intend for them to be used? And considering the game's history, how exactly could you NOT foresee them being used in a manner you now claim is inconsistent with your intent? Honestly I'm so sick and tired of the hypocrisy. The endless carrot-on-a-stick is finally breaking my last nerve. |
I have yet to see any action that the devs hate farming, PLing or think the market is out of control. Farming is just fine as long as it is not providing more reward than intended. (good luck getting a dev to say how much of a reward is ok for a farmer however)
PLing is discouraged but not hated. If they had that degree of hatred they would just not allow sidekicks at all. Or they would find out who is getting PLed and whip out the banhammer. Granted this would be foolish but strong emotions like hatred tend to drive people to do stupid things.
Also they have stated that the markets are not as they would like to see them but no mention of being out of controll. If they, in fact, believed the markets to be "out of controll" why would they be taking measures to bring the markets back under controll?
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The maintenance window was scheduled until 9 AM Wednesday morning Eastern time. The patch notes went up on the forums at 12:42 PM. It would be nice for them to get the notes up on the main page by around 5 PM Eastern the day of the patch, so that people could read them from the updater link, but that didn't seem to happen this time.
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Originally Posted by Phedra
As I type this, the patch notes are still not up on the official website.
Additionally a rough calculation suggests, to me, that the patch notes went up on the forum about 12 hours after the maintenance finished. That is however rough math from someone who scraped through so I'm up for correction. I am quite happy we actually get patch notes, in some form. However I find it a bit dissapointing that despite being told they will be available, both on the website and forums at time of maintenance, that they are given to us so long after the fact. --- All that said, I too am happy they're trying to nerf farms. I don't however see farms as an issue on the server I frequent. They haven't been since i15 and are becoming quite a lot less so as people simply get bored of them. |
"I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show,
A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes."
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ED, GDN, and AoE caps were all instituted to discourage and slow farming, and this was well before loot was introduced. The merit system was introduced to further slow the rate at which rare items could be obtained (with rewards based solely on time, not risk, which is in complete violation of their #1 mantra of "risk vs reward"). Oh sure, they'll let us farm, but only on their terms and at their pace. Which kinda defeats the point of farming.|
Originally Posted by HelinCarnate
I have yet to see any action that the devs hate farming, PLing or think the market is out of control. Farming is just fine as long as it is not providing more reward than intended. (good luck getting a dev to say how much of a reward is ok for a farmer however)
PLing is discouraged but not hated. If they had that degree of hatred they would just not allow sidekicks at all. Or they would find out who is getting PLed and whip out the banhammer. Granted this would be foolish but strong emotions like hatred tend to drive people to do stupid things. Also they have stated that the markets are not as they would like to see them but no mention of being out of controll. If they, in fact, believed the markets to be "out of controll" why would they be taking measures to bring the markets back under controll? |
Considering that Positron vowed to delete characters that were shown to have reached level 50 too quickly I think shows how they feel about powerleveling. It's also one of the main reasons they implemented the super-sidekicking system; to eliminate the use of bridges and manipulated SK levels for faster XP gain. Again, PLing is ok as long as it's done on their terms, meaning slogging thru tired old content.
And Castle has stated numerous times the market is out of control and inflation has run rampant, with prices for items being many times higher than they ever imagined. Yet despite admitting to this they still do everything they can to limit supply of these rare items, further fueling demand, and skyrocketing prices even higher.
So they're really ok with farming, powerleveling, and a broken market so long as they have complete control over all of it. Which means you're not really doing any of the things you think you are. And when you are actually ARE farming, powerleveling, and getting what you want without dealing with the market, giant red flags get thrown up leading to a swift and heavy-handed nerf with the excuse "well we never intended this to used in this way even though we designed it this way and were completely fine with it until you started doing stuff we didn't like with it".
Are you really so naive to think it DOESN'T work like this?
[QUOTE=White Hot Flash;2764375] If the author is worried that no one will come play cause it offers no reward, then perhaps you should write a better story. QUOTE]
The Magic Pony would like a word with you.
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I was talking about the exploit farms that this particular patch was aimed at, not any and all possible exploit farm that might exist now or in the future.|
Originally Posted by Zubenelgenubi
...except they're not.
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...except that even fewer people will bother now than ever did before, which was a vanishing few indeed. |
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...at least you got it right in the end.
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Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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Design does not equal intent. Oh wait, I've already said that.|
Originally Posted by Captain Fabulous
STOP CALLING IT AN EXPLOIT. It's not an exploit. No one was breaking any rules. None of these allies were broken, mis-coded, malfunctioning, or in any other way not WORKING EXACTLY THE WAY THE DEVS DESIGNED THEM.
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| Now you may say people used this aspect of AE in ways the devs never intended. Ok, I'll give you that. But that's still not an EXPLOIT. |
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| An exploit would be if you discovered a flaw or error in the way something worked and used it to your advantage, something that clearly was not supposed to be. For example, an ally Dispersion Bubble that gave +100% def instead of +10%. THAT'S an exploit. Or if you discovered that jumping up and down 3 times with Ninja Run active and the Blackwand out gave you unlimited recovery. THAT'S an exploit. |
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| Creating an AE map using assets that are 100% working as designed is NOT AN EXPLOIT. |
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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Me neither because I still have a faint hope that they will make a better fix for this when they have more time. Like, checking allies for powers and reduce XP only for buff-bots.
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Originally Posted by Venture
I don't. I'm not changing any of my arcs on account of this.
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Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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Personally my hope is more than faint. Even if I'm wrong on that I doubt I'll make any changes. It might affect what I write in the future, but cut stuff out of my old stories? No way.
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Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
Me neither because I still have a faint hope that they will make a better fix for this when they have more time. Like, checking allies for powers and reduce XP only for buff-bots.
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They also made it possible to spawn an 8 man mish solo or with only 1 other person sitting at the door. Would they do this if they were anti-farm anti PL?|
Originally Posted by Captain Fabulous
ED, GDN, and AoE caps were all instituted to discourage and slow farming, and this was well before loot was introduced. The merit system was introduced to further slow the rate at which rare items could be obtained (with rewards based solely on time, not risk, which is in complete violation of their #1 mantra of "risk vs reward"). Oh sure, they'll let us farm, but only on their terms and at their pace. Which kinda defeats the point of farming.
Considering that Positron vowed to delete characters that were shown to have reached level 50 too quickly I think shows how they feel about powerleveling. It's also one of the main reasons they implemented the super-sidekicking system; to eliminate the use of bridges and manipulated SK levels for faster XP gain. Again, PLing is ok as long as it's done on their terms, meaning slogging thru tired old content. And Castle has stated numerous times the market is out of control and inflation has run rampant, with prices for items being many times higher than they ever imagined. Yet despite admitting to this they still do everything they can to limit supply of these rare items, further fueling demand, and skyrocketing prices even higher. So they're really ok with farming, powerleveling, and a broken market so long as they have complete control over all of it. Which means you're not really doing any of the things you think you are. And when you are actually ARE farming, powerleveling, and getting what you want without dealing with the market, giant red flags get thrown up leading to a swift and heavy-handed nerf with the excuse "well we never intended this to used in this way even though we designed it this way and were completely fine with it until you started doing stuff we didn't like with it". Are you really so naive to think it DOESN'T work like this? |
How many people were actually banned after Posi made that statement? Didn't he also follow up with an appolgy stating basicly that he was out of line?
Part of the reason the prices are so high is because of how easy it is to make tons of money by using the AE farms and by being able to solo farms set for 8. (pause for the irony to sink in) Since so many people were doing AE farms and so few people were farming regular missions the supply of purples decreased while demand increased. At the same time the AE farmers also had tons of money to spend and were apparently willing to part with it since there have been plenty of sales with prices in the hundreds of millions.
Now that many AE farms have been nerfed, many folks will move back to normal mission farms. This will bring an increase in the purple supply which will slowly bring down prices. Hopefully it will also slow the inf/hour earning rate which will also help bring down prices.
Finally just because something may go on for a while before it is fixed does not mean that the dev staff was ok with it going on. They just had other things that were higher priority to deal with.
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Originally Posted by HelinCarnate
It is not fun for groups to have to rely on their own skills and powers to finish a story? What game are you playing?
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the context of the statement was that - if the arc is made where a player can solo it; then, it's not fun for groups anymore.
Political correctness is a stench in the nose of God. Yes, your God(s) also.
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probably.|
Originally Posted by Psyte
I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only person who doesn't necessarily care how much XP my arcs provide?
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why play an arc that is not going to give badges, decent xp, or good drops?
who here HONESTLY thinks otherwise?
Political correctness is a stench in the nose of God. Yes, your God(s) also.
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Depends on the toon I am playing. If it is a toon that I have finished slotting then I don't mind. Anything else where I still need to make xp and money, hell no.
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Originally Posted by Ezoran
probably.
why play an arc that is not going to give badges, decent xp, or good drops? who here HONESTLY thinks otherwise? |
Thanks for the exploit fix. Keep up the good work.
Also tossing in my vote for the removal of all exp from AE.
-mouse
I always thought that MA(AE) should be devoid of any exp. It should just be tickets. I would even break it down to be 2 tickets for minions, 4 tickets for LTs, 6 tickets for Bosses, 8 tickets for Elite Bosses, and 10 tickets for AVs.
Tickets drops would not be random, but for every mob in the mission as they are defeated. Up to the map limit of 1500 tickets.
Liberty Server
Active Character: Canadian Firestorm
Fire/Rad Controller Level 50
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qft
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Originally Posted by monkey_king
i'm confused. If the content of your story is so important, and removing a few ally spawns would completely break the narrative... Isn't the mission xp a secondary concern anyway?
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Regardless of the perennial debate about XP in Mission Architect, this latest patch is not working as intended.
It is not confining itself to allies. It also affects captives and escorts that do not fight, do not buff, and formed no part of any exploit. If you want to make MA stories that resemble official content ("5 office workers to rescue") you cannot do this without sending your reward structure into the toilet after this patch.
It would seem to have been inadequately tested, and ought to be rolled back. The fix is worse than the problem here.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
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I'd be OK with this. I think....
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Originally Posted by JJDrakken
Just remove XP from damn AE already, make it Salvage & Tickets & Cash only, there all your PL problems solved.
JJ |
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Originally Posted by Hazygreys
A lag issue that has been there since the beginning, almost 5 issues ago. If you knew me, then you'd know I don't form speed runs and do take it slowly, but there is always lag. I realize exploits need fixing before bugs, but really how long does it take to fix a bug?
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I still want the bug fixed that says someone is in their Base, or the Arena, or Mission interchangeable and randomly. But, that's only been around, since... I7 I think.
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I'll play an arc strictly for the story. I won't do it often if the rewards are drastically different than the rest of the game.|
Originally Posted by Ezoran
probably.
why play an arc that is not going to give badges, decent xp, or good drops? who here HONESTLY thinks otherwise? |
I wouldn't play a randomly picked from a list arc if I knew the rewards were nerfed (and the notes that say "ally" make it apparent ahead of time now). I would only take a huge reward hit for my favorite authors or arcs that the review sounded interesting.
This change will influence the way I choose arcs to play. I'll be less likely to take a chance on an unknown author that uses allies.
Most writers do care if no one plays their stories, just as moviemakers care about attendance, book authors care about readership, and musicians care about fans. It's all the same thing.
Together we entered a city of strangers, we made it a city of friends, and we leave it a City of Heroes. - Sweet_Sarah
BOYCOTT NCSoft (on Facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/517513781597443/
Governments have fallen to the power of social media. Gaming companies can too.
Well, I've read the patch notes, spent a few hours experimenting with the new changes, been keeping up with the forums, and have now slept on it.
To say that I am still less than impressed with this patch is a hilarious understatement.
I feel others have already stated the reasons against this patch far more eloquently than I ever could, but I'll add my voice against this "fix":
- This patch does absolutely nothing to serious farmers. They can farm without allies just fine, heck they can farm non-AE content just fine. All this hurts are the otherwise legitimate authors and MA players and small time farmers. I don't know what to think, as it seems like all this nerf does is to temporarily get rid of the rabble from the AE buildings in order to stop other players complaining about them. You've made the streets look clean, but it's still business as usual for the crime bosses as it were.
- This patch grossly hurts legitimate authors and players more than it does farmers--I really can't stress this enough. Allies in its many, many forms play a huge part in adding colour and immersion to an arc. I honestly doubt if I could have won a Dev's Choice if I now have to cut out all those allies from that arc. In-game exposition from a NPC? That's a xp nerf. Adding civilians going about their day to make the world seem more alive? That's a xp nerf. Rescuing people? You guessed it, xp nerf.
- This patch is effecting more things than just allies. It comes down even for captives, defends objects, escorts, battles with allies, etc... This patch was either rushed out with little testing or they're just busting legitimate authors and players to spite the farmers. To all those saying "GJ devs" please think of the harm they are doing. They've introduced a snake to curb farmer population, only for it to prey on the original, legitimate users it was supposed to protect.
A Penny For Your Thoughts #348691 <- Dev's Choice'd by Dr. Aeon!
Submit your MA arc for review & my arcs thread
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Wow, well said!
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
In any case, the use of buff-bots is not an Exploit with a capital-E, in the sense that it is an actionable violation of the rules of the game. However, it is an exploitive with a lower-e use of the mission design system. I know the devs knew about these types of problems because I was personally involved in the testing of these circumstances (in I14 beta, testing all the different ways critters and custom critters could be used in AE missions was basically *all* I did for literally hundreds of hours), and I know that using buff bots to allow players to get either minimal-risk rewards or highly accelerated rewards was not intended. The existence of the ability to even include them was a compromise, as most features of the AE are, between trying to give the players as much flexibility as possible, and trying to curtail the worst excesses of exploitive (and Exploitive) behavior.
The question often comes up: if the devs won't let everyone use everything for everything they want, why do they include it at all? And the answer is simply that if the devs only included in the game things they were willing to allow to be used in literally every conceivable way without regard to balance, there would be no game at all. There is nothing in this or any other MMO for which that statement is true. If someone believes that the moment a developer places something in an MMO they are giving unqualified permission to use that thing in any and all possible ways, with an additional promise not to change it when unexpected and undesirable uses are either discovered or discovered to be excessively promoted, then that person is obviously not within the target audience of the MMO industry. |
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Nope, but we're in a very small minority, it would seem.
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Originally Posted by Psyte
I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only person who doesn't necessarily care how much XP my arcs provide?
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After having a day to cool off about this change I've done some thinking and I think I have a better alternative fix.
If this fix is indeed to stop buffbotting, then the ideal fix would be to make it so custom critters don't use any powers at all if they don't have any attack powers that deal damage, and make it so they don't use any powers if they're set to passive or non-combat. Enemies taking damage from allies in MA missions already takes down the amount of XP they give out. The issue is that these allies are making the missions significantly easier without reducing the rewards. The solution then should be the ability to remove that, by making it so any ally in a mission is forced to be able to attack enemies and therefore utilize the current balancing factor already in the game. As it stands with the current patch, people who use allies who do attack are punished twice.
Obviously this solution would probably be harder to code in and obviously take more work, but the Mission Architect was such an undertaking and has been publicized so much that it frankly deserves a better exploit solution than this.
You don't need purples. You don't even need IOs. I have several characters who get along just fine with SOs, as we did for 8 issues. The market and the invention system really are optional.