Discussion: Live Patch Notes - 4/7/10
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-04-07 09:43 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
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This.
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Originally Posted by LaserJesus
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. |
61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)
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what about having purples drop at pretty much all levels? i'm not being sarcastic... if the level cap is getting upped in going rogue (possibly one level in i17? idr); then, lvl 50 purples won't be the only purps we have any longer... why not just make them lvl 8ish-level cap sets?
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Originally Posted by theheat
and I meant the rate that purples drop is too low, not too high.
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Political correctness is a stench in the nose of God. Yes, your God(s) also.
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But....the level cap isn't being raised. Unless I misunderstood something, they aren't actually raising the level cap. They're simply enhancing 50's.
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Originally Posted by Ezoran
what about having purples drop at pretty much all levels? i'm not being sarcastic... if the level cap is getting upped in going rogue (possibly one level in i17? idr); then, lvl 50 purples won't be the only purps we have any longer... why not just make them lvl 8ish-level cap sets?
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We'll see....
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Actually the reason is much simpler. The people who play but have a very different vision of how they like to play than the developers are still paying their 15/month and still there to help others have fun. WHY OH WHY WOULD THEY OPEN THEIR MOUTHS AND ALIENATE THEM ? See positron ae letter for example of a dev being reigned in for doing just this.|
Originally Posted by Warkupo
They aren't going to accurately define an exploit because it would be pointless to do so. At best you'd have these cheeky long-winded definition which would then immediately be changed as soon as the players figure out some other way to bend the rules.
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| Furthermore, it made AT's who would normally be buffing/controlling/tanking obsolete because a swarm of NPC's is already filling that role, turning the game into City of Blasters/Scrappers. That's exploitative *and* damaging to those who enjoyed a certain play style which is no longer necessary. |
As to the timing question, that is pretty obvious. This was something they were notified a long time ago about, if they are going to take this long to fix it, you would expect it to be fixed correctly not like this
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Tomatoe vs Tomato ?
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Originally Posted by Flameshot
But....the level cap isn't being raised. Unless I misunderstood something, they aren't actually raising the level cap. They're simply enhancing 50's.
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When the discussion is about the specific level of specific enhancements, no. It's very relevant whether or not the actual level cap is being raised.|
Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Tomatoe vs Tomato ?
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Which it's not.
At least, I'm 98% sure it's not.
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The Positron AE letter basically said "Stop using exploits or we'll ban you and change them." Lo and behold they've pretty much kept that business model by implementing this change and other changes. They don't like exploits. That should be obvious, direct statement or not. |
Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Actually the reason is much simpler. The people who play but have a very different vision of how they like to play than the developers are still paying their 15/month and still there to help others have fun. WHY OH WHY WOULD THEY OPEN THEIR MOUTHS AND ALIENATE THEM ? See positron ae letter for example of a dev being reigned in for doing just this.
Actually it was just certain defenders that were unneeded before, now its blasters and certain types of controllers as well that are unneeded. Its not the improvement you think it is. As to the timing question, that is pretty obvious. This was something they were notified a long time ago about, if they are going to take this long to fix it, you would expect it to be fixed correctly not like this |
The Dev's don't accurately define an exploit because that opens up a window to hell where everyone can then FIND an exploit the devs didn't think of, and the devs either get called liars, or just don't do crap about it. They aren't going to define it because it would be pointless to do so.
If there is someone out there that seriously didn't think the NPC armies weren't going to be nerfed then they are retarded and I have absolutely no sympathy for them.
And as for "fun" offered by AE farms, there are plenty of games that don't require any thinking what so ever that you can go play instead. Hell, I'll design one for you. Go get a piece of paper, and write a 1 on it. Now pop in a movie of Diehard or similiar action movie and jiggle a controller enthusiastically. Every now and then scratch out the one and put a progressively bigger number in it's place, and make a "DING" noise. Congratulations, you now have your AE farm and you're out of my immediate eyesight. Everyone wins.
And no, with the horde of NPC armies it was more effective to just get AOE blasters and scrappers. Fire/Kin was only a good farmer when Fulcrum Shift was *doing* something, and with all the NPC's putting you at your respective damage cap anyway, you might as well replace it with a blaster of some sort.
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I have player this game since before i7. When respec recipes were released I said "cool". i have leveled 16 50's since then and have seen zero drop. (wether or not they are on ww is immaterial) as far as i am concerned they have a drop rate of zero. I dont farm. evidently you must farm to get one of these.
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Originally Posted by Frosticus
While you don't need any of the loot items they have introduced a well founded loot system can drive a hack n' slash game* for years and to new heights of success. I think Diablo 2 would be a great example.
Loot is carrot on a stick that is virtually unparalleled. CoX tried to tap into that and has done a moderately successful job of it given the restrictions of the game (you can't have visual loot nearly as much as other systems use). It is an optional system, but they 100% want you to feel compelled, even driven, to attain it. *CoX is a hack n' slash game, make no mistake. 99.9% of the game consists of mowing down hordes of enemies. |
Lots of 50's yada yada. still finding fun things to do.
Cthulhu loves you, better start running
I�! I�! Gg�gorsch�a�bha egurtsa�ar�ug d� Dalhor! Cthluhu fthagn! Cthluhu fthagn!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages
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Originally Posted by Horusaurus
It's a fix, possibly not the best fix but it fixes things for the time being. Just don't put one allied NPC in a mission. There we go.
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fixed
Lots of 50's yada yada. still finding fun things to do.
Cthulhu loves you, better start running
I�! I�! Gg�gorsch�a�bha egurtsa�ar�ug d� Dalhor! Cthluhu fthagn! Cthluhu fthagn!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages
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My original suggestion was that any critter who has powers that aren't damage-centric, that is any buff or debuff, reduces exp by a certain amount. An all forcefield helper wouldn't do any damage, but also neither would a dark miasma helper. But both of them are making your job easier, and by the rules of the new patch, not reducing your exp any unless you have more than one. I can't even begin to pretend I know what numbers to suggest, but I do know that any power that does damage is taking away experience already. So any power that's not just an attack (even if it does weak damage like Flashfire), should be reducing your exp gain in some fashion.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm currently trying to think of a more elegant solution, actually. It isn't quite that simple. For example, an ally with nothing but radiation emission debuffs would not buff the player, but could debuff the critters in a comparable way that made them both easier to kill and offensively ineffective. But if they only debuff and don't do credible amounts of damage, confuse-like code won't account for them either.
The only ideas I have that might work correctly would require code, and that means they would likely take a while to implement, assuming you could get resources allocated to implement them. |
A pet that's MA/AR is taking away exp by doing damage. A pet that's X/FF should take away exp because it's buffing you. And a pet that's X/Rad should take away exp because it's debuffing for you. ALL pets should take away some amount of experience, not just select ones or select powers. Basing it only on damage dealt or number of pets is easy to exploit.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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And as their vision becomes more known to the people it impacts they leave. Usually they just leave, sometimes they do a fade out, very rarely they will come to the forums and express their displeasure. Usually it just isn't worth the effort.|
Originally Posted by Warkupo
The Positron AE letter basically said "Stop using exploits or we'll ban you and change them." Lo and behold they've pretty much kept that business model by implementing this change and other changes. They don't like exploits. That should be obvious, direct statement or not.
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Will this patch trigger an exodus of farmers ? I doubt it. Will it cause would be Authors, game creators, level designers to seek elsewhere for a creative outlet ? Definitely maybe.
As to the rest you really needed to have soloed some of those farms while your description may seem good from a theoretical level, from a practical level it misses much. The people that still want to farm those will just do so with tanks and scrappers or they may dual box in a kin that's about all the change that will be there.
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/tangent|
Originally Posted by Warkupo
They aren't going to accurately define an exploit because it would be pointless to do so. At best you'd have these cheeky long-winded definition which would then immediately be changed as soon as the players figure out some other way to bend the rules.
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This is not a bad thing. That's the problem with clearly defining rules, you'll run into the "rules lawyers" who do whatever they can to find whatever loophole there might be. "But you said...!!!"
It ain't rocket science, people. If you can level up to 50 in less than a day, it's hideously broken. Truth be known, if you can level up to 50 in less than a week, I am of the opinion that it is still hideously broken. And by "hideously," I mean broken to the point where you need to take whatever measures are necessary right now to fix it. Even if that means nerfing the game to be almost unplayable. Fortunately in this circumstance, it only affected one of many aspects of the game.
I keep seeing the assertion tossed about that because of this nerf, you can't put these types of missions in your AE arc. That's BS. Sure you can. If you're whining because your AE arc doesn't work now, then I can only presume that by "work," you mean "isn't conducive to farming." In which case, I have zero sympathy for you.
Look, it's harsh, but necessary. For a little while, you're going to have to make a conscious decision whether your arc is about getting stuff or about telling a story. Frankly, if it's about getting stuff, that's pretty stupid. I can get stuff in innumerable other ways in the game that are infinitely more interesting and fun than playing your arc. If it's about getting stuff faster than you would play playing other aspects of the game, then guess what. That's pretty much a classic definition of a farming arc, and it should be nerfed. If it's about telling a story, then what the hell difference does it make if experience or any other reward is nerfed?
Anyway, back to my original point. I have no problem with the devs basically saying, "You ought to know what is and isn't exploitive, and we're not going to spell it out for you." They're right, and even if they were to spell it out, you'd still have the same old whiners and complainers b****ing about how it's not fair in addition to the contingent of people moaning about how, "But you didn't explicitly say that was an exploit!!!"
Sheez. Like I said. It ain't rocket science.
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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Originally Posted by Venture
a) If the story absolutely can't work without a specific character then the odds are that you don't even have a story. You probably have just a bunch of stuff that happened.
b) Characters like the Honoree, which are built to be fought by teams and/or are supposed to require TF-specific temp powers to fight, should not be available in the MA in the first place. At least not until we have the ability to gate arcs by actual team size. |
A) you must not be a writer then or reader to say that does not make much sense
b) i will agree there
sincerly yours:
Bzald of TopTen
i couldn't think of the place to really ask this but this seems as good of a place as any I suppose.
Anyone else got the download after quitting the game today? Does that mean the next issue is ready?? will i get my demon summon finally?, it was like an 800mb dl that started the moment i quit so I was wondering about it seeing how I couldn't find any Info on it. I figured this had to be it.
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It's the pre-patch download. This happens with every new issue. It contains the majority of the files from the new issue, that people can download in advance so the download servers have some more breathing space on launch day. So, yes it means that the next issue will be ready "soon". But since Issue 17 isn't even in open beta yet, I'd count at least two more weeks untill release.
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Originally Posted by renfuuma
i couldn't think of the place to really ask this but this seems as good of a place as any I suppose.
Anyone else got the download after quitting the game today? Does that mean the next issue is ready?? will i get my demon summon finally?, it was like an 800mb dl that started the moment i quit so I was wondering about it seeing how I couldn't find any Info on it. I figured this had to be it. |
@True Metal
Co-leader of Callous Crew SG. Based on Union server.
Way to go devs. When you announced that CoX is going to implement content creation tool, many player warned that this will open a Pandora's Box but obviously it was an acceptable risk to you all. You said that you can deal with the bugs, unbalances, or exploits as they come and the overall potential for such a groundbreaking feature outweighs the risk. Now, those predictions have indeed came true and sure enough, you kept to your word and continued the tsunami of nerfs every few weeks in order to keep up with the authors that were *too* creative for their own good. As time went on, CoX population went through a continuous decline and AE use dwindled. This isn't a conjecture as anyone who has played for more than two years have made that very observation with their own eyes. As for those of us that can read financial reports and is knowledgable on currency exchange rates, the persistant decline in CoX is even more crystal clear. CoX sales revenue declined every quarter in 2009 from 6.8 million won in Q1 to 3.9 million won in Q4. That's a 43% drop in CoX revenue in the short span of one year. If revenue continues to decline at this alarming rate, barring a miracle, CoX will be in its death throes sooner rather than later. You don't even have to do any in depth due diligence to arrive at that conclusion but I digress.
My question for you devs is this. Given all that have transpired during the past year, what exactly was the point of AE? Why did you spend so much time developing, fine-tuning, monitoring and marketing (to the point of hype) the AE if it is eventually going to be little more than a niche feature that only a fraction of the population will actually partake in? Did you actually think that most people will only be motivated to use the AE for "storytellling" and "roleplaying" purposes when you went ahead with it? Maybe you haven't noticed but that vast majority of the "story" arcs on AE are amateurish in quality, full of typos, logical fallacies and simply aren't all that fun to play. This isn't to insult the player authors but rather pointing out a reality in the world of arts/literature when it comes to the talent divide between the haves and the have nots. If every amateur storyteller were so adept at their craft and hobby then practically anyone can publish good literature or conjure up compelling scripts for movie/television. That is simply not the case.
As some other people have said before, if I wanted a good story, I'd go read a book or watch a movie. I certainly do that constantly but in an online game? Not so much. Obviously not everyone will share that sentiment but enough surely do. Yet you choose to go the route of trying to mold AE into an exclusive story telling club as if to alienate those who care more about rewards. Are you so confident that GR is going to replenish your subscriptions and coffers? Here's a reality check. Engineers and programmers are quite often bad with the finances and if you all actually do expect GR to have that kind of impact, you fit firmly into that stereotype. You're introducing a paid expansion and revamping the graphics of a game that's already 6 years old. That's not to mention that there's literally a log jam of competitors out there so consumers aren't exactly short on options. To be brutally honest, GR is not going to make a huge splash as you think and it certainly wouldn't bring it a massive amount of new subscribers for a sustained period of time. Certainly not enough to make up for the 43% revenue decline over the course of 2009. After all, no game except for WoW, (and *maybe* EQ1) has exhibited such persistent staying power over that lengthy time frame in the U.S. market. As a matter of fact, the entire U.S. MMO market is suffering from a drastic decline in subscriptions numbers and CoX is not going to be the game to buck the trend, economic recovery or not.
P.S: Going back to the original point of introducing AE and the inevitable train wreck of nerfs that will surely follow it. I would just like to say, I told you so. You made your own bed and now you have to sleep in it. And no, more nerfs is not going to be the solution because it hasn't worked so far, hasn't it?
Dr Aeon made a comment about these changes in a new thread for those of you who are interested:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=216908
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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Er, no it doesn't. I'm staying because so far their mystical 'vision' is about where I want it to be. If it veers off course I'll leave. I know I'm not the only one. |
Originally Posted by Another_Fan
And as their vision becomes more known to the people it impacts they leave. Usually they just leave, sometimes they do a fade out, very rarely they will come to the forums and express their displeasure. Usually it just isn't worth the effort.
Will this patch trigger an exodus of farmers ? I doubt it. Will it cause would be Authors, game creators, level designers to seek elsewhere for a creative outlet ? Definitely maybe. As to the rest you really needed to have soloed some of those farms while your description may seem good from a theoretical level, from a practical level it misses much. The people that still want to farm those will just do so with tanks and scrappers or they may dual box in a kin that's about all the change that will be there. |
Fixing an exploit isn't going to end farming. I'm not implying it should.
AE teams were only going to accept scrappers and blasters. I didn't imply soloing, so don't act like I did.
Solo farming is worse than team farming, which is why I just jumped over to team farming, because that's the part we should give a crap about.
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I wasn't implying it was a bad thing. I'm going to assume the rest of your post rants at some unknown figure and that you were merely using me to elaborate, instead of getting irritated that you might be misinterpreting me.
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Originally Posted by TonyV
/tangent
This is not a bad thing. That's the problem with clearly defining rules, you'll run into the "rules lawyers" who do whatever they can to find whatever loophole there might be. "But you said...!!!" |
I knew it was coming oh well on to the next thing to farm as always
Pinnacle
Langar Thurs-Katana/SR 50; Hejtmane-DM/DA 50
Rogue Spear-Spines/DA 50; Hypnosis-Ill/Rad 50
Sir Thomas Theroux-DM/SR 50; Melted Copper-Fire/Shield 50
Byzantine Warrior-DB/ELA 50;Blade Tempo-50 DB/EA
Finally, closure.
Thanks for the linky and thanks to Aeon for the post.
Patience.
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
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Unfortunately this is exploitable. The problem is that you can make buff bots that have melee attacks and buffs, set them to buff you with long-duration buffs, flip them back to passive, and use the buffs until they run out. There are other AI-related tricks you can play, but this is the most obvious one.|
Originally Posted by LaserJesus
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. |
Its also surprisingly tricky to determine what an "attack" is in an automatic fashion. This is something I've specifically put a lot of thought into.
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This is actually not too far from my current line of thought. Its not a bad starting point for a workable solution although there are still some gotchas in there. The catch is that as stated its still too expansive because it counts things that *have* buffs and debuffs but don't actually buff you or debuff your targets. Furthermore it presumes an ally that possesses attacks can actually use them. There are ways to ensure they don't.|
Originally Posted by Dispari
My original suggestion was that any critter who has powers that aren't damage-centric, that is any buff or debuff, reduces exp by a certain amount. An all forcefield helper wouldn't do any damage, but also neither would a dark miasma helper. But both of them are making your job easier, and by the rules of the new patch, not reducing your exp any unless you have more than one. I can't even begin to pretend I know what numbers to suggest, but I do know that any power that does damage is taking away experience already. So any power that's not just an attack (even if it does weak damage like Flashfire), should be reducing your exp gain in some fashion.
A pet that's MA/AR is taking away exp by doing damage. A pet that's X/FF should take away exp because it's buffing you. And a pet that's X/Rad should take away exp because it's debuffing for you. ALL pets should take away some amount of experience, not just select ones or select powers. Basing it only on damage dealt or number of pets is easy to exploit. |
I have an outline for an idea that I was going to eventually put some time into, that involved the problem of how to give support characters credit for kills - say, how to give a rad defender partial credit for helping to defeat a giant monster. It occurs to me that idea has significant application for this situation. But I don't know if its technologically feasible. Working in my favor is that if implemented, it would solve several problems simultaneously. But it might take a significant amount of work in parts of the game engine not often tweaked.
The basic outline is to consider an overall fight to be a case of you dealing damage and you taking damage. "Help" is when something increases your damage or decreases your incoming damage. If the game could calculate damage components in a manner similar to how the tohit code calculates deflection messages, you could theoretically say, for every attack you make, how much of that damage is "yours" and how much is due to someone else buffing you or debuffing the target (this is not as straight forward as I've phrased it to be, given the way buffs and debuffs interact multiplicatively). A rad defender using EF on a giant monster could, in effect, get partial credit for all the attacks that land.
Do that for custom critters, and you could divide up the XP for each and every kill into your part and your buff-bot's part. A more complicated scenario could attempt to proportionately value defensive buffs which reduce your incoming damage.
This is, of course, an extremely tricky and speculative idea. I *think* I can make the math work (the defensive part is an order of magnitude harder to make fair). I don't know if there is enough jelly doughnuts in the world to bribe the devs into attempting it during their I17 crunch time. And even this somewhat complex idea has some corner cases still to consider (the most obvious of which is: what do you do about stacking slows and mezzes).
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Well, I think that a lot of the hostility between "farmers" and "non-farmers" (WARNING! I'm painting with a reeeeal wide brush here) comes from a lack of distinction between "legitimate" farming and "exploitative" farming. In many of these sort of discussions (i.e. arguments) I fail to parse that distinction myself.|
Originally Posted by Flameshot
But do we really part company? I have never once said "Eff the Devs! Let's do whatever we want!". At least not that I can remember. I have however said, we have the right to play how we choose with regards to other players. Players who feel they have sort of authority over what other players do. I fully understand the devs can do as they please with the game. It is their game after all. But I also understand that I pay to play this game, and there comes a point where that buys me the right for lack of a better term, to complain about something I don't like.
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The Devs have no beef with farming in general. Heck, dedicated farmers frequently have multiple accounts. In other words, they're real good customers. And I dont have a problem with it either. Heck, Ive lost count of the number of demon farms Ive been on. Its when the farming runs into exploitative behavior that problems crop up.
And then the devs act to fix the exploit. And often the fix comes out like THIS one did. And then people are unhappy on both sides of the fence. And then comes the finger pointing and the personal attacks and pretty soon somebody ends up in the wood chipper.
Rinse, repeat.
"OK, first of all... Shut Up." - My 13-Year-Old Daughter
29973 "The Running of the Bulls" [SFMA] - WINNER of the Mighty Big Story Arc Contest !
- The Stellar Wind Orbital Space Platform
and I meant the rate that purples drop is too low, not too high.