Discussion: Live Patch Notes - 4/7/10

After looking at this on live, it's not at all clear how the experience is affected by allies and battles. I have an arc with Freakshow and a couple of custom bosses in the first mission (#252193).

Running the first mission at level 50 at +1/x3, I got 36,567 or 23,992 inf for level 51 Tank Swiper bosses, and 48,105 or 31,562 for level 52 TS bosses (I ditched the ally and it did not damage the targets in both instances). The mission has one ally and one battle. That's a 34% decline in inf.

These are inf values within the same run of the same mission. I got the higher inf values before and after freeing the ally (though again, I ditched the ally).

Running another arc with all custom enemies (#1573) I got either 26,241 or 29,157 inf for one particular boss at level 51. This mission has only one ally. That's a 10% decline in inf. Again, before and after rescuing the ally.

I created another mission explicitly to test how freeing an ally affects rewards. Without allies I see 40,630 inf for level 51 Tank Swiper bosses. With one ally (yet unfreed) I saw 36,567 inf. I saw the same inf after freeing the ally, and regardless of whether the ally was Pacifist or Aggressive. That's a 10% reduction in rewards, and it was consistent in this mission.

We need some clarification on how this works. Why am I sometimes seeing different values for the same level critter in the same mission? Are you supposed to get more before the ally is freed? Less afterwards? Does proximity to an abandoned ally reduce rewards? Does abandoning an ally increase rewards? Do friendly patrols and battles change the rewards? How much does each ally change the reward by? Why do pacifist allies reduce rewards?

I'm all for eliminating exploits in AE, but I'm not sure this is a very good solution. Allies appear in standard content all the time, and when they attack in standard content you don't take a reward hit. In AE you lose rewards for every hit an ally lands. Now you lose rewards even when the ally isn't buffing you or even fighting, but is standing there waiting to be rescued on level 3 while you're fighting the boss on level 1? That's not right. Especially when the boss is tagged as Pacifist and will never attack anything.

I add battles and allies to missions for color, to impart information and to help squishy characters do missions with the tougher custom critters solo. With these reductions in inf/xp there is less and less motivation for players to run AE missions. And less motivation for authors to make unique and interesting AE missions.

I'm always ready to defend the devs when they fix exploits, but AE is becoming totally schizophrenic. It's either a an exploit-ridden power-leveling tool, or a barren wasteland that gives little reward for fighting the toughest critters in the game.

This scatter-shot approach to normalizing AE experience/influence is not working.

I can understand the necessity of eliminating AE farm exploits, but the described change to exp rewards in missions that include allies sounds pretty heavy-handed.

Friendly NPCs are a very useful tool for storytelling, both as major characters who become "Ally" details with dialog and characterization, or minor characters who battling bad guys in the background to make the environment seem more alive. You can see examples of both these cases even in dev-authored arcs.

I view myself as a prolific MA author; of the 8 story arcs I currently have published, 7 have friendly models in them. All are intended to support the story; none are intended to be buff bots that unfairly help the player. In fact, more often I've had players complain about low rewards due to allies "kill stealing". To have the rewards reduced even further seems discouraging.

Sharply reducing the rewards for any mission using friendly NPCs may address the short-term problem of a current farming exploit, but I believe it will also make it more difficult for Mission Architect to fulfill its stated primary purpose: namely, allowing users to create rich stories that can be enjoyed by the general player base.

They are fixing exploits, exploits which are resulting in the very 50's that some of you are contradictorily complaining about. Of course it's very difficult these days ensuring everyone is still happy in the end. Presumably you'd understand that these problems should be fixed almost immediately, however it results in rather rash decisions, but then again they are hardly going to spend a week fixing a measly 'XP' exploit, which consequently would result in a furore from us - for time-wasting.

I realise that for quite a few of the die-hards in this game, it is quite demoralising when a nerf bat swings a bit too hard but at the moment you have to take it in stride. 'AE' has been out for a while but it's still being fine-tuned, especially since most major updates have a new influence on it, of course lets all contemplate that they remove XP from the 'AE' system for example: Do you really think that the same number of people will use it? It would become exclusive in the sense your friends would only invite you into a good arc, etc. Unfortunately resulting in a discarded feature of the game.

The 'Ally' nerf had to come, in fact I have no idea why 'Allies' are even there, since it really would be abused severely. I don't understand why when the developer implemented this particular criteria the word 'abuse' did not bounce around his/her head. You can't argue that it was going to be used fairly, and unfortunately the people who did obey it were punished - and I use that loosely. I don't really make arcs but surely a story can make do with a citizen, or some variation of the sort. It's hardly worth the reiterated effort, when you consider that on the counter-balance lay one incredibly easy way of exploitation. I do view both sides, and I do feel some sympathy for those who enjoy their imagination going wild, but it doesn't really break the system nor destroy your efforts in a wild way. I appreciate that it does require you to edit them but, again I stress you can't really outweight the exploit with say a longer period of time attempting to mitigate any damage on the players as a whole.

I also understand that the fixes appear to be rather rampant and blunt but there really hasn't been an update in this game that has been pitch-perfect with the audience. There will always been someone affected, you and I both know there not one to sway unless it's imperative.

The spur of patches lately have been for 'AE' exploits and I feel that eventually it is being corrected slowly. They have 'Going Rogue' on their hands, and if you really sit down and consider it, there not a great big corporation focusing on every minute detail.

If your affected by it, try and work around it, and I mean really try. That's all that can be done lately.

I say this with a whole-hearted attempt for both parties, the bigger picture seems better to me

Fury

Apparently this should also read EU Test notes from what I heard...
Rumour has it they rolled back the EU Test server to pre DP and wiped all the EU Testers characters out!
Hope this isn't true...
If it is I hope they fix it bloody quick!

[QUOTE=Rodion;2761779]
I'd suggest that the devs put an XP rating on each arc so that players can tell ahead of time whether an arc gives decent XP. I like a good story as much as the next guy. But I like a good story that gives decent XP even more, and there's no reason you can't have both.
QUOTE]

Hmm, I like that idea, it be a realy usefull bit of info about an arc. They would have to come up with some kind of scale and system for it but it would be nice QoL AE improvment

As for the nerf's / bug fixes no overly bothersome the res thing has been needed for a long time, all player res powers has an invunarability phase to them so why not have the npc have the same efect.

Ally buff bots need the nerf bat pwning, sure they were not as bad as the minto farms(omg that was lame) but still fairly bad. I have ran a few of my arc's that have ally's and noted no signifacant drop in xp/inf so im thinking one or two is not going to gimp your arc.

but then who would nerf?

You know...

The last misison of my arc has 6 allies, an AV all alone in his own "group", and a custom group made up only of one "LT".

I'm gonna replay it and see if somehow XP is taken AWAY from me. That'd be hillarious!