Regarding Recent Changes to Architect

Originally Posted by JKwervo

I like how this AE nerf didn't really affect any of the farmers. 8)

Originally Posted by KingSnake

Must be a server thing. I always run my AE contact real fast cause of my OCD, and haven't seen a single person in the atlas AE building in MONTHS. Totally empty. I never heard AE spam anymore. Ok, maybe once in a blue moon. I can honestly say, in all my gloabl chat channels i'm a member of, only ONCE in... the last 6 months have i seen someone spam for an AE team. And i remember THAT because it was so weird to SEE an AE team forming in a long time.

I suppose bigger server may have more people using AE, obviously. Bigger servers also have more active PVP. That doesn't make it "popular" though. (I don't know what server your on, but mine is Triumph. No AE activity, no PvP. We are the PVE server. LOL)

Originally Posted by Aura_Familia

THAT would be hilarious.

EDIT: Why? Cause I would think the fact that you have a published Arc on the LIVE servers using a known abusive exploit or bug would, oh, I don't know, disqualify you from being in CLOSED BETA.

Hopefully what you're guessing isn't the case.

Originally Posted by Demonic_Gerbil

Isn't the point of CLOSED BETA to test how breakable things are? Isn't someone that finds those kinds of things EXACTLY the people you'd want in Closed Beta instead of some carebear?

Originally Posted by Demonic_Gerbil

Isn't the point of CLOSED BETA to test how breakable things are? Isn't someone that finds those kinds of things EXACTLY the people you'd want in Closed Beta instead of some carebear?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

What you want in a closed beta tester is someone capable of finding ways to break or exploit the game, is willing to report such findings to the devs, and has the restraint to avoid using that knowledge for personal gain.

Originally Posted by IncredibleMouse

Thanks for the exploit fix.

My friend re-activated her account now that it's been fixed.

Originally Posted by Captain_Freak

So your friend rage-quit over something thats easily avoided?

Originally Posted by Dr. Aeon

Myself, pohsyb, Television, War Witch, along with everyone else here involved in the operations of Mission Architect, are doing everything we can to arrive at a solution that we can all agree on.

....

Anyone who has a normal story arc that is drastically affected by this change should not go about overhauling your work.

Originally Posted by Dr. Aeon

Hey everyone,

We wanted to take a moment to address issues that have come up regarding the latest patch that has been released. We certainly understand a lot of your concerns and we want to do our best to alleviate them.

The change that has been implemented is a temporary change to combat a long standing exploit. This was a stopgap fix that we had to put out until we could come up with a more permanent solution. We certainly do not want to leave your arcs in a state where using them in non-exploitive ways results in little to no experience being gained.

Myself, pohsyb, Television, War Witch, along with everyone else here involved in the operations of Mission Architect, are doing everything we can to arrive at a solution that we can all agree on.

We currently plan to implement a solution in issue 17 or soon thereafter (and I mean actual soon and not Soon™) . We can't go into detail about what exactly is planned, but it will alleviate the current issue that many of you are having, which is finding your normal arcs are rewarding little experience.

Anyone who has a normal story arc that is drastically affected by this change should not go about overhauling your work. We are going to make sure that this upcoming fix will stop exploitive behavior within Architect while also allowing you all to be as creative as you want within the system - without extremely negative consequences.

Dr. Aeon

Originally Posted by Arctic_Princess

Of course, a sort of compromise (after reading responses on here) would be to have no XP/Ticket rewards until an arc is made a Dev's Choice.

Originally Posted by Xanatos

The Developers will never be able to stop farming and powerleveling. The farmers have already moved on to something else.

Originally Posted by Tubbius

A couple pages back, someone said that a fix would be to delete all the arcs and have folks republish the good ones.

I'm not buying it, personally, but it raises a question I've wondered about for a long time.

Very often, my published arcs get a LOT of tweaks and adjustments that the locally saved copies don't get. In fact, I've got really OLD revisions of various published arcs but not locally saved copies that match the latest republished revisions.

Is there any way to get a local save of a republished arc that doesn't wipe out ratings?

Sorry about the off-topic nature of this post, but it's something I've wondered a lonnnng time.

Originally Posted by Xanatos

Keeping this "fix", despite massive player outcry, means that stopping PLing/RMT is more important to the developers than happy architects/players.

Originally Posted by Aura_Familia

You don't need those types of people to find those type of exploits when you have folks like Arcanaville and others who were in closed beta and who found the exact same things during issue 14 Closed beta..

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

They could ensure there are no end-arounds in the reward system. The notion that balancing reward systems or combat systems is an impossible, and therefore ludicrous task, is itself ludicrous. It may be difficult, and the tools to do so may not be commonly exercised in typical game design methodology, but the notion that its actually an impossible task is so humorous to me from an engineering perspective that I always look upon it in the same way I look upon the notion that the moon landing was obviously faked.

You can't stop "farming" and "powerleveling" but you can theoretically ensure that the only skills that generate enhanced rewards are efficiency-related ones, not corner-case advantage-leveraging ones. You can make sure the players can exercise tactical options, and not engineer skewed circumstances.

You can try to improve both the speed and the precision of game rebalancing, and there's no question there's tons of room for improvement there. But you don't, as someone else put it, "give up." Giving up on game balancing is giving up on game design, period.

Originally Posted by Xanatos

The Developers will never be able to stop farming and powerleveling. The farmers have already moved on to something else.

Originally Posted by PoliceWoman

The patch of 4/7 does a poor job of achieving this goal, while negatively and arbitrarily impacting the vast majority of normal, non-exploitative story arcs. Unlike previous changes (such as the ones penalizing custom mobs if they don't have certain powers, or penalizing custom groups who don't have all rank positions filled), there is really not a good way to work-around the current patch while preserving the integrity of a story. It's simply not reasonable to remove all allies, noncombat hostages and defendable objects.

The success or failure of Mission Architect as a feature is almost entirely dependent on player-generated content. I believe the 4/7 patch discourages (even drives off) many players who use Mission Architect in non-exploitative ways, reducing the Mission Architect fan base and hurting its viability as a feature. I urge you to rollback this change immediately. Replace it with a more targeted fix later on, one that specifically stops the bad behavior without hurting "legitimate" players along with it.

Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan

Weekends on Triumph in the RWZ AE building the MA Super Team runs arcs. It's obviously time someone bumped the thread if it's fallen off the fron page.

Eco.

Originally Posted by OABAAB

You know Dr. Aeon, it's interesting that you're preaching patience when you know full well (or should know as an employee) that time isn't a luxury PS/CoX can afford. I know where to find NCSoft quarterly reports and what to look for when it comes to CoX revenue. I'm sorry but I couldn't help myself. This is part of what I do for a living. In anycase, since the introduction of AE in April of last year, CoX sales revenue all the sudden plummeted 40% (compared to a 43% revenue decline in a rolling 12 month period ending in Q4 2009). Basically, during the course of Q1 2009, CoX revenue went down 3% which can be attributed to the natural decline of most aging MMOs. Then came AE in Q2 in the final two quarters of 2009, revenue fell off a cliff and dropped 40%.

Next let's look at the chronology of AE itself. The first 2-3 months after the introduction of AE, there was no doubt that it was wildly popular and widely utilized. Everyone and their extended family were crammed into the AE buildings in AP or Mercy/Cap. That kind of player interest couldn't have been bad from the revenue standpoint and the fact that revenue only dropped 3% from Q1 to Q2 of last year seems to reflect just that. Then came the fine-tuning or nerfs to be more blunt. In chronological progression, ticket cap, custom critter exp, MM pets, and now allied NPCs, just to name a few of the big ones. If you log on during peak hours right now, the players in Mercy and Cap AE buildings are a mere small fraction of where it was a year ago. Going back to the revenue decline in 2009, you can't honestly tell me that these two trends had no correlation. The fact is that drastic and persistent nerfing of popular (and maybe even integral) features in a MMO can contribute significantly to the eventual demise of the game itself. After all it has already happened several times in the short history of MMORPGs. Two prominent examples would be SWG and more recently, Tabula Rasa.

Now let us consider the obvious fact that PS is not exactly flush with subscribers and rolling in dough (at least compared to years before). It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the bigwigs at NCSoft corporate have already expressed their concern over the steep decline in CoX revenue last year. After all in the corporate world, if a product line suddenly loses 40% of sales revenue in a matter of months, it usually gets discontinued. NCSoft may be willing to deal with it for now given that the overall company profitability skyrocketed last year due to the popularity of AION in Asia but how long is it going to last? What if GR doesn't generate as much revenue as desired? That projection isn't all that far fetched given the short term memory nature of the MMO population, ample competition and the fact that CoX is an aging game. This is not to mention that patience isn't exactly a virtue in the world dominated by corporate balance sheets.

With all of this in mind, I am simply shocked that you guys haven't switched to a more conservative approach when it comes to AE fine-tuning. The nerf now and deal with it later approach as exhibited by this latest episode is extremely shortsighted and irrational. It's almost as if PS is willing to alienate some player now while banking on GR to inject fresh blood later but that scenerio is far from a guarantee. Regardless of what the "good riddance, let them leave" or "we don't need players like that anyways" crowd is saying, CoX is currently not on a solid enough footing to be able to afford the hemorrhaging of even more subscribers (revenue).

P.S: If you dislike my bluntness and challenging tone, feel free to put a temporary or even permanent ban on me. If that is to be a consequence of me saying what needs to said, so be it. My main account was already canceled prior to all of this and this account only has about two weeks left. However, allow me to say this one final thing. The reason I canceled originally was due to a perfect storm of busier real life schedule, low CoV population and other diversions. It was not the result of some ragequit over any particular prior issue. However, now that I've seen the way this particular nerf was handled and the continuation of collective tunnel vision on the part of PS, I doubt I would've renewed anyways. Good luck.