Regarding Recent Changes to Architect

If access to the farm arcs was limited to Players with, say, 3 years worth of vet rewards, then I'd accept their inclusion.

But brand new players running a toon to 50 in a matter of days or weeks, bypassing the content, is not what we want.

Eco.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

1.) Well, like I said, I'm pretty sure my attitude is in the small minority on this one, but I think any decision differentiating an 'exploit' from 'legitimate farming' is likely to be arbitrary and artificial. In fact, it takes more 'effort' to create and use a mission full of buffbots that still requires a player to actively go out and destroy every target on the map than it does to sit in a doorway and chat with your friends. Yet the former is now categorized as an exploit yet the latter never was. So really what is the point?

Eliminate one thing and they will find another way to do it that eliminates effort. Eliminated that and they will find still another. My suggestion is that the devs recognize that a portion of the community will always find such behavior repugnant, while the other portion will never find it repugnant. Partition those two portions of the community from each other and create an interface that will conceal their activities from each other.

2.) By definition, I would not be punishing anyone for anything. I don't see any real sense in it. I think it's pretty illogical that my arcs are being punished for the behavior of players I don't know, don't associate with, and probably wouldn't associate with even if I did know them, but their behavior is what it is... them getting another level 50 doesn't somehow mean that I don't have the few I have. Them having billions of influence doesn't somehow take any away from me. Them having characters loaded down with IO sets doesn't adversely affect me. In fact, as I said, the only time they adversely affect me at all is if they mistakenly happen to open up one of my story arcs and down rate it because it isn't their cup of tea.

Defining something arbitrarily as an exploit is sort of like the congress suddenly deciding that since something is unhealthy for you, it should be criminalized and that everyone should have realized it should be criminalized all along.

I disagree with that. People will do what they will do and as long as the behavior isn't inherently harmful to anyone else, who cares?

So, yes, I think the exploiters, (and to a lesser extent all farmers), are largely tools. And I honetly don't really get what their activities do to give them enjoyment, hey, life is life and it does, so who am I to want to take it away from them?

I just wish they'd have the same consideration and not downrate an arc that is obviously what they did not want to play. Of course, I have no real evidence that it's farmer and exploiters who give me the few low ratings I get, but I suspect by some of the ((LULZ! U SUK! U MISSPELED 'A!')) comments that accompany these that these are probably the players who do it.

3.) I truly think a partitioned UI would probably solve a lot of these problems. I think the biggest issue is that the two portions of the community are just largely unreconcilable in what they want out of MA. As such, the answer isn't to take either thing away. It's to make it easier for each side to find what it wants.

The doorsitter still has to go to the effort of finding someone willing to run the mission for them. The more doorsitters, the less return on the mission-runner's investment. The people running missions full of buffbots on the other hand....you only need one mission that an infinite number of players can use.

And many of these exploits were pretty clear-cut. Minions that give lieutenant-level rewards, bosses that don't fight back, and especially that Mastermind bug.

The devs aren't going to allow the MA to give significantly higher rewards than the rest of the game. That is just not going to happen. To that end, they have two options: remove the mechanics that allow this to happen, affecting those who use those same mechanics in a way that does not give an unfair advantage, or set out the rules and prevent anyone who breaks them from doing so again.

It does if you use the markets. There is a thread on the market forum that demonstrates exactly how people using an obvious and blatant exploit has had a serious effect on the villain market. So yeah, they do take away your influence by devaluing it.

They also adversely affect MA as a whole with the hideous weeds that are their poorly spelled, blatantly unimaginative, near-identical farm missions. I have tried many times to find a nice quick arc to run. Try running a search for "Short" and "Very Short" arcs and tell me farms don't affect us.

It won't solve anything if everyone who thinks their farm is special flags it as "Story Focused." And we all know there are a LOT of people who think they are special and the rules don't apply to them. Which is why I suggest reinforcing the fact that the rules do, in fact, apply to them. With extreme prejudice.

I know it will sound sort of inconsistent with everything else I've said, but I have no complaint with them fixing things like this and doing it invisibly without saying anything about it. A minion that gives too much experience is a coding error. Any opponent that gives experience without fighting back is a coding error. Not sure about the MM bug, but it also sounds like what I categorize as a coding error.

All of these things can and should be fixed with no particular announcement, because doing it that way places the onus on the fix on what the developers have done without making any moral judgment about the behavior of the players at all. Essentially, it is like saying in a team meeting, 'we made an error, we need to fix it' instead of '-gasp- you bastich players are breaking my game!'

However, it's when you start to code out entire styles of play that I start to have huge problems with how you are addressing the problem. Having NPC allies is a tremendous boon to players of Defenders who like to solo. In fact, my emp/psi defender soloes almost every RWZ arc quite well at the highest settings with AVs because of the preponderence of npc allies the game provides you during those arcs. If you give Lady Gray both Fortitude and Adrenaline Rush, she wipes the floor with those ambushes of Vanguard that come after her. If you can keep Fusionette up and subtly convince Faultine to tank instead of control, you can beat down the AV version of Hro without issue.

But in essence, this action is telling me that I did that wrong. Those npc allies were never supposed to be there and I shouldn't be using that sort of thing in my arcs. But Dr. Aeon is saying that isn't true and that I should just be patient and that this is being done to prevent a select playstyle by a group of players that does not include me.

So... okay. At that point, that's where my argument comes into play. Rectifying coding errors is right. Should be done. Dictating playstyle through code in general, unless the playstyle is so abusive that it adversely affects a huge number of other players is wrong, in my opionion. And in a non-competitive game where we aren't jockeying for position and never playing directly against one another, it will always be hard to convince me that this is the case.

Still, this patch should never have gone live in this sorry, broken state and being told by the AE dev to just "grin and bear it" for an indefinite amount of time is not acceptable. Every day this patch is live only makes the damage worse.

I've stopped all advertising for my arcs in the meantime, there's not point in promoting something that is broken and cannot be fixed without many major rewrites as all 8 arcs got nailed by this mess. Advertising right now is just inviting poor ratings from people unaware of this bugged patch.

Question. Why did you make maps that could be exploited to begin with. Shut up.

Sister Twelve: same goes for you. Shut up. You aren't gaining any sympathy, and at this point you've managed to get people un-involved with this whole mess willing to step in and tell you it's time to close your mouth.

That's unduly harsh. The patch is effecting NPC's it, by all logical thinking, should not. Legitimate missions are effected by this change as well as the exploitative ones.

The upside to all this is that the exploitative missions aren't being pushed out the door in such a large quantity, and are basically stale at this point, meaning you could feasibly push your actual storytelling to higher points on the list, where as before you hadn't a chance in hell.

Probably should have waited for a more feasible patch, though.

Um... I don't know who you think you are, but I'll put this in a way I think you might comprehend.

Kiss my ***.

This list of "maps that could be exploited to begin with" would be "all of them".

Assuming that your story arc wasn't affected by this patch, in which case if it is you're more likely to get worse ratings now since most players are clueless about this broken patch and will downrate you for giving them crappy rewards.

This cannot be said enough times. I bet that this ended up in the patch by mistake and the Devs would rather cover that up than admit that they screwed up and roll it back.

Well, there you go, folks. I said as much in the other thread about this. It's just plain brain dead to leave an exploit in a game instead of taking it out and dealing with any side issues that come up. I mean, really. Duh.

For all the rage and fury, the developers prove once again that they actually are smarter than a crapton of people here give them credit for. (Not to mention, smarter than a crapton of people here, period.)

I really do love reading all the DOOOOOM!-criers posting their diatribes, the obligatory "I'm leaving!" posts, and all the other hoopla that surrounds issues like this, only to see the game still going strong years after so many other games have gone belly-up.

On with the show...

I would agree in full, but this exploit had been going strong from day one. I don't agree with all the rage-"quitting", but it seems to me that the bugged patch has done far more damage then the exploit.

Some people may be responding like this, but I think the general tone is current arc writers and AE enthusiasts who don't farm, have no interest in farming or exploits, but have had this legitimate arcs XP cut in roughly half by this patch. This includes a fair number of Dev Choice arcs.

It's just an annoyance for those who like to use the AE for fresh new content and still level at a reasonable pace. Earning 1/2 or 1/4 of normal XP doesn't really give people incentive to play their non-50s in the AE.

It doesn't give much incentive to play 50's either, the nerf affects tickets and influence as well.

You know, I did just this kind of analysis about three months ago, and my conclusion was that really, it's not suffering that badly. Funny how two different people can look at exactly the same numbers and come to different conclusions.

You're neglecting that in the past year, the U.S. has been in one of the most crushing recessions in our collective history. You're also completely neglecting the fact that there were a few pretty big-name releases of other games, including one centering around a 40-year-old major franchise (Star Trek Online) and one that competes directly with City of Heroes in the superhero genre (Champions Online). To be honest, against such stiff new competition, I think that 40% is actually pretty damn good, and that now that they're over that first year "hump" of those games being released, this year will be much better. You're also completely forgetting something I did in the thread I posted a few months ago, that sales and revenue are reported in Korean Won (by NCsoft, a Korean company), not U.S. dollars, and there's an exchange rate that can be a huge factor there.

If you really do this for a living, you should know these things.

Duh. Let's make a wager. I'll bet a large sum of money that around the end of July and for a few months after, there are going to be tons of people crammed in Praetoria. I'll further bet a large sum of money that a year from July, there will be a lot fewer people in Praetoria. I'll even go out on a limb and say that there are going to be a bunch of posts at that time about how Praetoria is a "ghost town," and that it's because of some nerf of the month that folks like you just can't stand.

These games had a lot more wrong with them than just nerfs. They were already almost dead as they were. In the case of SWG, it was a last-ditch effort to try to reinvent the game. In the case of Tabula Rasa, they never had a large player base, plus they had an internal management implosion that I don't think we'll soon see here.

It depends. Again, if you really do this for a living, you should know this. Have you compared these numbers to how other games are doing? Maybe average games on the market, especially games over five years old, lost 50% of sales revenue. Maybe this past year, they have been working on, you know, a large expansion to boost the numbers in the coming year. Maybe they're aware that they had a really good year the year before, and the revenue from this past year is actually in line with expectations. Of course, all of those explanations don't neatly fall in line with the more simplistic DOOOOOM! explanation.

Once again, you completely neglect the fact that a lot of people, myself included, still have active subscriptions to this game precisely because of the conservative approach the devs take.

Let me state it more clearly. The more developers leave known exploits in a game, the more people are able to take advantage of such exploits, the less likely I am to continue to play it. Every time I see one of these nerfs, it encourages me a bit more because unlike a lot of games that cave to player pressure and compromise their game, these developers have been known to make some hard choices, sacrifice short-term sentiment, and most importantly, protect the long-term integrity and playability of the game.

In short, they understand that it's better to lose 2% of your players now than to lose 20% in six months because your game has been taken over by farmers and isn't any fun for normal people to play any more.

I almost am staring in disbelief at that statement. It's 180 degrees opposite of short-sighted and. The short-sighted thing to do would be to give people everything they want. Billions of influence? Insta-50s? Storage bins of purples? Sure! Here they all are, everyone be happy! It would be like telling a drug addict that he can have all of the cocaine he wants. Oh, he'll be plenty happy in the short term, believe me. It's also grossly irresponsible. And so would be leaving in a known exploit that is actively being used to degrade the quality of this game. I see absolutely nothing irrational about their decision, and I fully support it 100%.

Actually, you really have no clue how City of Heros is performing relative to expectation, and apparently you're wrong. I see absolutely no indication that NCsoft is pulling support from City of Heroes. In fact, it seems to me quite the opposite. City of Heroes represents a huge foothold in the lucrative North American MMORPG market for the company, and I can't imagine that it's going to be willing to give that up anytime soon, especially with, as you pointed out, Tabula Rasa gone.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

je_saist is a master of digging. You don't even have to hand him a shovel, he just goes at it every time he opens his mouth.

"Why did you make maps that could be exploited to begin with." It's likely he still hasn't understood what the changes are, after nearly 200 posts.

I know your statement wasn't directed at me specifically, but I feel compelled to respond in kind:

No U.

People who are uninvolved with this whole mess should just stay out of threads on subjects that don't concern them. Just because a redname makes a post on a subject doesn't make everyone and their uncle an expert on said subject.

You know, the exact same thing is true of World of Warcraft, although it's THE major player in the MMO market. It's also true of Google. Eventually, everything's relevance diminishes to nothing. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but between now and the end of time, its relevance will diminish. You haven't really stated anything new.

Of course, you've also completely glossed over the thought that we could be just on the pre-launch side of a resurgence of subscriptions, that City of Heroes has at least one, possibly more, heydays of activity. There is precedence for that, the launch of City of Villains brought a long-lasting new base of subscribers to the game, a lot of whom are still here today.

What is totally unconstructive is drawing inferences from the fate of City of Heroes at some indeterminate point in the future that this particular decision has any relevance in instigating that future. It just ain't so. Personally, I think that the game will meet its demise when one of two things happens: either 1) if NCsoft sees the game as a cash cow and starts resting on its laurels or sells it out for some perceived new hotness, or 2) if several core developers (Matt Miller, Melissa Bianco, Christopher Bruce, Floyd Grubb) that have been with the game for years were to, for whatever reason good or bad, leave within a short time span.

I'm not even going to hesitate a guess on how much longer the game will last. It might go for decades if no exciting and revolutionary new form of entertainment supplants the video game industry by then. Given how invested NCsoft and these particular developers are in the game now, I just can't imagine it going away in less than five more years or so without something really major happening, and it sure isn't going to happen because Matt or any of the others screw something up so hideously to cause it, they've proven that.

I will say this, though. If they were to take action, even through inaction of standing by and watching, of allowing the player base to start reaping incredible rewards with little to no risk, that would be a sure sign to me that they really don't care about the long-term future of the game. To me, it would show that they're trying to milk whatever short-term profits they can from it, likely to sell the game out, take the money, and run. You can't deluge people with massive coolness for a week, tell them that's all there is, and expect them to keep paying you $15 a month. It's simply not a sustainable business model, and after that initial week, it's very not fun.

Using phrases like "gamer rage" is offensively condescending. It's only a small step above adding stupid tags to threads.

AE has been an important part of keeping my interest in the game relatively lively since it went live. So they can't give us entirely new maps to explore; this way we will at least be able to fight dozens of new mobs as we level. The ability to create mission arcs for pure self expression is also something I value fairly high, and has occupied a good deal of my time playing on live.

Yes, it made me angry when the devs decided to devalue the new and player created mobs at the expense of the supplied ones, and require that they suffer a substantial penalty while still being harder than the ones in game. This at least left you with three quarters of what you once had.

But it makes me even angrier when it was pointed out very quickly that this damned patch was not working as intended, and yet it is still live. This entirely ruins any AE mission that aspires to anything more complicated than a radio/newspaper mission.

I am also entirely unconvinced that there is any emergency that comes anywhere near justifying having this patch still live as an "exploit fix", given the fact that buffing NPCs have been a feature of AE since the day it went live.

There's only one right thing to do here. And it has not been done yet.

I would like to beleive the playerbase isn't this stupid.

I really, really would.

I can think of one reason: it's the holidays. For the past few days I have been teaming with a lot of new and returning players, drawn in by all the hubbub over GR. If I were to hazard a guess on what the devs are thinking, it's that they don't want a repeat of the last great AE farming and drama that ensued that happened during yet again another holiday, that saw a lot of new, and returning players checking out the hubbub over MA.

If this was the case and the devs said so upfront when they implemented this nerf, I could have understood their stance. I still think it's an amazingly bad implementation and they could and should have found a better alternative, but I wouldn't want a repeat of what happened last time either.