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| Add a button for "Report this adventure for content." on the rating screen. |
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
EDIT: Looking below, it turns out I was right for the wrong reason. Shows how much I use AE.
"You don't lose levels. You don't have equipment to wear out, repair, or lose, or that anyone can steal from you. About the only thing lighter than debt they could do is have an NPC walk by, point and laugh before you can go to the hospital or base." -Memphis_Bill
We will honor the past, and fight to the last, it will be a good way to die...
There's already a report button on the rating screen, and you can send in comments.
Oops. Anyways, the rest of my suggestion still stands. If only a limited number of people are making the majority of meow missions, ban them from the game.
You can already report things you think are exploits - and the GMs do act on them too.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
It's a nice idea Doubter, and I think your heart is in the right place.
There's just a couple of really big player issues at hand that make such a solution unworkable in the long-run. I need to stress that the following behaviors are documented: they have happened.
For starters, there are known voting-cliques within the game that vote down any mission not made by them, and vote-up any mission made them, effectively preventing several players from ever getting some of the honor badges. Such cliques are not going to "rat out" exploitable arcs.
There's also players who un-plublish and re-publish exploitable missions on a daily basis, ensuring that their exploitable arc continues to change arc numbers. A report system would have to be based against global names, and would only effective for missions that were active when a GM could look at them. Arcs that had been unpublished, but saved to the hard-drive, could be republished at a later date. Remember: just having an exploitable arc loaded to your hard-drive may not mean you actually ran it, or used it to power/level or exploit.
Which leads into the next issue. The sheer number of new arcs that could be introduced daily, with minor changes, would wreck havoc with the GM's ability to peruse reported arcs. Paragon Studios would have to hire a team just to sit and do NOTHING but work through AE arc reports.
Which leads into the final point as of right now. There already is a report for content button on the Architect Mission Drop Down. Sure, you'll have to scroll down if you have a small Architect Mission Drop Down window to see it... but it's there. We also don't know how much that button is used to report exploitable arcs.
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Now, I agree that perma-bans are one of the most effective ways to stop such behavior. When players realize that there is a very real chance of a financial loss based on their behavior... most players will get the hint. As of right now, due to the complex legalities between Cryptic, NCSoft, and Paragon Studios, Paragon Studios can't, as far as I'm aware, legally announce which accounts have been banned. There also are limitations on how long accounts can be banned, and what bannable offenses are.
Most exploiters are aware of these limitations, and aware that even if they do get "caught" in the act, there is no fear that something serious would happen to their accounts or their payments.
My suspicion is that the exploitation would stop in a heartbeat if the legal hurdles could be overcome and Paragon Studios could simply announce in Admin Chat across all servers, @Global Name was banned for exploiting AE: good by.
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If you see one like that, make sure your report contains a detailed description of the mission content, plus the global name of the publisher.
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Originally Posted by je_saist
There's also players who un-plublish and re-publish exploitable missions on a daily basis, ensuring that their exploitable arc continues to change arc numbers. A report system would have to be based against global names, and would only effective for missions that were active when a GM could look at them. Arcs that had been unpublished, but saved to the hard-drive, could be republished at a later date. Remember: just having an exploitable arc loaded to your hard-drive may not mean you actually ran it, or used it to power/level or exploit.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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Even if naming them directly were impossible, simply announcing "X number of accounts were banned today for exploiting AE" on a login pop-up would be a good start.
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Originally Posted by je_saist
My suspicion is that the exploitation would stop in a heartbeat if the legal hurdles could be overcome and Paragon Studios could simply announce in Admin Chat across all servers, @Global Name was banned for exploiting AE: good bye.
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Sure they do.. That's why there are thousands and thousands of old exploit farm missions still clogging up AE.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
You can already report things you think are exploits - and the GMs do act on them too.
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I'm sorry but AE makes me laugh, just like it did from day-1... even then I knew nothing good would come of it and look where we are today... sad really, but people are people and you can't change human nature. *shrugs* 
/Insert witty and sarcastic response here, filled with both "All ready been suggested" and "Facepalm"
No, but seriously, you 've got your head in the right place. Now if only we could actually change human nature (/credit to Vacant for posting first)
lol @ban credit card
1. Devs would never do that
2. Less Monthly fee money ftw right?
3. Devs already nerfed AE so much who uses it?
4. I think we should ban people who use BM/Demon/Rikti farms too cause basicly the same thing right?
5. lulwut
6. ????
7. Profit
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On the servers I play on, several SG's and Global channels have AE nights. There's also an active contingent of people actually creating stories in the AE system. The implication of #3 is well, factually wrong. The implication you try to make is that nobody uses AE, which simply isn't true.|
Originally Posted by Blpup
lol @ban credit card
1. Devs would never do that 2. Less Monthly fee money ftw right? 3. Devs already nerfed AE so much who uses it? 4. I think we should ban people who use BM/Demon/Rikti farms too cause basicly the same thing right? 5. lulwut 6. ???? 7. Profit |
What is true is that the exploiters, those who used the AE system, knowingly used the AE system, to bypass risk / reward ratios and achieve high levels with little to no actual gameplay experience... have gone back to the older farms. Some of them still work the system, trying to figure out the next big exploit, the next big enemy group or combination that the developers overlooked, or the right combination of IO buffs, damage, recharge time, and powers to get the most out of a mission.
It's those players who are directly responsible for the changes being made to AE, but each change better fulfills the goal of AE to be a way for players to share stories with each other. Too many players, and from your post you are one of them, get hung up on the phrase alternate Level Path. The developers have been over that phrase more times than I care to count: Alternate does not mean equivalent or superior.
It's not really that hard a concept to comprehend. Yes. You can use AE to level from 1 to 50. No, it was never supposed to be as fast as playing Developer Created content. It was never supposed to be used for farming. It was never supposed to be used to bypass risk reward. Everybody who actually cared, and paid attention, knew anvils would be dropping from "Day-1."
Now, I know this is going to go straight over your head. I know that you don't care one bit about playing the game or having fun. I know that all you care about is getting maximum xp's for littlest time spent.
I do have to ask these questions: Why? What's the goal? Why the rush to get to 50? What's the point of rushing through the game and not doing anything?
No, I'm not exactly expecting an intelligent response except maybe another "lolwhut" since these questions require elementary school comprehension skills... but maybe it will serve as food for thought for new players researching the history of AE, or looking into using AE to tell their own stories.
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this
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Originally Posted by Venture
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I think the key word there is "old" - the GMs seem to have a policy of only removing current exploit missions - like MM Thug missions were being taken down quite fast while that exploit was live, but now that it's been fixed, they seem to have moved on to taking down new exploit missions, so there are still quite a few MM Thug missions floating around that never got reported.
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Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
Sure they do.. That's why there are thousands and thousands of old exploit farm missions still clogging up AE.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Some ideas can be to not limit so much.
Yes, the army of buffers/debuffers was causing content to be WAY to easy, and was an exploit.
However, they could of kept it at 3 heroes before xp drops with out harm.
But I base this only on some stories have people who help you purely for story purposes (rescue hero...hero wouldnt just run away...or you get to go on an adventure with Bill & Ted!) but now people will have less xp, because of it.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
One of these days the AE buildings will just be replaced with a plot of land that's a burned out shell of a building with bumslump'd hobo against the wall telling you Dr. Aeon got sued for patent infringement by somebody in Texas, and Architect Entertainment went bust.
Or they'll just nerf the poo out of tickets and make it so you can only get 10 per map or something. If you're just looking to PL, heck, even if they completely removed XP from AE people will just go back to their old GV and PI farm missions....in fact I'm pretty sure they are. Saw a WS in AP asking how to get to PI in broadcast a few nights ago. Loooool. Quick ticket rolls for recipes seem to be the bigger AE draw than PL to 50 in a night is.
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Best Venture post ever. I'd love to stick that at the top of ever "lol AE" thread. |
Originally Posted by Venture
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But I can be patient. Sooner or later (and I'll bet sooner), it's going to be pretty well ironed out so it can't be too easily exploited but will provide decent enough returns* and the lazy will just go back to farming missions outside the building. Then we can all look back on these idiotic threads and laugh.
*"decent enough returns" may well end up being less than any normal farm mission on PI or someplace; the goofballs will still chide AE for that, which will show us where there goals in the game lie and why we don't need to pay them any mind.
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Right, 'cause that worked out so well for Robespierre.
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Was is Capt. Outhouse?
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Originally Posted by Iannis
Saw a WS in AP asking how to get to PI in broadcast a few nights ago. Loooool. .
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@Mental Maden @Maden Mental
"....you are now tackle free for life."-ShoNuff
really the only way your gonna fix AE is to take exp out of AE .
but that's not gonna happen since it would affect sales of mission slots .
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because NC staff has infinite time for stupid **** like this
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Originally Posted by dbuter
When an AE mission is reported (make sure a copy goes to the devs), a dev could check it and if it's all monsters who don't attack but give great xp, they can just delete the mission (and not reimburse the creator in any way). And maybe send a warning to whoever posted it. If a person makes too many meow missions, cancel their accounts and ban their credit card. It might take a few months, but I'm betting this would solve the issue pretty quickly.
And then really good missions that happen to have a helper NPC wouldn't give next to 0 xp (which I think is a drastic, and not very good, temporary fix). EDITED |
Paragon Unleashed, Unleash Yourself!
I'm of the opinion that if somebody leaves and exploit mission up for everybody to play then the person deserves a perma ban, just for being stupid.
I mean how hard is it to make your little exploit mission, tell as few people as possible(if anybody) and unpublish it when you are done with your runs? I just don't get the people that leave those things up.
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I know. It's like stealing a painting and then putting a picture of it outside your house.
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Originally Posted by MunkiLord
I'm of the opinion that if somebody leaves and exploit mission up for everybody to play then the person deserves a perma ban, just for being stupid.
I mean how hard is it to make your little exploit mission, tell as few people as possible(if anybody) and unpublish it when you are done with your runs? I just don't get the people that leave those things up. |
Paragon Unleashed, Unleash Yourself!
When an AE mission is reported (make sure a copy goes to the devs), a dev could check it and if it's all monsters who don't attack but give great xp, they can just delete the mission (and not reimburse the creator in any way). And maybe send a warning to whoever posted it. If a person makes too many meow missions, cancel their accounts and ban their credit card. It might take a few months, but I'm betting this would solve the issue pretty quickly.
And then really good missions that happen to have a helper NPC wouldn't give next to 0 xp (which I think is a drastic, and not very good, temporary fix).
EDITED