How long will the exploits go on?
By
Acemace,
Posted on: 2010-11-24 20:30 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Tricky question. The Mods might view it as discussing/advertising exploits and delete it. |
Originally Posted by Robot
Would it be stupid to maybe put up a thread where people could post Arc #'s and disuses whether they are acceptable to play or not?
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Probably best to ask the Ocho first.
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In addition to what Oedipus Tex and Schismatrix have said, we are free to repeat the same AE missions as often as we want. If the devs were against farming they would have designed it so we could only do each mission once after it was published.|
Originally Posted by Robot
May I ask what the difference is between legitimate farming and an exploit? I don't read the forums much, so I'm not exactly sure if we're talking about the same thing. I'm talking about AE missions that are made to just kill enemies, make $$$, and don't offer any storyline like the "traditional" missions in the game.
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There's also the fact that the devs have implemented other features that encourage farming and PLing. Like the Mentor/sidekick, super sidekick, and Oroborous features
So when people claim that the devs hate farming/Power leveling in conjunction with AE exploits it's all just smoke and mirrors to confuse the issue.
I just found something that made me laugh pretty hard...
Remember those videos that Rooster Teeth did to promote the Mission Architect? Check out the first one, 1:32 in...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yff3jH8NECs#t=1m32s
Self-fulfilling prophecy? 
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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The snowball effect of these hyper-efficient MA farms could be largely nullified by paying about 1/10th of an iota of attention to the MA building and stepping on missions they found issue with.
That wouldn't do anything to repair the structural issue, but it would go a long way toward preventing Captain Casual catching a ride on the XP Express.
I understand that structural remedies take a relatively long time to roll out, but all this heated rhetoric rings hollow when 'exploit' maps are ignored for weeks at a time.
A mission with a billion 'reported for content' flags hardly requires a salaried lead dev to issue a 30 page report justifying its deletion, or a new build of the game to correct. Assign some minimum wage cube drone to "exploit duty" once a week or so, or appoint some eager Junior G Men from the anti-everything crowd to scour MA for heresy.
It wouldn't be hard to derail these frenzies before they reach critical mass.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
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Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
I just found something that made me laugh pretty hard...
Remember those videos that Rooster Teeth did to promote the Mission Architect? Check out the first one, 1:32 in... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yff3jH8NECs#t=1m32s Self-fulfilling prophecy? |
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I would say "Yes", conditionally 'yes', if they're wise, 'yes', I would venture they have no CLUE what that phrase means anymore, so 'no', I would say exploiting the market system and using it to break the back of every other player that shares the game environment with you should be in there somewhere, punishable by permaban, "not relevant', if there were players not playing by these 'rules' you speak of, I'd imagine the game code would have been corrupted enough to break it by now. If you mean the other subscribers making use of a short lived flaw in the game's programming to get a little ahead and put some things in the game environment back on track as these people that don't play by your 'rules', then I would say it's entirely up to them how they choose to feel. |
Originally Posted by Captain-Electric
Psychic Guardian, are you really suggesting that participating in a leveling treadmill or exploit "with a goal in mind" differentiates a player from a cheater?
Major_Control, are you suggesting that rule-breaking behavior should no longer be considered cheating once there is a wide consensus among those players who chose to participate in such behaviors? You're both of the opinion that abusing exploits isn't and shouldn't be considered cheating. Do you think the devs would agree with your perception of the issue? And does this mean you disagree (with Paragon Studios and NCSoft) about the importance of the risk/reward ratio that has taken them years to achieve and balance? Also, what do you think SHOULD be considered cheating? You both seem to think exploit abusers (I'll respectfully avoid the term "cheaters" as you requested) should be left alone by "Purity Police", a derogatory term that applies to some players at least. When you use that term, are you also referring to Paragon Studios? Also, do you believe using such terminology is the best, most mature way to present your arguments to Paragon Studios? Major_Control, you suggested implementing a farming label for mission arcs in AE that are intended to be used as leveling treadmills or exploit abuses. The overall tone of both yours and Psychic Guardian's posts implies that exploit abusers actually feel VICTIMIZED by subscribers who play by the rules and avoid abusing exploits (this is where the term "Purity Police" comes in). This is interesting, because I doubt many of us would have suspected that. But let me turn that around: do you think people who play by the rules may feel similarly victimized by players who DON'T play by the rules and enjoy abusing exploits? |
I personally have grown tired of slogging through the exhausted and pale 'content' and have no interest in leveling a character to fifty through the course of normal play. The game simply isn't that interesting any more and the dearth of content has nailed that coffin long since shut.
I would venture that this game DOES provide an unheard of level 'tinkering' possibilities that make it a fascinating and fun experience, once which has continued to hold my interest for years after the game itself proved stale and tiresome. I don't choose to feel any particular way about the people insisting that I'm "not playing right", or "not doing it by the rules", because I don't particularly care how they feel about it. I'm doing what keeps me interested enough in this game to keep playing it and paying my monthly subs. What they choose to feel is entirely their own concern.
Stand UP.
FIGHT BACK!
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The devs never deliberately and intentionally encourage farming. Never. The devs look at farming as an unintended but not explicitly barred behavior. You can do the same thing over and over if you want, but the devs are never going to specifically encourage or condone it. On more than one occasion I've mentioned to the devs that a particular feature would be held up as "encouraging farming." In every case, I was told that essentially that was an unavoidable side effect, not the intended purpose.|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
In addition to what Oedipus Tex and Schismatrix have said, we are free to repeat the same AE missions as often as we want. If the devs were against farming they would have designed it so we could only do each mission once after it was published.
There's also the fact that the devs have implemented other features that encourage farming and PLing. Like the Mentor/sidekick, super sidekick, and Oroborous features So when people claim that the devs hate farming/Power leveling in conjunction with AE exploits it's all just smoke and mirrors to confuse the issue. |
Here's the bottom line on farming. Unless it involves exploits, the devs won't usually go out of their way to stop farming. On the other hand, if something they do hurts a particular kind of farming, they also won't shed a tear either. Farming is an unprotected activity.
On the subject of the most egregious farming exploit currently being farmed in the AE. I'm aware of it, and I'm aware of its mechanics. But I never really tested it myself. So I decided to do just that this weekend. I deliberately did so in a secondary account I use for testing purposes, so that if I tripped an anti-farming trigger, it wouldn't compromise my primary accounts. I also collected a lot of data on what you can do with that particular exploit. If there is anyone who says they didn't realize within seconds that they were in an exploit farm, even someone who just started playing the game yesterday and is over the age of ten, frankly they are lying or completely oblivious to external stimuli. I mean, you have to exit these maps within a minute or so of entering them if you start at level one, because you level so fast you'll stop earning XP before you reach the end of the mission.
My rough estimate is that you can earn XP at 30 to 50 times the normal rate, if not more. I have some pity for someone that doesn't realize some marginal AE exploit is earning them 25% more XP than normal. But not 5000%. That would be like someone starting up the game client, having it crash and shut your PC off, and sitting there for an hour thinking that perhaps its just night time in Paragon City.
If I log in this evening and all my attacks started one-shotting everything - Bosses, AVs, Hamidon - I would /bug it. I wouldn't assume it was One-Shot Cyber Monday or the devs were just rewarding my one billionth forum post word.
Okay, I would also go out and solo Lusca. But only once for the fraps video. Not a hundred times in a row for the drops.
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I still don't see the issue. There are people around talking about raising the influence cap, which is, what?, 2 billion or something? The only way to get there is to farm exploits. Yet those players are still here.
I was just now looking at some purple IOs I'd like to have on one of my characters for the Incarnate stuff. The Stun Absolute Amazement is the only reasonably-priced one I saw, running around 50 million per. The rest of them are in the 400 to 800 million range, and I even saw one going for a billion. If I pooled all the Influence from all my many alts into one account, I could probably buy TWO of those IOs. With nothing left over to actually make them. How does a regular person afford stuff that expensive without exploiting something or buying Influence from one of those spammers? Beats me, man.
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I don't farm AE exploits for influence, yet I have multiple characters sitting at the influence cap. It doesn't take exploits to get there, only some effort and leveraging the available tools in the game.|
Originally Posted by Ironik
I still don't see the issue. There are people around talking about raising the influence cap, which is, what?, 2 billion or something? The only way to get there is to farm exploits. Yet those players are still here.
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| How does a regular person afford stuff that expensive without exploiting something or buying Influence from one of those spammers? Beats me, man. |
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It's statements like these that honestly make me scratch my head. Just look at all the defeat badges we have. A great many of them you will not get in a reasonable time unless you specifically go after those kinds of mobs/missions. To me, repeating the same in game task (in this case, killing mobs of type x) over and over again while working toward a specified goal is farming. You are farming mobs for a reward you want. Maybe the Devs (and a lot of the community, apparently) just have a different definition of farming than I do. I figure that must be it, because in CoH the term "farming" definitely has a very negative connotation that it just doesn't have in other games I've played.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
On more than one occasion I've mentioned to the devs that a particular feature would be held up as "encouraging farming." In every case, I was told that essentially that was an unavoidable side effect, not the intended purpose.
Here's the bottom line on farming. Unless it involves exploits, the devs won't usually go out of their way to stop farming. On the other hand, if something they do hurts a particular kind of farming, they also won't shed a tear either. Farming is an unprotected activity. |
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Snaptooth says you're wrong about that.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The devs never deliberately and intentionally encourage farming. Never.
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A good analysis of the problem.
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Originally Posted by King_Moloch
Lisar's statement here amuses me somewhat, enough to post about it, anyway.
"We got told from release not to abuse AE or bad things will happen to us why are we all in shock and awe when weeks later we are doing it and we get our hands smacked?" Because they have only themselves to blame. This game is constructed on a philosophy of "late blooming sets" and "slowly unraveling plotlines" and "higher level hazard zones" that promise much but demand too much as well, or return nothing, as in the case of the Shadow Shard and other enormous wastes of funding and programmer time. In my experience, farms are the only thing that has kept me playing this game, mostly because I can't stand how feeble, uninteresting, and painful low level play is. There is no other mechanic than "beat on stuff". No real crafting, no real environment to interact with...nothing. For it's era, that was fun, but any more there needs to be more to it, much more. What's interesting is that this is the ONLY MMO I get this impression from. It's not fun at levels below 32. At all. In fact, I haven't (until this last week, ironically) played a character at those levels as a general rule. It's frustrating, not engaging, boring, and work. I play this game to entertain myself. Not to have a third job. Back years and years ago when this game was new and the MMO industry was much younger, we were much more forgiving of a game's shortcomings. This has gotten to be true less and less as we have watched technology just steamroll right past this game and a few others that were very popular in their time. Farming offers me a way to circumnavigate the laughably bad "plot" and ignore the grind grind grind of newspaper/radio missions, which are a poor substitute for real content. Since this game's developers and programmers refuse to offer ANYTHING in the way of real content, I don't see the issue with me finding a way to make the game enjoyable enough to keep paying for my accounts and keep generating revenue for it to continue to fail me. And the vocal few screaming about how "the marketz are being rooned!", I can say only that the tools exist for them to redress this issue in the same manner everyone else does. Get your commons with tickets, it takes ten minutes to have hundreds of them. Otherwise, welcome to the other side of the fence, where people are going to belittle and harass you for not playing the game their way. I've been dealing with it for years as I waited for real content to be added and it never was. Here and there I got an hours worth of task force every year or two, and a zone no one ever uses or two, but other than that, pretty much nil since launch. And GR, an expansion I paid for that offers really... nothing of interest or value aside from a vague promise of "more to come" that I've been choking on for years. More to come.. when? And will it be something other than the same tired rehashed and then rehashed again Freedom Phalanx characters that I've grown to hate with unmatched intensity? If the hamfisted Incarnate storyline is any indication, it's not something I'm overly eager about in any case. What's ironic is that with DC Online marketing to a lower IQ bracket, the NCSoft folks should be taking a very, very close look at the niche of people that won't under any circumstance be looking into that diseased abortion. Right now, the base community of CoH seems to be RPers, people that love the costume creator too much to leave, and a small hard core group of PvPers that against all odds (and common sense, it seems) have found the dedication to make this game work for them. Instead of puking out ridiculously poor "content" (as with the Alpha Strike 'plotline') they would be wise to consider updating the graphcs in a meaningful fashion instead of a hopelessly overcomplex retooling utra mode that didn't really improve much. I mean really, its been seven years and I STILL DON'T HAVE FINGERS. I have fleshy meat mittens. Not that difficult to figure out. So, instead of wasting time and effort pointing out the excesses of the playerbase and this latest farming craze , which would pass on it's own most likely, soon enough, resources need to instead be allocated to figuring out what needs to be focused on, the players that have stayed for years and years, despite this game's many, many flaws. The BASE BUILDERS. THE ROLEPLAYERS. I'm not talking about the creepy catgirl ERP nonsense,the actual roleplayers that are and have always been the backbone of this game's community, behind the vast majority of community events and interaction. Instead of complaining about the farmers, fix the reasons it is vitally necessary for them to farm. Fix the prestige gulf. The cost of base building is absolutely, unforgivably stupid. It needs to be addressed, and would take very little real time or effort to do so, and yet for years it has remained in limbo. This, like many other things in this game, is what drives people to farm for prestige, farm for influence (since the developers thought putting a cap on how much could be charged for an item was a no-go as was suggested when the market was born), farm for tickets for salvage since the low level game is a nightmare to play for many of us. Address these issues before chopping out the means of resolving them. Or don't and limp along slowly dying off as more and more people get fed up and move on to better games. Oh, of course, I forgot, this game has MILLIONS of subscribers, and more joining every day, it's population is HUGE and still growing! Closing, I suppose this had turned into one of those pissed off rants that annoy when I read them from other people, but reading this entire thread has just irritate me to no end. This game has much, much bigger problems we've continued to pretend not to notice than the players trying to make the game something interesting enough to stay logged into. /end sarcastic overview and analysis <---The above is written after reading this entire thread and getting tired of the CoH Forum Apologists trying to pin the imbalances and their usage on the players instead of the development team, who very likely instigated this whole thing to begin with in order generate enough interest and higher level characters to actually USE the alpha strike expansion. |
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Originally Posted by Steel_Shaman
Just look at all the defeat badges we have. A great many of them you will not get in a reasonable time unless you specifically go after those kinds of mobs/missions. To me, repeating the same in game task (in this case, killing mobs of type x) over and over again while working toward a specified goal is farming. You are farming mobs for a reward you want. Maybe the Devs (and a lot of the community, apparently) just have a different definition of farming than I do. I figure that must be it, because in CoH the term "farming" definitely has a very negative connotation that it just doesn't have in other games I've played.
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Don't bring in the Badgers to the topic, in many cases they're card carrying members of the purity police (though admittedly not all).
You see, running even a cannon mission repeatedly to receive a badge, is not the same as the exact identical activity, and even the same mission, to receive the reward of influence.
Because influence is more valuable then a badge.......err, unless you're a badger (as you would be if you're farming badges, wink..) in which case the badge is worth infinitely more then influence...then, um..
Well never mind, it's not the same, move along, end of discussion.
The purity police will have it's eye on you for bringing up such an arrant subject.
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It's important to note that early badge/achievement theory expected players to just play normally and then go 'Oh hey I got a badge what did I do to get that?' once one landed on them.|
Originally Posted by Steel_Shaman
It's statements like these that honestly make me scratch my head. Just look at all the defeat badges we have. A great many of them you will not get in a reasonable time unless you specifically go after those kinds of mobs/missions. To me, repeating the same in game task (in this case, killing mobs of type x) over and over again while working toward a specified goal is farming. You are farming mobs for a reward you want. Maybe the Devs (and a lot of the community, apparently) just have a different definition of farming than I do. I figure that must be it, because in CoH the term "farming" definitely has a very negative connotation that it just doesn't have in other games I've played.
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The obsessive 'Okay now what do I do next? Okay, I can find them at <x>? Okay! Let's go work on that!' behavior really caught a lot of developers by surprise. And in fact, Paragon Studios FORGOT about this pattern, when they put together the original AE badges.
That's the perspective difference. Developers who include badges like that are coming from the "Well, not everyone will get them, some of them will eventually get them, and then they can be proud that they did" position.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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Snaptooth encourages farming in the same sense that mito respawns encourage farming. For that matter, saying a defeat badge encourages farming is like saying yellow lights encourage speeding, because they force you to go really really fast to beat the red.|
Originally Posted by Flarstux
Snaptooth says you're wrong about that.
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I'm not really arguing, or guessing. I'm just describing. People keep claiming to be perplexed about the devs' behavior when it comes to farming and exploitive behavior. When that happens, I provide the same explanation I've been giving for years. Beyond that, if you think I'm wrong, I'm not in a position to prove it to you. I can say the odds of public debate changing the devs' mind about what is and is not an exploit, or whether to act to correct them or not, has an extremely low probability of success.
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Um, what? This doesn't make sense to me. Why would somebody stop earning XP?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I mean, you have to exit these maps within a minute or so of entering them if you start at level one, because you level so fast you'll stop earning XP before you reach the end of the mission.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Snaptooth encourages farming in the same sense that mito respawns encourage farming. For that matter, saying a defeat badge encourages farming is like saying yellow lights encourage speeding, because they force you to go really really fast to beat the red.
I'm not really arguing, or guessing. I'm just describing. People keep claiming to be perplexed about the devs' behavior when it comes to farming and exploitive behavior. When that happens, I provide the same explanation I've been giving for years. Beyond that, if you think I'm wrong, I'm not in a position to prove it to you. I can say the odds of public debate changing the devs' mind about what is and is not an exploit, or whether to act to correct them or not, has an extremely low probability of success. |
And therein lies one of the principal reasons for this games slow degeneration. Because we continue to focus on the insignificant instead of addressing the issues that would greatly improve this game, we continue our slow spiral back to life support. GR gave us a pretty good boost, but it's time to shift forward and think about this time next year.
As you say, evidently nothing the playerbase says or does makes an impact, even when they depart in massive numbers. Like G.W., our devs are huge fans of 'staying the course', even when the course leads to cancellation. Now, of course I'm not saying that this issue shouldn't be handled immediately, of course it should, nor am I saying that DOOM will befall the game if the farms are killed once again. I am saying that this should not be the top issue on the list. It's fascinating that we have all these people on the forums eagerly decrying their fellow players as 'cheaters' and 'exploiters' and they have their knickers in a bunch over farming, but we can't get them to show in equal numbers for trying to get the game improved or upgraded. WHY? Really. Why.
After rereading all the posts I could find over the last farming escapade, the answer was simple and depressing. There are a thousand and one little logic traps the forum apologists create to support their perspective, but what it comes down to is very simple. Selfish greed. They don't want people having things that they have previously held the market on. Literally. There isn't much more to it than that. They don't want people gaining easily what they have slogged through the awful, awful 'content' and grind for with minimal effort. That, while sad, is understandable. I personally hate the game before 32 and haven't played it in years until recently. My assessment of that experience was.. not positive. I have great respect for people that are able to curb their expectations and accept a lesser effort as 'enough'. I seem to lack that quality myself.
There is, of course, the old "team" argument, where no one wants to see a fifty with no idea what they're doing, but let's face it. This game doesn't HAVE many new players, and gets them so seldom that it is actually a pleasure to me to educate them when they ask for help. I don't personally mind, as I don't team anymore, but I do understand that small point.
Which brings me once again to the main point. That this thread has drawn out far more people than most do, and for nothing more than fingerpointing and namecalling, instead of offering constructive direction for where the entire playerbase would love to see the game go. Because, as you pointed out Arcanaville, no matter what we say, how often or loud we say it, the things that need to improve clearly won't, and the things that don't matter will continue to keep our interest.
Stand UP.
FIGHT BACK!
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You do not earn XP, Inf, or drops from defeated foes 5 or more levels below you.
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Originally Posted by MunkiLord
Um, what? This doesn't make sense to me. Why would somebody stop earning XP?
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If that is her reasoning then she doesn't understand how this particular exploit works.
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Originally Posted by Tin_Soldier
You do not earn XP, Inf, or drops from defeated foes 5 or more levels below you.
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I assumed that was the reason. Arcanaville may have had another reason in mind.
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Originally Posted by MunkiLord
If that is her reasoning then she doesn't understand how this particular exploit works.
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Her testing may not have gone long enough to discover that part.
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Originally Posted by Tin_Soldier
I assumed that was the reason. Arcanaville may have had another reason in mind.
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Errr, yeah. I wondered about that too.
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Originally Posted by MunkiLord
Um, what? This doesn't make sense to me. Why would somebody stop earning XP?
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If you start at level one.|
Originally Posted by MunkiLord
If that is her reasoning then she doesn't understand how this particular exploit works.
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Unless I'm testing a completely different exploit that generates fifty times the rewards as normal play, while you will eventually reach a point where leveling is irrelevant, that doesn't happen at level one. It would be suboptimal if it did regardless, because you wouldn't want to deprive yourself of having at least a minimal complement of attacks besides the veteran ones.
Trust me when I say I've tested the exploit at *all* levels.
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Maybe I'm concentrating on this statement or reading too much into it, but what would make a level 1 stop earning XP? Is there some game mechanic I'm not aware of?|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If you start at level one.
Unless I'm testing a completely different exploit that generates fifty times the rewards as normal play, while you will eventually reach a point where leveling is irrelevant, that doesn't happen at level one. It would be suboptimal if it did regardless, because you wouldn't want to deprive yourself of having at least a minimal complement of attacks besides the veteran ones. Trust me when I say I've tested the exploit at *all* levels. |
I realize not training past level one would be incredibly inefficient, but you would still be earning XP correct?
Would it be stupid to maybe put up a thread where people could post Arc #'s and disuses whether they are acceptable to play or not?
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