Facts on MARTy

Its like using a sledge hammer to knock in a thumb-tack.

I'm going to wait and see how bad it gets, but I for one think this is a backwards step.

Things known for certain about MARTy based on testing and Zwillinger's comments.

1. If triggered it stops all rewards for a period of time. Length unknown but presumably based on how hard you pushed past the limit.

2. If it triggers while playing dev designed content that is a bug. So if your in a newspaper or radio mission and it triggers then you should bug it. IF your in a Speed TF etc and and it triggers bug it.

3. In other words it primarily is designed to catch player built content that is to some level or the other much more efficient than equivalent dev built content.

4. Triggering it shuts of your rewards for a period of time and creates a log file entry.

5. Having the log file entry from MARTy isn't automatically a black mark. Generally it is a shrug and go on. Excessive or unusual triggering of it will result in someone investigating further. Ie. Playing the latest super farm and triggering it will just get a log entry. Finding some weird case where you stand in the right spot and whistle the happy woodcutter song while tugging on your right ear to cause all of the critters in Perez Park to explode will get you investigated. Particularly if you do the latter repeatedly and don't bug it.

6. They will use the logs to identify technics being used to build the super farms and kill said techniques.

7. They will use the logs to spot new exploits that haven't been reported.

8. Because the rewards are capped at what is considered a maximum acceptable level active exploits won't result in an immediate shutdown of the servers until a fix is ready anymore.

9. After reading the transcript of the chat this morning the time the rewards cut off for are 1 - 10 minutes. Probably depending on how much you exceeded the trigger limit by.

Topdoc tested Marty vs CEBR and found no decrease versus what he is normally able to do here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=257

Now putting that together with Zwil's post here: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...47#post3870547

Stating that time to complete as one of the metrics is tracked as defeats/time then I am cautiously optimistic that the reach of the initiative is actually going to be rather small in scope.

I had heard of one person tripping Marty in a demon farm but don't have a link to that post.

My only real worry as I stated in the main thread is that super teams by their very nature blow past all intended game limits and if they start tripping Marty then I will be a bit sad. I really don't want to get to a point where I have to worry that perhaps 3 or 4 kitted out /Rads or /Colds or whatever are going to cause rewards to be cut off for a whole team.

I am also more than willing to reserve judgment until the servers come back up and I can start trying to push the limits and see where the cut offs tend to kick in.

Joe,

Honest question. Why do you feel the need to "Push the limits and see where the cut offs tend to kick in." as soon as possible?

Everything we've been told makes this out to be an anti-exploit tool, not a farm killing tool. So actively trying to engage MARTy seems counter productive. Just play the game and if MARTy triggers bug it. Regardless of what you're doing, bug it.
If ITF runs or FireFarms or even CEBR trigger MARTy... bug it.

As this is not what it's supposed to do, according to the Dev's. If you have a super secret 'I WIN' button and use it to kill everything in the Shard and MARTy triggers, time to hide.

I fully expect MARTy to be going haywire left and right for the 1st few months active. Eventually though they will get the kinks worked out and then we can start testing the limits to see where we stand.

My point is, you will. I expect everyone will be setting it off 'accidentally' for a few weeks while the kinks get ironed out, while they watch the figures and adjust accordingly. Testing it before it's in full-time run mode only means you'll have to go back and do all that testing again down the road.

Still, if you're having fun doing it, more power to you!

I'm not mad at the MARTy thing at all in the way it's designed. I do want to test it doing things like +4/x8 ITFs and things along those lines.

If you haven't already and you're worried about MARTy, check out today's UStream (the first part). Posi & Zwill talk about MARTy and give some very good explanations.

My thought is that it's to prevent exploits caused by reverse engineering and packet editing. IE. If I hook a DLL to the process that was capable of sending "Attack" packets on command faster than an animation triggers, then it would trigger MARTy.

I highly doubt we'll see it in action, but there will be players coming from the F2P side that will attempt to find the aforementioned exploits.