Sadly some people seem to think that rules have a grey area. Rules are black and white. There is right and there is wrong, there is no kind of right and not too wrong. All posi said was that the powerleveling useing exploits in the AE sytem will not be tolerated and those who did use the exploits may lose some of what they gained. I leveled a few characters from 1-17 using the meow farms. Honestly they were really not that bad when considered next to the NARF missions. Those missions had a bomb in every group of comm officers. Charge in, attack the bomb, 95% of the spawn dies. Huge xp from that with nearly zero risk. THOSE are the farms posi is talking about. Calm down and read what he posted without all the rage and you will see that he is not going to go around banning all farmers. Yes people farm for things, inf, purple ios, salvage. The difference is they use a mission that has not been created with specific mobs and goals that skew the risk/reward ratio to far one way or the other. People have farmed battlemaiden for years and nothing was done about it. When salvage and ios were introduced people farmed demons for arcane salvage drops. There will always be farming, but to expect an exploit that makes farming a zero risk/high reward endeavor is just delusional. To expect people who blatantly took advantage of said exploit to not have some form of punishment leveled against them is just retarded.
Sure some punishment is expected and even warranted. But who is the greatest offender? Those that created the farms or the ones that ran them?
I've read Posi's post when it first hit and was calm then and now, I'm just curious as to how they are determining the "most egregious" and where he will draw that line. His initial post left something to be desired and did stir the community into a fever pitch.
Since I have no sympathy for cheaters, this was very satisfying to read. Thanks.
The devs created a system that would add some fun to the game. As usual, some cheaters found a way to exploit it. Just because you CAN cheat, doesn't mean you should. In games just as in life, we are not provided with a perfect experience. There will be times when there is temptation before us, and those with character and integrity resist temptation because it is the right thing to do. Opportunity does not equal justification.
how EXACTLY is it cheating?
how EXACTLY does it adversely affect you?
i noticed in your "better than thou" posting, you neglected to define anything. kudos to ya.
edit: no, REALLY... i have a couple of arcs i've put a LOT of time and effort into. probably half the people that have run them have given them 4/5 and left nice comments. yet, i'm struggling to get 100 votes on my arcs.
how EXACTLY is this "stuff" cheating, and HOW does it adversely affect you?
do you run TF/SF a lot one one toon? that's farming. according to you, farming is cheating, yes?
have you gotten ANY badges, thru other than just normal, random play? that's farming for badges. hope you didn't cheat like that.
accolades? recipes? did you hide in a pvp zone for hours for X badge? did you farm pvp kills for base items?
no really... only casual players MIGHT be not guilty of farming one thing or another. and that's cheating. must be nice to be perfect.
I think the COH staff have outlined how exactly it is cheating. But cheaters will always defend their cheating with all kinds of rationalizations. One of the most popular rationalizations is they allowed me to do it so it's not cheating.
Well to use a real life analogy, your car can probably go a hundred miles an hour. But there is still a speed limit. Just beause the auto industry made a car that can go 100 plus miles an hour and just because the government built the road does not justify your speeding. And whether your speeding adversely affects me personally is irrelevant since rules, laws, etc are in place to protect the community as a whole.
so, you have no idea how its cheating, you're just jumping on the bandwagon and can't answer to anything i've posted in this thread.
everyone has an opinion. it ends there. doesn't mean they're right, factual, or anything else -- the opinion simply exists.
so, protecting the community as a whole, with cheating that you can't define being punished.
i'm not hypothetically speaking about ANYTHING here -- what cheating, and what adverse effect to the community (individually, as a whole, however you want to break it down) -- ...................
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
what EXACTLY is the difference between grinding and farming? is it ONLY the amount of time involved?
in coh you grind for : inf(amy/luence) recipes (purple, costume, pvp) reward merits vanguard merits tickets badges (damage, healing, X defeats/kills, etc) accolades
NORMAL play, would involve running thru the content ONCE, on a toon, correct? otherwise... ODDS ARE... that you're grinding or farming.
i can speak from experience, that VERY anti-farm groups (such as RO - repeat offenders), despite their assertions to different - farm. if you're "completing normal content"; but, that means you're running an ITF every day (and ran the ITF multiple times a day before the nerf/change)... that's fine that you're "running content to its completion"; but, it's farming, either for levels, inf(amy/luence), merits, whatever.
ae/ma is supposedly a modified version of a tool used by staff... correct? after the 6ish months to get i13 out, they pushed it back another 5 months to i14. this game has been out for 5 years. at least 20% of this game's lifespan was spent getting ma/ae to a release point to the customer. posi even states that they expected players to farm, using ma/ae.
there is no blame or wrong doing on the parts of ANY players. if you don't like farming, explain EXACTLY how it adversely affects you. use tiny words. between tickets and reward merits, you can get most any recipe ingame (with the exceptions of purples, costumes, and pvp recipes). but there's a whole lot of "proc" recipes you can gain via merits/tickets. is it that you're jealous that your grinding is not getting you the recipes as quickly as someone else's farming? are you jealous that someone farming has more lvl 50s than you and your grinding?
how EXACTLY does someone else grinding at a fast rate (i.e. farming), adversely affect YOU, personally, in your enjoyment of this game? if that person ENJOYS his/her playstyle, who EXACTLY are YOU, to say that it's wrong?
no, i'm tired of this rampant memememememe "i'm the most important and only the way i say to play is ok" IDIOTIC way of thinking -- everyone complaining about this "rampant farming" needs to explain EXACTLY how this is adversely affecting you.
keep in mind, if people aren't teaming with you, it very well could be your personality. or, enough people have gotten tired of carrying you. lack of people to group with is DEFINITELY on you; because i've had no problem getting sf/tf/random normal content grouping at any time since ae/ma was released.
The main adverse affects that I have seen from the AE farm-fest was:
1. Atlas, Peregrine Island, Mercy, and Cap Au Diable, the zones that seem to be considered the universal meeting grounds for things like this were so overloaded at times that the server would flip out and crash the zone, despite having multiple instances of said zone up and running.
2. There are badges that can only be obtained for how many times your mission is star rated and what the rating average is. The rating system as it stands at the moment can be griefed (hey all my good buddies, Please 5 star my farm mission and one star that guy that I hate that uploaded a story arc.) The MA system should give option for an author to be anonymous if they choose, thus gettting more honest ratings from people.
3. The extreme lag on some servers combined with the crashing from all the MA usage. Granted one can try a less populous zone.
4. Of course the big thing now that is affecting everyone is Posi's rant and threat.
1a - shows a lot more people playing than normal, eh? more people is now a bad thing for coh?
1b - not sure what you're talking about, i've seen multiple instances of each. if what you say is true; then, does that mean the game is just coded incredibly poorly? lots of people playing SHOULD be a good thing, yes?
2 - what are you talking about? even if you're talking about "cheating"; then, how does this ADVERSELY affect someone? because you're not pushing your missions/arcs and getting people to rate them? seriously?
3 - what's that got to do with cheating? if ae/ma is popular and it's pulling in droves of people... why is that a bad thing?
4 um, ok...
what post are you replying to? i don't see where you're pointing out the 'adversely affecting people' caused by ae/ma. seriously - server lag? so, basically you're saying that a larger population adversely affects the server... and that this population boom is caused by ae/ma... and so many are playing in ae/ma because of farming... and that LAG is how it adversely affects you...
so, essentially, by making the points you made - you also see no problem in playing ae/ma in any fashion you desire; and that the only problem is that the devs can't deal with the overwhelming amount of people playing the game.
ok
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Sadly some people seem to think that rules have a grey area. Rules are black and white. There is right and there is wrong, there is no kind of right and not too wrong. All posi said was that the powerleveling useing exploits in the AE sytem will not be tolerated and those who did use the exploits may lose some of what they gained. I leveled a few characters from 1-17 using the meow farms. Honestly they were really not that bad when considered next to the NARF missions. Those missions had a bomb in every group of comm officers. Charge in, attack the bomb, 95% of the spawn dies. Huge xp from that with nearly zero risk. THOSE are the farms posi is talking about. Calm down and read what he posted without all the rage and you will see that he is not going to go around banning all farmers. Yes people farm for things, inf, purple ios, salvage. The difference is they use a mission that has not been created with specific mobs and goals that skew the risk/reward ratio to far one way or the other. People have farmed battlemaiden for years and nothing was done about it. When salvage and ios were introduced people farmed demons for arcane salvage drops. There will always be farming, but to expect an exploit that makes farming a zero risk/high reward endeavor is just delusional. To expect people who blatantly took advantage of said exploit to not have some form of punishment leveled against them is just retarded.
but it was ok to exploit winterlord xp?
it was ok to exploit folks like fire tanks herding entire maps/zones and powerleveling folks from 1-50 in a couple of days?
it's ok to exploit ingame mechanics and form a "super team" of say all fire/rad controllers, and exploit the stacking of all those abilities, AND exploit a double xp weekend, to level them all from 1-50 in that weekend's time?
and it was ok to run a half hour speed katie run a dozen times a day for weeks on end, in order to EXPLOIT the tf/recipe system?
to expect punishment for people playing with ae/ma (which was modified for player use for OVER A YEAR'S TIME, that we know of... possibly longer... 20%+ of the lifetime of this game), when all other forms of exploitation of the game have just been given a nod and a wink... to expect punishment for "abusing" a system that was played/tested/whatever for over a year, a system that posi even stated they "did not expect it to not be abused" or however he bass-ackwardly stated it, to expect punishment for people who are simply playing the game in front of them -- when OBVIOUSLY the vast majority of players are doing it (i know for a fact a number of vocal supporters of posi's ban/delete statements, have themselves leveled toons from 1-50 on rikti farms) -- that makes no sense at all.
and i've spoken with my wallet. i also know a lot of others who have done likewise. the forumites are always a small minority in any game, yet they feel the speak for "the people"; which, they rarely do.
it's called hypocrisy and alienating the actual playerbase, by taking offense at THIS "abuse" while never having "punished" all the other exploitations which i've mentioned.
please.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
honestly, how EXACTLY does THIS farming, adversely affect YOU personally?
Seriously, read this. I'm not talking about farming. They've dealt with farming by making it harder in the past. I'm saying the meow farms were exploiting an unintentional flaw in the MA system. They have banned people for doing that before (usually temp-bans and removal of gains). The only huge difference is this was on a much larger scale than most other exploits out there.
About the only applicable past events I can think of would be the Winter Lord's from way back and possibly the smoke grenade/caltrops bug from release. The big difference between now and then is there's a different person in charge of the game (who, incidentally, wanted to pull the Winter Lord event as soon as they discovered the problem).
And as far as it goes, THIS farming detracted from my play experience by making it harder to find teams to do the more story based MA arcs or any of the TFs out there (which I do like to do). Also on a lot of my lowbies, until I moved them into somewhere like Talos (stupid long trek at level 2) I tended to get a bombardment of tells asking if I wanted to start/join a farm mission. Bleh.
As I said before though, I don't agree with Positron's stance, but he has a perfectly viable argument. <shrug>
honestly, how EXACTLY does THIS farming, adversely affect YOU personally?
Seriously, read this. I'm not talking about farming. They've dealt with farming by making it harder in the past. I'm saying the meow farms were exploiting an unintentional flaw in the MA system. They have banned people for doing that before (usually temp-bans and removal of gains). The only huge difference is this was on a much larger scale than most other exploits out there.
About the only applicable past events I can think of would be the Winter Lord's from way back and possibly the smoke grenade/caltrops bug from release. The big difference between now and then is there's a different person in charge of the game (who, incidentally, wanted to pull the Winter Lord event as soon as they discovered the problem).
And as far as it goes, THIS farming detracted from my play experience by making it harder to find teams to do the more story based MA arcs or any of the TFs out there (which I do like to do). Also on a lot of my lowbies, until I moved them into somewhere like Talos (stupid long trek at level 2) I tended to get a bombardment of tells asking if I wanted to start/join a farm mission. Bleh.
As I said before though, I don't agree with Positron's stance, but he has a perfectly viable argument. <shrug>
Yes. Posi's arguement is viable but his initial post could have been done better. Meant to ask, has anyone check the official boards today to see if Posi has said anything? I haven't been able to get to the boards today due to work.
However Posi's comments about removing character access was stated to be the next to last option with outright banning being the big one.
Actually, removing the character was stated to be the big penalty for being an egregious offender of the PLing. The wording was, "leading up to and perhaps including losing access to the characters power-leveled in this fashion." So no banning for being a PLer.
Should those that made and posted the MEOW farms repeatedly despite warnings, etc., be banned? If they were warned previously and even had the farm locked or deleted then by republishing it they have willfully defied an order/warning from the devs. That to me should constitute a ban. But I'm not the one making the final call.
You realize that's exactly what they've said they'll do yes? The only people I saw being outright banned in the whole of Posi's post were the severe offenders of publishing the offending missions. "Players who knowingly use an exploit when creating an arc, run the risk of having access to MA suspended, or worse- depending on the severity of the action, their account banned."
Overall they're saying they'll take away at least some of the PLed levels, suspend MA access to some PL publishers, and possibly ban the worst PL publishing offenders. On top of that they're discouraging people from posting future banable missions by making missions that get banned continue to take up an arc slot.
Honestly though, I really can't see any way Posi could have worded it that at least some portion of the playerbase (a nicely vocal portion to to some extent) wouldn't piss and moan and cry doom. Hell, they'd still complain if it was only a 'going forward' comment. They'd go on and on about how their farms weren't hurting anyone and how unfair this is and that they're quitting right this instant when their subscription runs out ....
Meant to ask, has anyone check the official boards today to see if Posi has said anything? I haven't been able to get to the boards today due to work.
Nobody's said anything about it yet but players, not even the mods.
Well that's interesting. I would think with all the furor that was generated that at least one redname would have stepped in with a white flag of truce and an olive branch. Ah well, typical Posi. I was just reading up on the latest news on DCUO, if that game is even half as good as the preliminaries say then it's bye bye to Coh
Since I have no sympathy for cheaters, this was very satisfying to read. Thanks.
The devs created a system that would add some fun to the game. As usual, some cheaters found a way to exploit it. Just because you CAN cheat, doesn't mean you should. In games just as in life, we are not provided with a perfect experience. There will be times when there is temptation before us, and those with character and integrity resist temptation because it is the right thing to do. Opportunity does not equal justification.
how EXACTLY is it cheating?
how EXACTLY does it adversely affect you?
i noticed in your "better than thou" posting, you neglected to define anything. kudos to ya.
edit: no, REALLY... i have a couple of arcs i've put a LOT of time and effort into. probably half the people that have run them have given them 4/5 and left nice comments. yet, i'm struggling to get 100 votes on my arcs.
how EXACTLY is this "stuff" cheating, and HOW does it adversely affect you?
do you run TF/SF a lot one one toon? that's farming. according to you, farming is cheating, yes?
have you gotten ANY badges, thru other than just normal, random play? that's farming for badges. hope you didn't cheat like that.
accolades? recipes? did you hide in a pvp zone for hours for X badge? did you farm pvp kills for base items?
no really... only casual players MIGHT be not guilty of farming one thing or another. and that's cheating. must be nice to be perfect.
I think the COH staff have outlined how exactly it is cheating. But cheaters will always defend their cheating with all kinds of rationalizations. One of the most popular rationalizations is they allowed me to do it so it's not cheating.
Well to use a real life analogy, your car can probably go a hundred miles an hour. But there is still a speed limit. Just beause the auto industry made a car that can go 100 plus miles an hour and just because the government built the road does not justify your speeding. And whether your speeding adversely affects me personally is irrelevant since rules, laws, etc are in place to protect the community as a whole.
The difference is that if I get a speeding ticket because I was speeding, I don't expect the cop to be a complete A$$hat. Just give me my ticket and let me pay my fine. I also don't expect all the people who are driving the speed limit to pull over to the side of the road and laugh at my misfortune and give me their soapbox about how law abiding they are. I hope you are not this black and white in real life.
Were i live.. Do a 100 km/h on a road designated 50... you will loser your license... pretty mutch the same thing... Also if they catch you speeding say 5-6 times.. they will take your license... in the same way if you publish the same mission/arc even after warnings you will prolly have sterner measuers taken... So i say it was a very good comparison.
I can tell already there are some really enlightened people here that will contribute so much to society when they decide to finally grow up and learn how the real world works. I bet five years from now I'll be reading some post on the internet from an MMO gamer who got fat and diabetic eating chocolate and is trying to sue Hershey's for making him that way, and I'll just know it's one of you special little snowflakes. In the meantime, just keep those defense mechanisms firing away, and always remember, that no matter what happens to you, it's never your fault. It'd be a real shame if any one of you would actually try to change yourself for the better.
I was just reading up on the latest news on DCUO, if that game is even half as good as the preliminaries say then it's bye bye to Coh
Sadly no MMO I've ever seen is half as good at release as it looked in the previews.
DCU does look quite nice I do have to say. From what it looks, it might be a bit PvP oriented for a lot of folks though.
There appear to be designated areas of Metropolis and Gotham that are PvP areas and I don't think you can just walk up to a villain and start a fight, I think the villain has to be up to something first. Could be wrong but that's my take from what's been released.
And yes, many MMO's don't measure up to the preliminaries.........Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies spring to mind....such promise..... luckily Star Wars Old Republic should make up for the debacle that Galaxies became.
Since I have no sympathy for cheaters, this was very satisfying to read. Thanks.
The devs created a system that would add some fun to the game. As usual, some cheaters found a way to exploit it. Just because you CAN cheat, doesn't mean you should. In games just as in life, we are not provided with a perfect experience. There will be times when there is temptation before us, and those with character and integrity resist temptation because it is the right thing to do. Opportunity does not equal justification.
how EXACTLY is it cheating?
how EXACTLY does it adversely affect you?
i noticed in your "better than thou" posting, you neglected to define anything. kudos to ya.
edit: no, REALLY... i have a couple of arcs i've put a LOT of time and effort into. probably half the people that have run them have given them 4/5 and left nice comments. yet, i'm struggling to get 100 votes on my arcs.
how EXACTLY is this "stuff" cheating, and HOW does it adversely affect you?
do you run TF/SF a lot one one toon? that's farming. according to you, farming is cheating, yes?
have you gotten ANY badges, thru other than just normal, random play? that's farming for badges. hope you didn't cheat like that.
accolades? recipes? did you hide in a pvp zone for hours for X badge? did you farm pvp kills for base items?
no really... only casual players MIGHT be not guilty of farming one thing or another. and that's cheating. must be nice to be perfect.
I think the COH staff have outlined how exactly it is cheating. But cheaters will always defend their cheating with all kinds of rationalizations. One of the most popular rationalizations is they allowed me to do it so it's not cheating.
Well to use a real life analogy, your car can probably go a hundred miles an hour. But there is still a speed limit. Just beause the auto industry made a car that can go 100 plus miles an hour and just because the government built the road does not justify your speeding. And whether your speeding adversely affects me personally is irrelevant since rules, laws, etc are in place to protect the community as a whole.
The difference is that if I get a speeding ticket because I was speeding, I don't expect the cop to be a complete A$$hat. Just give me my ticket and let me pay my fine. I also don't expect all the people who are driving the speed limit to pull over to the side of the road and laugh at my misfortune and give me their soapbox about how law abiding they are. I hope you are not this black and white in real life.
Were i live.. Do a 100 km/h on a road designated 50... you will loser your license... pretty mutch the same thing... Also if they catch you speeding say 5-6 times.. they will take your license... in the same way if you publish the same mission/arc even after warnings you will prolly have sterner measuers taken... So i say it was a very good comparison.
if you're doing twice the posted speed limit, you're recklessly endangering the lives of others. speed limits are inplace for a reason (most of the time).
how EXACTLY is that a good comparison to someone farming, which has absolutely NO AFFECT on YOUR gameplay, unless you're a worthless, lazy, doorsitter. i can understand doorsitters getting upset by being booted from teams repeatedly. but um... doorsitters aren't going to be taken seriously, since, well, they're worthless.
i have yet to see anyone make statements which show how it adversely affects them; i've only seen half-assed - nonsensical completely EXAGGERATED comparisons to real life events.
so, i will have to continue to take it, that the lack of ability of anyone to simply enunciate the adverse effect to THEMSELVES (other than someone griping about lag... gee, if the game is popular it lags... yeah, that's so not a farming issue)... i'll have to assume that it's just a bunch of band-wagoneers spouting off non-factual rhetoric.
but please, if you're not a worthless, lazy, doorsitter, and you're reading this, and this ae/ma farming has adversely affected YOU... please enlighten me on HOW.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
How does it affect me(playerbase)? This question is nonsense. It is not up to us to answer a dopey question like this. The rules are rules, designated by the owners of the property. If you didnt like the rules, 5yrs later is a little bit late to complain or challenge them now. Dont you think?
If you break the rules and do something wrong, you should get punished. How much punishment? As much as the owners believe is warranted to curb the infringements(they could also suffer knowingly if they are overboard, ntl). You can dislike them, but argument isnt likely to get you anywhere but more hot under your own collar.
Does it affect you how rule breakers are punished? The consistency of your bullish remarks appear as it likely could. Retribution and/or removal might be at your doorstep. It could be like getting fired before you can quit to save face, damian7.
The reason why those individuals might be punished is clear and above debate. You/I do not make the rules. Appearantly you dont like limits and restrictions that sometimes require you to moderate yourself. If the infraction was created or unregulated by another entity you find it well within your prerogative to commit the transgression? Nonsense and quite frankly despicable, damian7.
To say you didnt read your rules of the road booklet, law requirements of a different state or country and claim that somehow it protects you from scrutiny after breaching the law is ridiculous to say the least.
[u}Ignorance is not an excuse or remotely a valid defense.[/u]
Now, to say that the developers are above fault here is also incorrect, and I dont believe anyone is saying otherwise. The majority does fall on the players who exploited the system. To say that Autocomplete missions isnt exploitation and griefing of the system is horribly imbecilic.
Also, I dont give a rats a** how Mr. Miller stated it. These players blatantly broke his rules! The guy should be really pis*ed off. They tried to bring the playerbase a tool to create something that adds their personal flavor to the game and it was abused sickeningly. When the gears grind to a halt on innovation dont be looking at the dev team asking 'why'?. This type of garbage influences creativity when people just take incongruous advantage of it.
Mistakes were made throughout this ordeal and should be treated as mistakes, not game ending failures. Everyone needs to pull in the claws, deal with the infractors, dust themselves off, and get to work on closing the loopholes. Go earn your cape the same way that everyone within the rules have earned them since their creation. Legitimately.
How does it affect me(playerbase)? This question is nonsense. It is not up to us to answer a dopey question like this. The rules are rules, designated by the owners of the property. If you didnt like the rules, 5yrs later is a little bit late to complain or challenge them now. Dont you think?
If you break the rules and do something wrong, you should get punished. How much punishment? As much as the owners believe is warranted to curb the infringements(they could also suffer knowingly if they are overboard, ntl). You can dislike them, but argument isnt likely to get you anywhere but more hot under your own collar.
Does it affect you how rule breakers are punished? The consistency of your bullish remarks appear as it likely could. Retribution and/or removal might be at your doorstep. It could be like getting fired before you can quit to save face, damian7.
The reason why those individuals might be punished is clear and above debate. You/I do not make the rules. Appearantly you dont like limits and restrictions that sometimes require you to moderate yourself. If the infraction was created or unregulated by another entity you find it well within your prerogative to commit the transgression? Nonsense and quite frankly despicable, damian7.
To say you didnt read your rules of the road booklet, law requirements of a different state or country and claim that somehow it protects you from scrutiny after breaching the law is ridiculous to say the least. [u}Ignorance is not an excuse or remotely a valid defense.[/u]
Now, to say that the developers are above fault here is also incorrect, and I dont believe anyone is saying otherwise. The majority does fall on the players who exploited the system. To say that Autocomplete missions isnt exploitation and griefing of the system is horribly imbecilic.
Also, I dont give a rats a** how Mr. Miller stated it. These players blatantly broke his rules! The guy should be really pis*ed off. They tried to bring the playerbase a tool to create something that adds their personal flavor to the game and it was abused sickeningly. When the gears grind to a halt on innovation dont be looking at the dev team asking 'why'?. This type of garbage influences creativity when people just take incongruous advantage of it.
Mistakes were made throughout this ordeal and should be treated as mistakes, not game ending failures. Everyone needs to pull in the claws, deal with the infractors, dust themselves off, and get to work on closing the loopholes. Go earn your cape the same way that everyone within the rules have earned them since their creation. Legitimately.
Agreed. Far as I'm concerned there is more then enough blame to go around:
1. AE was released with loopholes/exploits/oversights that could and should have been corrected beforehand, imo. Granted finding every mistake or loophole is a long task, but I would think they would have prioritized things like the XP value table for all creatures being correct. Things like the Rikti Comm officers and the fire imps clearly were not. The Devs also had plenty of notice and alerts coming to them about the farms and how people were essentially raping the AE system for XP, yet they wait until after Free Reactivation and the Anniversary Event to release any form of fix much less shut down the farms??? A very slow response time. Granted shutting DOWN the great new feature for until it was repaired DURING the Anniversary/Free Reactivation would have been bad, but it would have stopped the exploit/raping that was going on. The Devs however must have been having "blind faith" that the players wouldn't use these loopholes. Kudos to the ones that didn't!
2. The Players broke rules and regulations by the creation and implementation of mission that broke the rules of the game and the AE.
honestly, how EXACTLY does THIS farming, adversely affect YOU personally?
Seriously, read this. I'm not talking about farming. They've dealt with farming by making it harder in the past. I'm saying the meow farms were exploiting an unintentional flaw in the MA system. They have banned people for doing that before (usually temp-bans and removal of gains). The only huge difference is this was on a much larger scale than most other exploits out there.
About the only applicable past events I can think of would be the Winter Lord's from way back and possibly the smoke grenade/caltrops bug from release. The big difference between now and then is there's a different person in charge of the game (who, incidentally, wanted to pull the Winter Lord event as soon as they discovered the problem).
And as far as it goes, THIS farming detracted from my play experience by making it harder to find teams to do the more story based MA arcs or any of the TFs out there (which I do like to do). Also on a lot of my lowbies, until I moved them into somewhere like Talos (stupid long trek at level 2) I tended to get a bombardment of tells asking if I wanted to start/join a farm mission. Bleh.
As I said before though, I don't agree with Positron's stance, but he has a perfectly viable argument. <shrug>
so it detracted from your play experience because you couldn't get teams... already covered that and lag. look to yourself for the answer to people not wanting to team with you. i have had zero problem getting any sort of non-ma/ae team since it was released.
so, here's another person who has to admit that it has not affected him/her adversely. gotcha... QQing cuz it's cool, jumping on the bandwagon, whatever.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
How does it affect me(playerbase)? This question is nonsense. It is not up to us to answer a dopey question like this. The rules are rules, designated by the owners of the property. If you didnt like the rules, 5yrs later is a little bit late to complain or challenge them now. Dont you think?
If you break the rules and do something wrong, you should get punished. How much punishment? As much as the owners believe is warranted to curb the infringements(they could also suffer knowingly if they are overboard, ntl). You can dislike them, but argument isnt likely to get you anywhere but more hot under your own collar. Does it affect you how rule breakers are punished? The consistency of your bullish remarks appear as it likely could. Retribution and/or removal might be at your doorstep. It could be like getting fired before you can quit to save face, damian7.
The reason why those individuals might be punished is clear and above debate. You/I do not make the rules. Appearantly you dont like limits and restrictions that sometimes require you to moderate yourself. If the infraction was created or unregulated by another entity you find it well within your prerogative to commit the transgression? Nonsense and quite frankly despicable, damian7.
To say you didnt read your rules of the road booklet, law requirements of a different state or country and claim that somehow it protects you from scrutiny after breaching the law is ridiculous to say the least. [u}Ignorance is not an excuse or remotely a valid defense.[/u]
Now, to say that the developers are above fault here is also incorrect, and I dont believe anyone is saying otherwise. The majority does fall on the players who exploited the system. To say that Autocomplete missions isnt exploitation and griefing of the system is horribly imbecilic.
Also, I dont give a rats a** how Mr. Miller stated it. These players blatantly broke his rules! The guy should be really pis*ed off. They tried to bring the playerbase a tool to create something that adds their personal flavor to the game and it was abused sickeningly. When the gears grind to a halt on innovation dont be looking at the dev team asking 'why'?. This type of garbage influences creativity when people just take incongruous advantage of it.
Mistakes were made throughout this ordeal and should be treated as mistakes, not game ending failures. Everyone needs to pull in the claws, deal with the infractors, dust themselves off, and get to work on closing the loopholes. Go earn your cape the same way that everyone within the rules have earned them since their creation. Legitimately.
what in the world are you talking about?
i'm not going to continue to repeat BLATANTLY OBVIOUS FACTS. if you are incapable of reading and responding and articulating something other than well, NOTHING, why even reply?
what rules were broken?
what rules were broken which hadn't been broken a bazillion times before?
what exactly is the fault of any player? name ONE ITEM IN ANY MMO EVER --
one
one single item
in ANY mmo EVER
that has not been pushed as far as it could by the playerbase
name ONE -- in COH -- that has not been pushed as far as it could by the playerbase, since coh beta.
go ahead, name ONE
you're very right, IGNORANCE IS NO EXCUSE.
go ahead, let's live in reality, shall we? i mean, your holier than thou speech - bring it to reality and let's see which side is being ignorant, in an honest fashion. can we do that? are we capable of being honest and factual, and not going on a holier than thou "oh imma tell, you was breaking an unknown rule"... unknown rule? was it spelled out in no uncertain terms? or, was it (using someone's bad comparison), "don't speed", but no speed limit was posted?
i take offense at the righteous indignation attitudes (full of ignorance, by the way), which have NOTHING to back them. so, go ahead, tell me one time in ANY mmo where the playerbase have not pushed ANYTHING to its limit.... if a game CAN do it, the players WILL do it. being ignorant of that one, teeny, tiny, SIMPLE concept -- is no excuse.
being holier than thou -- you should be on the side of right, before copping that 'tude, bub.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Since I have no sympathy for cheaters, this was very satisfying to read. Thanks.
The devs created a system that would add some fun to the game. As usual, some cheaters found a way to exploit it. Just because you CAN cheat, doesn't mean you should. In games just as in life, we are not provided with a perfect experience. There will be times when there is temptation before us, and those with character and integrity resist temptation because it is the right thing to do. Opportunity does not equal justification.
how EXACTLY is it cheating?
how EXACTLY does it adversely affect you?
i noticed in your "better than thou" posting, you neglected to define anything. kudos to ya.
edit: no, REALLY... i have a couple of arcs i've put a LOT of time and effort into. probably half the people that have run them have given them 4/5 and left nice comments. yet, i'm struggling to get 100 votes on my arcs.
how EXACTLY is this "stuff" cheating, and HOW does it adversely affect you?
do you run TF/SF a lot one one toon? that's farming. according to you, farming is cheating, yes?
have you gotten ANY badges, thru other than just normal, random play? that's farming for badges. hope you didn't cheat like that.
accolades? recipes? did you hide in a pvp zone for hours for X badge? did you farm pvp kills for base items?
no really... only casual players MIGHT be not guilty of farming one thing or another. and that's cheating. must be nice to be perfect.
I think the COH staff have outlined how exactly it is cheating. But cheaters will always defend their cheating with all kinds of rationalizations. One of the most popular rationalizations is they allowed me to do it so it's not cheating.
Well to use a real life analogy, your car can probably go a hundred miles an hour. But there is still a speed limit. Just beause the auto industry made a car that can go 100 plus miles an hour and just because the government built the road does not justify your speeding. And whether your speeding adversely affects me personally is irrelevant since rules, laws, etc are in place to protect the community as a whole.
The difference is that if I get a speeding ticket because I was speeding, I don't expect the cop to be a complete A$$hat. Just give me my ticket and let me pay my fine. I also don't expect all the people who are driving the speed limit to pull over to the side of the road and laugh at my misfortune and give me their soapbox about how law abiding they are. I hope you are not this black and white in real life.
Were i live.. Do a 100 km/h on a road designated 50... you will loser your license... pretty mutch the same thing... Also if they catch you speeding say 5-6 times.. they will take your license... in the same way if you publish the same mission/arc even after warnings you will prolly have sterner measuers taken... So i say it was a very good comparison.
if you're doing twice the posted speed limit, you're recklessly endangering the lives of others. speed limits are inplace for a reason (most of the time).
how EXACTLY is that a good comparison to someone farming, which has absolutely NO AFFECT on YOUR gameplay, unless you're a worthless, lazy, doorsitter. i can understand doorsitters getting upset by being booted from teams repeatedly. but um... doorsitters aren't going to be taken seriously, since, well, they're worthless.
i have yet to see anyone make statements which show how it adversely affects them; i've only seen half-assed - nonsensical completely EXAGGERATED comparisons to real life events.
so, i will have to continue to take it, that the lack of ability of anyone to simply enunciate the adverse effect to THEMSELVES (other than someone griping about lag... gee, if the game is popular it lags... yeah, that's so not a farming issue)... i'll have to assume that it's just a bunch of band-wagoneers spouting off non-factual rhetoric.
but please, if you're not a worthless, lazy, doorsitter, and you're reading this, and this ae/ma farming has adversely affected YOU... please enlighten me on HOW.
Well i will try and find a comparison that does not offend your sense of sensability. Saddly i do not find one that i can't see you picking appart in one way or another so i am going to stand by my earlier statemtn that if you break stablished laws and/or rules you get punished.
The best example i can find is two people of legal age having sex in a bush on a city square... peple around can see them and hear them.. this does not adversly affect anyone and one can just look away if that sort of thing does not appeal to you. Well this is still against the were i live and the police would mostlikely tell you to stop doing what you are doing, should they 45 min later get another call that you are at it again in the same bush at the same square butt naked and bumping they might escort you of the square... And so on and so fort. In the ned there is a risk you would get a court order to stay out of the damm bush. Same with this system. You might not get a perma-ban the fist time but do it enough or enough times and you would get something more than a mild slap on the wrist.
Does this make more sense to you as were i stand on this issue, for all i care you can have orgy in that bush but there are rules that say you can't and someone will be botherd by it...
so it detracted from your play experience because you couldn't get teams... already covered that and lag. look to yourself for the answer to people not wanting to team with you.
I didn't say impossible, I said harder. And it's my fault that people are running MA missions/teams when I ask if they'd like to do a TF? That makes no sense.
so, here's another person who has to admit that it has not affected him/her adversely.
Reading comprehension? I'll admit that the zone-lag in the lower zones isn't as bad as a hammy raid, or a zombie/rikti invasion, but it's to the point that I don't like going into those zone's AE centers.
And incidentally, wouldn't you (and people like you) be the ones "QQing" as you put it? I'm pretty much fine with this whole decision. As you pointed out none of my complaints against the PLing were really huge (still existent but not big issues). I think it's a somewhat ill-advised decision on the dev's part, but it won't hurt me, or (to my knowledge) any of my SG mates, as we were all calmly running the missions for their story not the XP/inf gain. You seem to be the one complaining about the decision and all.
what rules were broken? what rules were broken which hadn't been broken a bazillion times before?
This one I believe:
You will not exploit any bug in City of Heroes and you will not communicate the existence of any such exploitable bug (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits) either directly or through public posting, to any other user of City of Heroes.
It's an item in the rules of conduct that you agree to abide by every time you start up the game. Generally speaking, they have banned people in the past for violating that rule too. It's generally been the badge-farmers who find some ridiculously easy way to get a difficult badge, get it on several characters and then don't bug-report it (even when they do bug-report it the badge is usually removed). So yea, it's been broken before, but then people have also been punished for breaking it before.
And seriously you can't possibly believe that being able to level as quickly as some could using the meow farms was intended? So yea, the devs are well within their rights to remove access to uber-PLed characters, but I think it's an ill-advised move to do so.
what rules were broken which hadn't been broken a bazillion times before?
This one I believe:
You will not exploit any bug in City of Heroes and you will not communicate the existence of any such exploitable bug (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits) either directly or through public posting, to any other user of City of Heroes.
It's an item in the rules of conduct that you agree to abide by every time you start up the game. Generally speaking, they have banned people in the past for violating that rule too. It's generally been the badge-farmers who find some ridiculously easy way to get a difficult badge, get it on several characters and then don't bug-report it (even when they do bug-report it the badge is usually removed). So yea, it's been broken before, but then people have also been punished for breaking it before.
And seriously you can't possibly believe that being able to level as quickly as some could using the meow farms was intended? So yea, the devs are well within their rights to remove access to uber-PLed characters, but I think it's an ill-advised move to do so.
you can't seriously believe that everyone running a fire tank, or being PL'd by a fire tank, for months on end, was not willfully exploiting the game, can you?
you can't seriously believe that all the people involved, on a daily basis, on super teams, whose express AND STATED design is to EXPLOIT ingame mechanics and provide incredibly insane teaming combinations, is not STILL wlilfully exploiting the game, can you?
do i really need to do it for every instance of past, AND CURRENT, game exploitation, which is ignored? or, which the game gets changed, and essentially, is ignored?
you can't seriously NOT know all of these things, and expect to be given any credence to any opinion you have on this topic... you do realize this, yes?
the precedent, laid out by every member of the dev team, past and present -- is to give lip service blah blah about farming, to shut up the hundred or so shrills on the forums, and let the other 130,000+ players enjoy their game.
facts... support that.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
so it detracted from your play experience because you couldn't get teams... already covered that and lag. look to yourself for the answer to people not wanting to team with you.
I didn't say impossible, I said harder. And it's my fault that people are running MA missions/teams when I ask if they'd like to do a TF? That makes no sense.
so, here's another person who has to admit that it has not affected him/her adversely.
Reading comprehension? I'll admit that the zone-lag in the lower zones isn't as bad as a hammy raid, or a zombie/rikti invasion, but it's to the point that I don't like going into those zone's AE centers.
And incidentally, wouldn't you (and people like you) be the ones "QQing" as you put it? I'm pretty much fine with this whole decision. As you pointed out none of my complaints against the PLing were really huge (still existent but not big issues). I think it's a somewhat ill-advised decision on the dev's part, but it won't hurt me, or (to my knowledge) any of my SG mates, as we were all calmly running the missions for their story not the XP/inf gain. You seem to be the one complaining about the decision and all.
i'm complaining about what people always complain about -- other people telling ME what is and isn't fun. or how i should spend MY time ingame.
it's laggy? complain to the gaming company. reason it wasn't laggy before is no one wanted to play, cuz the game is mediocre and it's major point of praise is the character creation system.
i do like changes they've made the past couple of years... but... leveling a toon to 50 is a boring grind. farming is a fast grind, but grind nonetheless. once you hit 50, you can start grinding for purples, and now pvp sets.
for a game that's supposedly all about the journey to 50... the JOURNEY TO 50... why don't i see new content for every level range each issue? i15 has a whopping new tf for blue and sf for red -- lvl 35-50? or is it only 45-50?... wow, another underwhelming issue... who'd have thunk? not a hell of a lot of lower level content the past couple of years, eh?
but, remember... the game is about the journey to lvl 50... yup, that's why there has been ONE new exclusive zone to red side... grandville... oopsies, that's max level. not for low level toons, unless you're pl'ing/farming.
argue something relevant to reality. it is incredibly irresponsible to expect players of coh, who have AND CONTINUE to exploit every game mechanic inplace... to NOT continue to exploit every game mechanic inplace.. it is irresponsible to the point of abject stupidity.
but hey, there's rules (that have been broken by the majority of players and even HAVE GUIDES AND THREADS UP EVERY DAY ON THE OFFICIAL FORUMS about how to abuse ingame mechanics)... a blind person can see the precedent set every single day of this game's life...
no? go look right this moment, and count the number of super team threads there are (not super group... and if you don't know what a super team is.. find out, and catch up to coh from the past 3+ years).... see how many of these teams, whose intent is to exploit ingame mechanics... get locked/banned/deleted... cuz it's none.
but, oh, THIS time, we're going to quote rules and make examples. THIS time, we're going to dictate to players how we will ALLOW them to play.
i'm using the word 'hypocrite' correctly when i throw it around in regards to this foolishness. opine all you want, but precedent and indeed, common sense - are both against any opinion which does not include the playerbase of any MMO fully utilizing/playing/exploiting ingame mechanics to their utmost. and for a dev, or dev team, to believe otherwise -- honestly is willful negligence, ignorance, and even stupidity.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Since I have no sympathy for cheaters, this was very satisfying to read. Thanks.
The devs created a system that would add some fun to the game. As usual, some cheaters found a way to exploit it. Just because you CAN cheat, doesn't mean you should. In games just as in life, we are not provided with a perfect experience. There will be times when there is temptation before us, and those with character and integrity resist temptation because it is the right thing to do. Opportunity does not equal justification.
how EXACTLY is it cheating?
how EXACTLY does it adversely affect you?
i noticed in your "better than thou" posting, you neglected to define anything. kudos to ya.
edit: no, REALLY... i have a couple of arcs i've put a LOT of time and effort into. probably half the people that have run them have given them 4/5 and left nice comments. yet, i'm struggling to get 100 votes on my arcs.
how EXACTLY is this "stuff" cheating, and HOW does it adversely affect you?
do you run TF/SF a lot one one toon? that's farming. according to you, farming is cheating, yes?
have you gotten ANY badges, thru other than just normal, random play? that's farming for badges. hope you didn't cheat like that.
accolades? recipes? did you hide in a pvp zone for hours for X badge? did you farm pvp kills for base items?
no really... only casual players MIGHT be not guilty of farming one thing or another. and that's cheating. must be nice to be perfect.
I think the COH staff have outlined how exactly it is cheating. But cheaters will always defend their cheating with all kinds of rationalizations. One of the most popular rationalizations is they allowed me to do it so it's not cheating.
Well to use a real life analogy, your car can probably go a hundred miles an hour. But there is still a speed limit. Just beause the auto industry made a car that can go 100 plus miles an hour and just because the government built the road does not justify your speeding. And whether your speeding adversely affects me personally is irrelevant since rules, laws, etc are in place to protect the community as a whole.
The difference is that if I get a speeding ticket because I was speeding, I don't expect the cop to be a complete A$$hat. Just give me my ticket and let me pay my fine. I also don't expect all the people who are driving the speed limit to pull over to the side of the road and laugh at my misfortune and give me their soapbox about how law abiding they are. I hope you are not this black and white in real life.
Were i live.. Do a 100 km/h on a road designated 50... you will loser your license... pretty mutch the same thing... Also if they catch you speeding say 5-6 times.. they will take your license... in the same way if you publish the same mission/arc even after warnings you will prolly have sterner measuers taken... So i say it was a very good comparison.
if you're doing twice the posted speed limit, you're recklessly endangering the lives of others. speed limits are inplace for a reason (most of the time).
how EXACTLY is that a good comparison to someone farming, which has absolutely NO AFFECT on YOUR gameplay, unless you're a worthless, lazy, doorsitter. i can understand doorsitters getting upset by being booted from teams repeatedly. but um... doorsitters aren't going to be taken seriously, since, well, they're worthless.
i have yet to see anyone make statements which show how it adversely affects them; i've only seen half-assed - nonsensical completely EXAGGERATED comparisons to real life events.
so, i will have to continue to take it, that the lack of ability of anyone to simply enunciate the adverse effect to THEMSELVES (other than someone griping about lag... gee, if the game is popular it lags... yeah, that's so not a farming issue)... i'll have to assume that it's just a bunch of band-wagoneers spouting off non-factual rhetoric.
but please, if you're not a worthless, lazy, doorsitter, and you're reading this, and this ae/ma farming has adversely affected YOU... please enlighten me on HOW.
Well i will try and find a comparison that does not offend your sense of sensability. Saddly i do not find one that i can't see you picking appart in one way or another so i am going to stand by my earlier statemtn that if you break stablished laws and/or rules you get punished.
The best example i can find is two people of legal age having sex in a bush on a city square... peple around can see them and hear them.. this does not adversly affect anyone and one can just look away if that sort of thing does not appeal to you. Well this is still against the were i live and the police would mostlikely tell you to stop doing what you are doing, should they 45 min later get another call that you are at it again in the same bush at the same square butt naked and bumping they might escort you of the square... And so on and so fort. In the ned there is a risk you would get a court order to stay out of the damm bush. Same with this system. You might not get a perma-ban the fist time but do it enough or enough times and you would get something more than a mild slap on the wrist.
Does this make more sense to you as were i stand on this issue, for all i care you can have orgy in that bush but there are rules that say you can't and someone will be botherd by it...
make whatever comparison you want. i'm looking at the official site's forum - player events... on the front page alone, i quickly count at least 5 or 6 long threads about super teams -- teams of players joining together with the statted (and explicit) intention of abusing/exploiting ingame mechanics so as to lvl super quickly.
something that has been ongoing for years in coh.
much like all the other examples of actual ingame exploitation which has either been "fixed" by changing game mechanics (say... winterlord and fire tanks), or willfully ignored by the entire game staff for LITERAL years (super teams, teams built to lvl from 1-50 on double xp weekends, etc).
what example do you have to counter years of precedent, set by the staff at the gaming company, which CONTINUES to ignore super teams built with the explicit goal of exploiting and abusing ingame mechanics?
oh, but it's ok, cuz we're going to ignore 5 years of pl'ing and farming, and we're only going to hide behind rules THIS time.
that... is hypocrisy.
so, to use your speeding example. the cops ignore everyone every day, doing 75 in a 50. then, after 5 years, one of the cops spills coffee on his lap, because he thought that he could drive with his knees, drink coffee, eat 4 donuts (ALL 4 at one time), read on his laptop AND text on his cell --- all at the same time, and someone happened to be passing him (cuz he's doing 30 in this 50), and NOW he decides to be angry and take it out on that person doing 50 by lying and saying they were doing 126mph.
that is what this is akin to, but only if you don't ignore 5 years of rampant pl/farming. if you ignore the 5 year history of this game, and say "nooooooooooo we only start paying attention TODAY". then sure, you can justify ANYTHING.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
I'm not really sure where you seem to be getting this idea that I'm new to the game but oh well.
but, oh, THIS time, we're going to quote rules and make examples. THIS time, we're going to dictate to players how we will ALLOW them to play.
It's well within their rights to do so though. You're equating this issue with fire tanks taking people to 50 in days, some of the more obscene AT/powerset combos (and team combinations) out there which also take days to level to 50, and to the WL event (which I skipped over ... vacation ya know) which to my understanding still couldn't level someone from one to fifty in less than half a day (under two hours was the best reported time I've seen). THIS little leveling quirk was by far and away the most obscene one ever introduced into the game and one of the more well-known. That last little bit was mostly the problem I'll wager.
If it had been kept on the DL, and hadn't been all over the place it would have been handled quietly and like all the other, more severe exploits that have in the past and will likely continue to crop up in the game. Which is, incidentally, pretty much how they're handling it now.
And you realize that it's the job of the devs to dictate how we're allowed to play the game yes? They determine what's acceptable and what's not. What's too fast/easy (therefore deserving of a nerf) and what's too slow/hard (and therefore needs a buff). They have datamining tools and the like set up to help them analyze that. Sometimes it takes them forever and a day to really notice (like how old defiance sucked) and other times it's fairly obvious to them quite quickly (old-time smoke grenade ... or this MA issue). Their job is to fix it, reign it in or buff it up. Something they do at least adequately in my opinion.
I mean seriously, you did notice that almost all of your examples of 'exploitative' behavior in the game have been 'fixed' yes? The ones that aren't either fall within the dev's acceptable range (likely at the high end of the scale), aren't considered a big enough problem to address (fixes use work-hours), or are probably going to get addressed at some point.
Anyhoo:
Positron Q) If I powerlevelled a character, am I going to lose them? A) Probably not. Only the worst of the worst, exploitive, powerlevelled characters will be removed from the game. We dont take retroactive punishments lightly, but some offenses are so egregious that no one would question their intent and those ill-gotten gains should be dealt with. I just want to emphasize that no one is looking to punish anyone here, but rather remove the rewards of exploitive behavior.
Q) Are you going to give us an absolute definition of what abuse is? A) I know a lot of you want to know an exact definition to see if you were actually abusing the system, or just playing the game, but I dont want to be set up in a situation where our definition of abuse is abused. For example, if we say that the definition is you gained 4 levels in under 30 minutes, then someone will make sure that they gain 4 levels in 31 minutes, so they can claim they were within the allowed limits and not abusing. Someone said it best that the definition of reckless driving is purposely ambiguous, being Disregard for safety. With this example, I would say that a good interpretation of abuse is Disregard for the risk and/or time to reward ratio.
Q) What about all the farming and abusing that goes on in the normal game? How come you guys dont put a stop to that? A) We address rewards abuse all the time. We put timers on missions that could get reset for rewards. We take rewards off of critters that are considered exploitively farmable. Or we just change the mission. Merit rewards are another way we have handled the situation. You cant run really fast stuff over and over and get a reward every time. Again, we are looking out for Disregard for the risk and/or time to reward ratio, and we take action.
Comments
Sure some punishment is expected and even warranted. But who is the greatest offender? Those that created the farms or the ones that ran them?
I've read Posi's post when it first hit and was calm then and now, I'm just curious as to how they are determining the "most egregious" and where he will draw that line. His initial post left something to be desired and did stir the community into a fever pitch.
how EXACTLY is it cheating?
how EXACTLY does it adversely affect you?
i noticed in your "better than thou" posting, you neglected to define anything. kudos to ya.
edit: no, REALLY... i have a couple of arcs i've put a LOT of time and effort into. probably half the people that have run them have given them 4/5 and left nice comments. yet, i'm struggling to get 100 votes on my arcs.
how EXACTLY is this "stuff" cheating, and HOW does it adversely affect you?
do you run TF/SF a lot one one toon? that's farming. according to you, farming is cheating, yes?
have you gotten ANY badges, thru other than just normal, random play? that's farming for badges. hope you didn't cheat like that.
accolades? recipes? did you hide in a pvp zone for hours for X badge? did you farm pvp kills for base items?
no really... only casual players MIGHT be not guilty of farming one thing or another. and that's cheating. must be nice to be perfect.
I think the COH staff have outlined how exactly it is cheating. But cheaters will always defend their cheating with all kinds of rationalizations. One of the most popular rationalizations is they allowed me to do it so it's not cheating.
Well to use a real life analogy, your car can probably go a hundred miles an hour. But there is still a speed limit. Just beause the auto industry made a car that can go 100 plus miles an hour and just because the government built the road does not justify your speeding. And whether your speeding adversely affects me personally is irrelevant since rules, laws, etc are in place to protect the community as a whole.
so, you have no idea how its cheating, you're just jumping on the bandwagon and can't answer to anything i've posted in this thread.
everyone has an opinion. it ends there. doesn't mean they're right, factual, or anything else -- the opinion simply exists.
so, protecting the community as a whole, with cheating that you can't define being punished.
i'm not hypothetically speaking about ANYTHING here -- what cheating, and what adverse effect to the community (individually, as a whole, however you want to break it down) -- ...................
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
The main adverse affects that I have seen from the AE farm-fest was:
1. Atlas, Peregrine Island, Mercy, and Cap Au Diable, the zones that seem to be considered the universal meeting grounds for things like this were so overloaded at times that the server would flip out and crash the zone, despite having multiple instances of said zone up and running.
2. There are badges that can only be obtained for how many times your mission is star rated and what the rating average is. The rating system as it stands at the moment can be griefed (hey all my good buddies, Please 5 star my farm mission and one star that guy that I hate that uploaded a story arc.) The MA system should give option for an author to be anonymous if they choose, thus gettting more honest ratings from people.
3. The extreme lag on some servers combined with the crashing from all the MA usage. Granted one can try a less populous zone.
4. Of course the big thing now that is affecting everyone is Posi's rant and threat.
1a - shows a lot more people playing than normal, eh? more people is now a bad thing for coh?
1b - not sure what you're talking about, i've seen multiple instances of each. if what you say is true; then, does that mean the game is just coded incredibly poorly? lots of people playing SHOULD be a good thing, yes?
2 - what are you talking about? even if you're talking about "cheating"; then, how does this ADVERSELY affect someone? because you're not pushing your missions/arcs and getting people to rate them? seriously?
3 - what's that got to do with cheating? if ae/ma is popular and it's pulling in droves of people... why is that a bad thing?
4 um, ok...
what post are you replying to? i don't see where you're pointing out the 'adversely affecting people' caused by ae/ma. seriously - server lag? so, basically you're saying that a larger population adversely affects the server... and that this population boom is caused by ae/ma... and so many are playing in ae/ma because of farming... and that LAG is how it adversely affects you...
so, essentially, by making the points you made - you also see no problem in playing ae/ma in any fashion you desire; and that the only problem is that the devs can't deal with the overwhelming amount of people playing the game.
ok
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
but it was ok to exploit winterlord xp?
it was ok to exploit folks like fire tanks herding entire maps/zones and powerleveling folks from 1-50 in a couple of days?
it's ok to exploit ingame mechanics and form a "super team" of say all fire/rad controllers, and exploit the stacking of all those abilities, AND exploit a double xp weekend, to level them all from 1-50 in that weekend's time?
and it was ok to run a half hour speed katie run a dozen times a day for weeks on end, in order to EXPLOIT the tf/recipe system?
to expect punishment for people playing with ae/ma (which was modified for player use for OVER A YEAR'S TIME, that we know of... possibly longer... 20%+ of the lifetime of this game), when all other forms of exploitation of the game have just been given a nod and a wink... to expect punishment for "abusing" a system that was played/tested/whatever for over a year, a system that posi even stated they "did not expect it to not be abused" or however he bass-ackwardly stated it, to expect punishment for people who are simply playing the game in front of them -- when OBVIOUSLY the vast majority of players are doing it (i know for a fact a number of vocal supporters of posi's ban/delete statements, have themselves leveled toons from 1-50 on rikti farms) -- that makes no sense at all.
and i've spoken with my wallet. i also know a lot of others who have done likewise. the forumites are always a small minority in any game, yet they feel the speak for "the people"; which, they rarely do.
it's called hypocrisy and alienating the actual playerbase, by taking offense at THIS "abuse" while never having "punished" all the other exploitations which i've mentioned.
please.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
About the only applicable past events I can think of would be the Winter Lord's from way back and possibly the smoke grenade/caltrops bug from release. The big difference between now and then is there's a different person in charge of the game (who, incidentally, wanted to pull the Winter Lord event as soon as they discovered the problem).
And as far as it goes, THIS farming detracted from my play experience by making it harder to find teams to do the more story based MA arcs or any of the TFs out there (which I do like to do). Also on a lot of my lowbies, until I moved them into somewhere like Talos (stupid long trek at level 2) I tended to get a bombardment of tells asking if I wanted to start/join a farm mission. Bleh.
As I said before though, I don't agree with Positron's stance, but he has a perfectly viable argument. <shrug>
About the only applicable past events I can think of would be the Winter Lord's from way back and possibly the smoke grenade/caltrops bug from release. The big difference between now and then is there's a different person in charge of the game (who, incidentally, wanted to pull the Winter Lord event as soon as they discovered the problem).
And as far as it goes, THIS farming detracted from my play experience by making it harder to find teams to do the more story based MA arcs or any of the TFs out there (which I do like to do). Also on a lot of my lowbies, until I moved them into somewhere like Talos (stupid long trek at level 2) I tended to get a bombardment of tells asking if I wanted to start/join a farm mission. Bleh.
As I said before though, I don't agree with Positron's stance, but he has a perfectly viable argument. <shrug>
Yes. Posi's arguement is viable but his initial post could have been done better. Meant to ask, has anyone check the official boards today to see if Posi has said anything? I haven't been able to get to the boards today due to work.
Overall they're saying they'll take away at least some of the PLed levels, suspend MA access to some PL publishers, and possibly ban the worst PL publishing offenders. On top of that they're discouraging people from posting future banable missions by making missions that get banned continue to take up an arc slot.
Honestly though, I really can't see any way Posi could have worded it that at least some portion of the playerbase (a nicely vocal portion to to some extent) wouldn't piss and moan and cry doom. Hell, they'd still complain if it was only a 'going forward' comment. They'd go on and on about how their farms weren't hurting anyone and how unfair this is and that they're quitting right this instant when their subscription runs out ....
Well that's interesting. I would think with all the furor that was generated that at least one redname would have stepped in with a white flag of truce and an olive branch. Ah well, typical Posi. I was just reading up on the latest news on DCUO, if that game is even half as good as the preliminaries say then it's bye bye to Coh
how EXACTLY is it cheating?
how EXACTLY does it adversely affect you?
i noticed in your "better than thou" posting, you neglected to define anything. kudos to ya.
edit: no, REALLY... i have a couple of arcs i've put a LOT of time and effort into. probably half the people that have run them have given them 4/5 and left nice comments. yet, i'm struggling to get 100 votes on my arcs.
how EXACTLY is this "stuff" cheating, and HOW does it adversely affect you?
do you run TF/SF a lot one one toon? that's farming. according to you, farming is cheating, yes?
have you gotten ANY badges, thru other than just normal, random play? that's farming for badges. hope you didn't cheat like that.
accolades? recipes? did you hide in a pvp zone for hours for X badge? did you farm pvp kills for base items?
no really... only casual players MIGHT be not guilty of farming one thing or another. and that's cheating. must be nice to be perfect.
I think the COH staff have outlined how exactly it is cheating. But cheaters will always defend their cheating with all kinds of rationalizations. One of the most popular rationalizations is they allowed me to do it so it's not cheating.
Well to use a real life analogy, your car can probably go a hundred miles an hour. But there is still a speed limit. Just beause the auto industry made a car that can go 100 plus miles an hour and just because the government built the road does not justify your speeding. And whether your speeding adversely affects me personally is irrelevant since rules, laws, etc are in place to protect the community as a whole.
The difference is that if I get a speeding ticket because I was speeding, I don't expect the cop to be a complete A$$hat. Just give me my ticket and let me pay my fine. I also don't expect all the people who are driving the speed limit to pull over to the side of the road and laugh at my misfortune and give me their soapbox about how law abiding they are. I hope you are not this black and white in real life.
Were i live.. Do a 100 km/h on a road designated 50... you will loser your license... pretty mutch the same thing... Also if they catch you speeding say 5-6 times.. they will take your license... in the same way if you publish the same mission/arc even after warnings you will prolly have sterner measuers taken... So i say it was a very good comparison.
This have been a good conversation
I can tell already there are some really enlightened people here that will contribute so much to society when they decide to finally grow up and learn how the real world works. I bet five years from now I'll be reading some post on the internet from an MMO gamer who got fat and diabetic eating chocolate and is trying to sue Hershey's for making him that way, and I'll just know it's one of you special little snowflakes. In the meantime, just keep those defense mechanisms firing away, and always remember, that no matter what happens to you, it's never your fault. It'd be a real shame if any one of you would actually try to change yourself for the better.
DCU does look quite nice I do have to say. From what it looks, it might be a bit PvP oriented for a lot of folks though.
DCU does look quite nice I do have to say. From what it looks, it might be a bit PvP oriented for a lot of folks though.
There appear to be designated areas of Metropolis and Gotham that are PvP areas and I don't think you can just walk up to a villain and start a fight, I think the villain has to be up to something first. Could be wrong but that's my take from what's been released.
And yes, many MMO's don't measure up to the preliminaries.........Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies spring to mind....such promise..... luckily Star Wars Old Republic should make up for the debacle that Galaxies became.
how EXACTLY is it cheating?
how EXACTLY does it adversely affect you?
i noticed in your "better than thou" posting, you neglected to define anything. kudos to ya.
edit: no, REALLY... i have a couple of arcs i've put a LOT of time and effort into. probably half the people that have run them have given them 4/5 and left nice comments. yet, i'm struggling to get 100 votes on my arcs.
how EXACTLY is this "stuff" cheating, and HOW does it adversely affect you?
do you run TF/SF a lot one one toon? that's farming. according to you, farming is cheating, yes?
have you gotten ANY badges, thru other than just normal, random play? that's farming for badges. hope you didn't cheat like that.
accolades? recipes? did you hide in a pvp zone for hours for X badge? did you farm pvp kills for base items?
no really... only casual players MIGHT be not guilty of farming one thing or another. and that's cheating. must be nice to be perfect.
I think the COH staff have outlined how exactly it is cheating. But cheaters will always defend their cheating with all kinds of rationalizations. One of the most popular rationalizations is they allowed me to do it so it's not cheating.
Well to use a real life analogy, your car can probably go a hundred miles an hour. But there is still a speed limit. Just beause the auto industry made a car that can go 100 plus miles an hour and just because the government built the road does not justify your speeding. And whether your speeding adversely affects me personally is irrelevant since rules, laws, etc are in place to protect the community as a whole.
The difference is that if I get a speeding ticket because I was speeding, I don't expect the cop to be a complete A$$hat. Just give me my ticket and let me pay my fine. I also don't expect all the people who are driving the speed limit to pull over to the side of the road and laugh at my misfortune and give me their soapbox about how law abiding they are. I hope you are not this black and white in real life.
Were i live.. Do a 100 km/h on a road designated 50... you will loser your license... pretty mutch the same thing... Also if they catch you speeding say 5-6 times.. they will take your license... in the same way if you publish the same mission/arc even after warnings you will prolly have sterner measuers taken... So i say it was a very good comparison.
if you're doing twice the posted speed limit, you're recklessly endangering the lives of others. speed limits are inplace for a reason (most of the time).
how EXACTLY is that a good comparison to someone farming, which has absolutely NO AFFECT on YOUR gameplay, unless you're a worthless, lazy, doorsitter. i can understand doorsitters getting upset by being booted from teams repeatedly. but um... doorsitters aren't going to be taken seriously, since, well, they're worthless.
i have yet to see anyone make statements which show how it adversely affects them; i've only seen half-assed - nonsensical completely EXAGGERATED comparisons to real life events.
so, i will have to continue to take it, that the lack of ability of anyone to simply enunciate the adverse effect to THEMSELVES (other than someone griping about lag... gee, if the game is popular it lags... yeah, that's so not a farming issue)... i'll have to assume that it's just a bunch of band-wagoneers spouting off non-factual rhetoric.
but please, if you're not a worthless, lazy, doorsitter, and you're reading this, and this ae/ma farming has adversely affected YOU... please enlighten me on HOW.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
How does it affect me(playerbase)? This question is nonsense. It is not up to us to answer a dopey question like this. The rules are rules, designated by the owners of the property. If you didnt like the rules, 5yrs later is a little bit late to complain or challenge them now. Dont you think?
If you break the rules and do something wrong, you should get punished. How much punishment? As much as the owners believe is warranted to curb the infringements(they could also suffer knowingly if they are overboard, ntl). You can dislike them, but argument isnt likely to get you anywhere but more hot under your own collar.
Does it affect you how rule breakers are punished? The consistency of your bullish remarks appear as it likely could. Retribution and/or removal might be at your doorstep. It could be like getting fired before you can quit to save face, damian7.
The reason why those individuals might be punished is clear and above debate. You/I do not make the rules. Appearantly you dont like limits and restrictions that sometimes require you to moderate yourself. If the infraction was created or unregulated by another entity you find it well within your prerogative to commit the transgression? Nonsense and quite frankly despicable, damian7.
To say you didnt read your rules of the road booklet, law requirements of a different state or country and claim that somehow it protects you from scrutiny after breaching the law is ridiculous to say the least.
[u}Ignorance is not an excuse or remotely a valid defense.[/u]
Now, to say that the developers are above fault here is also incorrect, and I dont believe anyone is saying otherwise. The majority does fall on the players who exploited the system. To say that Autocomplete missions isnt exploitation and griefing of the system is horribly imbecilic.
Also, I dont give a rats a** how Mr. Miller stated it. These players blatantly broke his rules! The guy should be really pis*ed off. They tried to bring the playerbase a tool to create something that adds their personal flavor to the game and it was abused sickeningly. When the gears grind to a halt on innovation dont be looking at the dev team asking 'why'?. This type of garbage influences creativity when people just take incongruous advantage of it.
Mistakes were made throughout this ordeal and should be treated as mistakes, not game ending failures. Everyone needs to pull in the claws, deal with the infractors, dust themselves off, and get to work on closing the loopholes. Go earn your cape the same way that everyone within the rules have earned them since their creation. Legitimately.
Agreed. Far as I'm concerned there is more then enough blame to go around:
1. AE was released with loopholes/exploits/oversights that could and should have been corrected beforehand, imo. Granted finding every mistake or loophole is a long task, but I would think they would have prioritized things like the XP value table for all creatures being correct. Things like the Rikti Comm officers and the fire imps clearly were not. The Devs also had plenty of notice and alerts coming to them about the farms and how people were essentially raping the AE system for XP, yet they wait until after Free Reactivation and the Anniversary Event to release any form of fix much less shut down the farms??? A very slow response time. Granted shutting DOWN the great new feature for until it was repaired DURING the Anniversary/Free Reactivation would have been bad, but it would have stopped the exploit/raping that was going on. The Devs however must have been having "blind faith" that the players wouldn't use these loopholes. Kudos to the ones that didn't!
2. The Players broke rules and regulations by the creation and implementation of mission that broke the rules of the game and the AE.
About the only applicable past events I can think of would be the Winter Lord's from way back and possibly the smoke grenade/caltrops bug from release. The big difference between now and then is there's a different person in charge of the game (who, incidentally, wanted to pull the Winter Lord event as soon as they discovered the problem).
And as far as it goes, THIS farming detracted from my play experience by making it harder to find teams to do the more story based MA arcs or any of the TFs out there (which I do like to do). Also on a lot of my lowbies, until I moved them into somewhere like Talos (stupid long trek at level 2) I tended to get a bombardment of tells asking if I wanted to start/join a farm mission. Bleh.
As I said before though, I don't agree with Positron's stance, but he has a perfectly viable argument. <shrug>
so it detracted from your play experience because you couldn't get teams... already covered that and lag. look to yourself for the answer to people not wanting to team with you. i have had zero problem getting any sort of non-ma/ae team since it was released.
so, here's another person who has to admit that it has not affected him/her adversely. gotcha... QQing cuz it's cool, jumping on the bandwagon, whatever.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
what in the world are you talking about?
i'm not going to continue to repeat BLATANTLY OBVIOUS FACTS. if you are incapable of reading and responding and articulating something other than well, NOTHING, why even reply?
what rules were broken?
what rules were broken which hadn't been broken a bazillion times before?
what exactly is the fault of any player? name ONE ITEM IN ANY MMO EVER --
one
one single item
in ANY mmo EVER
that has not been pushed as far as it could by the playerbase
name ONE -- in COH -- that has not been pushed as far as it could by the playerbase, since coh beta.
go ahead, name ONE
you're very right, IGNORANCE IS NO EXCUSE.
go ahead, let's live in reality, shall we? i mean, your holier than thou speech - bring it to reality and let's see which side is being ignorant, in an honest fashion. can we do that? are we capable of being honest and factual, and not going on a holier than thou "oh imma tell, you was breaking an unknown rule"... unknown rule? was it spelled out in no uncertain terms? or, was it (using someone's bad comparison), "don't speed", but no speed limit was posted?
i take offense at the righteous indignation attitudes (full of ignorance, by the way), which have NOTHING to back them. so, go ahead, tell me one time in ANY mmo where the playerbase have not pushed ANYTHING to its limit.... if a game CAN do it, the players WILL do it. being ignorant of that one, teeny, tiny, SIMPLE concept -- is no excuse.
being holier than thou -- you should be on the side of right, before copping that 'tude, bub.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
how EXACTLY is it cheating?
how EXACTLY does it adversely affect you?
i noticed in your "better than thou" posting, you neglected to define anything. kudos to ya.
edit: no, REALLY... i have a couple of arcs i've put a LOT of time and effort into. probably half the people that have run them have given them 4/5 and left nice comments. yet, i'm struggling to get 100 votes on my arcs.
how EXACTLY is this "stuff" cheating, and HOW does it adversely affect you?
do you run TF/SF a lot one one toon? that's farming. according to you, farming is cheating, yes?
have you gotten ANY badges, thru other than just normal, random play? that's farming for badges. hope you didn't cheat like that.
accolades? recipes? did you hide in a pvp zone for hours for X badge? did you farm pvp kills for base items?
no really... only casual players MIGHT be not guilty of farming one thing or another. and that's cheating. must be nice to be perfect.
I think the COH staff have outlined how exactly it is cheating. But cheaters will always defend their cheating with all kinds of rationalizations. One of the most popular rationalizations is they allowed me to do it so it's not cheating.
Well to use a real life analogy, your car can probably go a hundred miles an hour. But there is still a speed limit. Just beause the auto industry made a car that can go 100 plus miles an hour and just because the government built the road does not justify your speeding. And whether your speeding adversely affects me personally is irrelevant since rules, laws, etc are in place to protect the community as a whole.
The difference is that if I get a speeding ticket because I was speeding, I don't expect the cop to be a complete A$$hat. Just give me my ticket and let me pay my fine. I also don't expect all the people who are driving the speed limit to pull over to the side of the road and laugh at my misfortune and give me their soapbox about how law abiding they are. I hope you are not this black and white in real life.
Were i live.. Do a 100 km/h on a road designated 50... you will loser your license... pretty mutch the same thing... Also if they catch you speeding say 5-6 times.. they will take your license... in the same way if you publish the same mission/arc even after warnings you will prolly have sterner measuers taken... So i say it was a very good comparison.
if you're doing twice the posted speed limit, you're recklessly endangering the lives of others. speed limits are inplace for a reason (most of the time).
how EXACTLY is that a good comparison to someone farming, which has absolutely NO AFFECT on YOUR gameplay, unless you're a worthless, lazy, doorsitter. i can understand doorsitters getting upset by being booted from teams repeatedly. but um... doorsitters aren't going to be taken seriously, since, well, they're worthless.
i have yet to see anyone make statements which show how it adversely affects them; i've only seen half-assed - nonsensical completely EXAGGERATED comparisons to real life events.
so, i will have to continue to take it, that the lack of ability of anyone to simply enunciate the adverse effect to THEMSELVES (other than someone griping about lag... gee, if the game is popular it lags... yeah, that's so not a farming issue)... i'll have to assume that it's just a bunch of band-wagoneers spouting off non-factual rhetoric.
but please, if you're not a worthless, lazy, doorsitter, and you're reading this, and this ae/ma farming has adversely affected YOU... please enlighten me on HOW.
Well i will try and find a comparison that does not offend your sense of sensability. Saddly i do not find one that i can't see you picking appart in one way or another so i am going to stand by my earlier statemtn that if you break stablished laws and/or rules you get punished.
The best example i can find is two people of legal age having sex in a bush on a city square... peple around can see them and hear them.. this does not adversly affect anyone and one can just look away if that sort of thing does not appeal to you. Well this is still against the were i live and the police would mostlikely tell you to stop doing what you are doing, should they 45 min later get another call that you are at it again in the same bush at the same square butt naked and bumping they might escort you of the square... And so on and so fort. In the ned there is a risk you would get a court order to stay out of the damm bush. Same with this system. You might not get a perma-ban the fist time but do it enough or enough times and you would get something more than a mild slap on the wrist.
Does this make more sense to you as were i stand on this issue, for all i care you can have orgy in that bush but there are rules that say you can't and someone will be botherd by it...
This have been a good conversation
And incidentally, wouldn't you (and people like you) be the ones "QQing" as you put it? I'm pretty much fine with this whole decision. As you pointed out none of my complaints against the PLing were really huge (still existent but not big issues). I think it's a somewhat ill-advised decision on the dev's part, but it won't hurt me, or (to my knowledge) any of my SG mates, as we were all calmly running the missions for their story not the XP/inf gain. You seem to be the one complaining about the decision and all.
This one I believe:
It's an item in the rules of conduct that you agree to abide by every time you start up the game. Generally speaking, they have banned people in the past for violating that rule too. It's generally been the badge-farmers who find some ridiculously easy way to get a difficult badge, get it on several characters and then don't bug-report it (even when they do bug-report it the badge is usually removed). So yea, it's been broken before, but then people have also been punished for breaking it before.And seriously you can't possibly believe that being able to level as quickly as some could using the meow farms was intended? So yea, the devs are well within their rights to remove access to uber-PLed characters, but I think it's an ill-advised move to do so.
This one I believe:
It's an item in the rules of conduct that you agree to abide by every time you start up the game. Generally speaking, they have banned people in the past for violating that rule too. It's generally been the badge-farmers who find some ridiculously easy way to get a difficult badge, get it on several characters and then don't bug-report it (even when they do bug-report it the badge is usually removed). So yea, it's been broken before, but then people have also been punished for breaking it before.And seriously you can't possibly believe that being able to level as quickly as some could using the meow farms was intended? So yea, the devs are well within their rights to remove access to uber-PLed characters, but I think it's an ill-advised move to do so.
you can't seriously believe that everyone running a fire tank, or being PL'd by a fire tank, for months on end, was not willfully exploiting the game, can you?
you can't seriously believe that all the people involved, on a daily basis, on super teams, whose express AND STATED design is to EXPLOIT ingame mechanics and provide incredibly insane teaming combinations, is not STILL wlilfully exploiting the game, can you?
do i really need to do it for every instance of past, AND CURRENT, game exploitation, which is ignored? or, which the game gets changed, and essentially, is ignored?
you can't seriously NOT know all of these things, and expect to be given any credence to any opinion you have on this topic... you do realize this, yes?
the precedent, laid out by every member of the dev team, past and present -- is to give lip service blah blah about farming, to shut up the hundred or so shrills on the forums, and let the other 130,000+ players enjoy their game.
facts... support that.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Reading comprehension? I'll admit that the zone-lag in the lower zones isn't as bad as a hammy raid, or a zombie/rikti invasion, but it's to the point that I don't like going into those zone's AE centers.And incidentally, wouldn't you (and people like you) be the ones "QQing" as you put it? I'm pretty much fine with this whole decision. As you pointed out none of my complaints against the PLing were really huge (still existent but not big issues). I think it's a somewhat ill-advised decision on the dev's part, but it won't hurt me, or (to my knowledge) any of my SG mates, as we were all calmly running the missions for their story not the XP/inf gain. You seem to be the one complaining about the decision and all.
i'm complaining about what people always complain about -- other people telling ME what is and isn't fun. or how i should spend MY time ingame.
it's laggy? complain to the gaming company. reason it wasn't laggy before is no one wanted to play, cuz the game is mediocre and it's major point of praise is the character creation system.
i do like changes they've made the past couple of years... but... leveling a toon to 50 is a boring grind. farming is a fast grind, but grind nonetheless. once you hit 50, you can start grinding for purples, and now pvp sets.
for a game that's supposedly all about the journey to 50... the JOURNEY TO 50... why don't i see new content for every level range each issue? i15 has a whopping new tf for blue and sf for red -- lvl 35-50? or is it only 45-50?... wow, another underwhelming issue... who'd have thunk? not a hell of a lot of lower level content the past couple of years, eh?
but, remember... the game is about the journey to lvl 50... yup, that's why there has been ONE new exclusive zone to red side... grandville... oopsies, that's max level. not for low level toons, unless you're pl'ing/farming.
argue something relevant to reality. it is incredibly irresponsible to expect players of coh, who have AND CONTINUE to exploit every game mechanic inplace... to NOT continue to exploit every game mechanic inplace.. it is irresponsible to the point of abject stupidity.
but hey, there's rules (that have been broken by the majority of players and even HAVE GUIDES AND THREADS UP EVERY DAY ON THE OFFICIAL FORUMS about how to abuse ingame mechanics)... a blind person can see the precedent set every single day of this game's life...
no? go look right this moment, and count the number of super team threads there are (not super group... and if you don't know what a super team is.. find out, and catch up to coh from the past 3+ years).... see how many of these teams, whose intent is to exploit ingame mechanics... get locked/banned/deleted... cuz it's none.
but, oh, THIS time, we're going to quote rules and make examples. THIS time, we're going to dictate to players how we will ALLOW them to play.
i'm using the word 'hypocrite' correctly when i throw it around in regards to this foolishness. opine all you want, but precedent and indeed, common sense - are both against any opinion which does not include the playerbase of any MMO fully utilizing/playing/exploiting ingame mechanics to their utmost. and for a dev, or dev team, to believe otherwise -- honestly is willful negligence, ignorance, and even stupidity.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
how EXACTLY is it cheating?
how EXACTLY does it adversely affect you?
i noticed in your "better than thou" posting, you neglected to define anything. kudos to ya.
edit: no, REALLY... i have a couple of arcs i've put a LOT of time and effort into. probably half the people that have run them have given them 4/5 and left nice comments. yet, i'm struggling to get 100 votes on my arcs.
how EXACTLY is this "stuff" cheating, and HOW does it adversely affect you?
do you run TF/SF a lot one one toon? that's farming. according to you, farming is cheating, yes?
have you gotten ANY badges, thru other than just normal, random play? that's farming for badges. hope you didn't cheat like that.
accolades? recipes? did you hide in a pvp zone for hours for X badge? did you farm pvp kills for base items?
no really... only casual players MIGHT be not guilty of farming one thing or another. and that's cheating. must be nice to be perfect.
I think the COH staff have outlined how exactly it is cheating. But cheaters will always defend their cheating with all kinds of rationalizations. One of the most popular rationalizations is they allowed me to do it so it's not cheating.
Well to use a real life analogy, your car can probably go a hundred miles an hour. But there is still a speed limit. Just beause the auto industry made a car that can go 100 plus miles an hour and just because the government built the road does not justify your speeding. And whether your speeding adversely affects me personally is irrelevant since rules, laws, etc are in place to protect the community as a whole.
The difference is that if I get a speeding ticket because I was speeding, I don't expect the cop to be a complete A$$hat. Just give me my ticket and let me pay my fine. I also don't expect all the people who are driving the speed limit to pull over to the side of the road and laugh at my misfortune and give me their soapbox about how law abiding they are. I hope you are not this black and white in real life.
Were i live.. Do a 100 km/h on a road designated 50... you will loser your license... pretty mutch the same thing... Also if they catch you speeding say 5-6 times.. they will take your license... in the same way if you publish the same mission/arc even after warnings you will prolly have sterner measuers taken... So i say it was a very good comparison.
if you're doing twice the posted speed limit, you're recklessly endangering the lives of others. speed limits are inplace for a reason (most of the time).
how EXACTLY is that a good comparison to someone farming, which has absolutely NO AFFECT on YOUR gameplay, unless you're a worthless, lazy, doorsitter. i can understand doorsitters getting upset by being booted from teams repeatedly. but um... doorsitters aren't going to be taken seriously, since, well, they're worthless.
i have yet to see anyone make statements which show how it adversely affects them; i've only seen half-assed - nonsensical completely EXAGGERATED comparisons to real life events.
so, i will have to continue to take it, that the lack of ability of anyone to simply enunciate the adverse effect to THEMSELVES (other than someone griping about lag... gee, if the game is popular it lags... yeah, that's so not a farming issue)... i'll have to assume that it's just a bunch of band-wagoneers spouting off non-factual rhetoric.
but please, if you're not a worthless, lazy, doorsitter, and you're reading this, and this ae/ma farming has adversely affected YOU... please enlighten me on HOW.
Well i will try and find a comparison that does not offend your sense of sensability. Saddly i do not find one that i can't see you picking appart in one way or another so i am going to stand by my earlier statemtn that if you break stablished laws and/or rules you get punished.
The best example i can find is two people of legal age having sex in a bush on a city square... peple around can see them and hear them.. this does not adversly affect anyone and one can just look away if that sort of thing does not appeal to you. Well this is still against the were i live and the police would mostlikely tell you to stop doing what you are doing, should they 45 min later get another call that you are at it again in the same bush at the same square butt naked and bumping they might escort you of the square... And so on and so fort. In the ned there is a risk you would get a court order to stay out of the damm bush. Same with this system. You might not get a perma-ban the fist time but do it enough or enough times and you would get something more than a mild slap on the wrist.
Does this make more sense to you as were i stand on this issue, for all i care you can have orgy in that bush but there are rules that say you can't and someone will be botherd by it...
make whatever comparison you want. i'm looking at the official site's forum - player events... on the front page alone, i quickly count at least 5 or 6 long threads about super teams -- teams of players joining together with the statted (and explicit) intention of abusing/exploiting ingame mechanics so as to lvl super quickly.
something that has been ongoing for years in coh.
much like all the other examples of actual ingame exploitation which has either been "fixed" by changing game mechanics (say... winterlord and fire tanks), or willfully ignored by the entire game staff for LITERAL years (super teams, teams built to lvl from 1-50 on double xp weekends, etc).
what example do you have to counter years of precedent, set by the staff at the gaming company, which CONTINUES to ignore super teams built with the explicit goal of exploiting and abusing ingame mechanics?
oh, but it's ok, cuz we're going to ignore 5 years of pl'ing and farming, and we're only going to hide behind rules THIS time.
that... is hypocrisy.
so, to use your speeding example. the cops ignore everyone every day, doing 75 in a 50. then, after 5 years, one of the cops spills coffee on his lap, because he thought that he could drive with his knees, drink coffee, eat 4 donuts (ALL 4 at one time), read on his laptop AND text on his cell --- all at the same time, and someone happened to be passing him (cuz he's doing 30 in this 50), and NOW he decides to be angry and take it out on that person doing 50 by lying and saying they were doing 126mph.
that is what this is akin to, but only if you don't ignore 5 years of rampant pl/farming. if you ignore the 5 year history of this game, and say "nooooooooooo we only start paying attention TODAY". then sure, you can justify ANYTHING.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
I'm not really sure where you seem to be getting this idea that I'm new to the game but oh well.
It's well within their rights to do so though. You're equating this issue with fire tanks taking people to 50 in days, some of the more obscene AT/powerset combos (and team combinations) out there which also take days to level to 50, and to the WL event (which I skipped over ... vacation ya know) which to my understanding still couldn't level someone from one to fifty in less than half a day (under two hours was the best reported time I've seen). THIS little leveling quirk was by far and away the most obscene one ever introduced into the game and one of the more well-known. That last little bit was mostly the problem I'll wager.If it had been kept on the DL, and hadn't been all over the place it would have been handled quietly and like all the other, more severe exploits that have in the past and will likely continue to crop up in the game. Which is, incidentally, pretty much how they're handling it now.
And you realize that it's the job of the devs to dictate how we're allowed to play the game yes? They determine what's acceptable and what's not. What's too fast/easy (therefore deserving of a nerf) and what's too slow/hard (and therefore needs a buff). They have datamining tools and the like set up to help them analyze that. Sometimes it takes them forever and a day to really notice (like how old defiance sucked) and other times it's fairly obvious to them quite quickly (old-time smoke grenade ... or this MA issue). Their job is to fix it, reign it in or buff it up. Something they do at least adequately in my opinion.
I mean seriously, you did notice that almost all of your examples of 'exploitative' behavior in the game have been 'fixed' yes? The ones that aren't either fall within the dev's acceptable range (likely at the high end of the scale), aren't considered a big enough problem to address (fixes use work-hours), or are probably going to get addressed at some point.
Anyhoo: