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Update on a few things

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Chris, Mar 31, 2020.

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  1. Thodin

    Thodin Avatar

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    I dont know that I agree with this. Perhaps don't drop the ban hammer, but bang it on their F****** heads until they realize - THESE PEOPLE SPECIFICALLY ARE KILLING THE GAME by exploiting this. The fact there is no way/reason for new/returning players to attempt being competitive in a constantly CHANGING XP gain/loss structure. I say ban them them until the 10x buff goes away so the rest of us NON-Min/Maxer's trying to catch up with the current competitive skill/adventure levels..... maybe give them a chance...? I know plenty of people that give up because the curve is too inconsistent and unbalanced. In fact I am certain sure that's a MAJOR reason 10x XP incentive was implemented ,.. helping people enjoy the game, not get even further behind. These people absolutely know better. Enjoy playing with yourselves when I, and many people finally toss in the towel for never having a chance, (or more importantly a reason) to catch up. I've played since day one, i've lost 10 million in 1 death when that took weeks, or for me (months) to get. Don't act like these jokers don't know they are deliberately breaking the game, and are producing their own demise.
     
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  2. Thodin

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    Don't let your desperation to retain active players become your weakness, favoritism seem's to run thick in the development & administration of this game and it's starting to give me hives...
    END
     
  3. Tiina Onir

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    Or, just do like I said and roll back the XP.

    To be frank, players aren't killing the game. The community is one of the best things SotA has going for it. What's killing the game is the ham-fisted balancing, and a disappointing main quest-line which is severely lacking in player agency.
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2020
  4. jschoice

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    I strongly agree with this. I was a strong advocate for creating a shared XP pool because it never made sense that bank space, gold, and being in a guild had to be shared among alts. For me sharing needed to be all or nothing. I also felt that a shared XP pool would make it a better deal to buy an alt slot which was a revenue for the company. Otherwise it is a better deal to the player to just open another free account but if I could use my shared XP pool to have a crafter only character or if I prefer to RP different types of characters this would make sense. I never was a learn all the skills on one character type of player. I want my Ranger type to be known as a ranger and not a ranger one day and a mage another day.

    The problem I see which lead to these exploits is the fact that you made a decision to play around with the XP and increasing it to 10x for questing. I can understand doubling XP as many of us are now left at home and could see this as a way to play more but this constantly changing how much XP a person can earn is sort of ridiculous.

    For some reason what should I thought was a core design feature about this game that was stated over and over and over again throughout development is that the power curve flattens out after 100 and even more significantly after 120. That the only reason to try and hit 200 in a skill was to say you could but it really didn't ad anything to ones power. When I watch the min maxers out they state that there is a significant benefit and power boost for getting skills over 120. So either they are mistaken, or there has been a significant design change that to my knowledge has never been clearly explained. That I find frustrating because people who have the time to grind millions and millions of XP at UT or now a Control Point will always have a significant advantage to a more balanced player who enjoy doing different scenes instead of standing in one scene 10 to 12 hours a day every day.

    I understand having a flexible design process but I never realized flexible meant on the spot without really thinking about it. The 10x XP for quests seems to have been a quick decision and because some idiots found a way to exploit it shared xp pools need to be removed.
     
  5. Storm Silverhand

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    Regardless a few have Explored the hell out of this , and now we have all been penalized, by having the ties between our Toons cut , i hope the ones responsible take there punishment like boys / and Girls they "are" and don't keep complaining, "You Got Caught " suck it up Get over it , if you cant and you keep reoffending . i hope your prepared to take the concrquces of "your" actions, knowing your Exploits are hurting all the other players in the game. "YOU DO THE CRIME YOU DO THE TIME " and shut the F*** up !!!!!!!!

    "YOU DO THE CRIME DO THE TIME "

    Sorry I'm a passionate player "RANT OVER"
     
  6. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    Perhaps you missed this part:
     
  7. Urwendor

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    So they shall also be without any really penalties or punishment.

    To just lose the experience they cheated is just a correction. They will continue to exploit in the future and have probably done exploiting before.
     
  8. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
     
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  9. Urwendor

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    Who shall I throw the stone at?
     
    Last edited: Apr 1, 2020
  10. Urwendor

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    Who shall I throw the stone on!
     
  11. Urwendor

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    I feel that I have to clearify my point of view.

    I'm not against those who have their alts and main in a small group and do quests and adventure. It´s up to you what you do with your account(s) and your characters (if you don't do it to earn money perhaps).

    But when you do new alts just to get more experience on your main chracter, then you have crossed the line! And if you continue to do this, rince and repeat then you are cheating and should be banned.
     
  12. Storm Silverhand

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  13. Grimbone

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    This.
     
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  14. Thodin

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    Agreed, exploiters clearly are not the only reason this game seems to be struggling. The community size is modest at best yet devout & diehard! and it's breaking my heart watching all of us cling on for dear life waiting for __________ to be fixed/finished/balanced/delivered, but "dont lawyer me bro" Uhhhggg. Most of us have invested much more than just time and money... and the payback is feeling nothing short of a bad girlfriend / failing relationship. I REALLY just want this to work!!! But time has taught us history repeats itself and it's been a long haul!

    Tell me, who doesn't want a level playing field? ohh, the people exploiting the mechanics of the game to stay thousands of hours ahead of the average player!!!!!! We should all demand a level playing field to warrant being competitive in,... otherwise why play an MMO? seriously?

    Call me old fashioned but, I say set an example by punishing your children for being bad, and let the good kids continue gaining the benefits,... no need to punish everyone for their mistakes. No exceptions! Ban them for the duration of 10x XP and let us get on with it! releasing their names wouldn't be a bad idea either! might gain some revenue in name changes :p definitely need a list of punished exploiters publicly posted in game somewhere! I'd say lets have some fun and put a bounty on their heads but god knows that would get exploited too! LOL! THIS IS WHY WE CANT HAVE NICE THINGS!!!!!!!!!
     
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  15. Nevyn Waldail

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    I'm going to be a little irked if shared xp goes, I have 3 alts because I like my toons to have sepcific roles. this seems a strange fix to the 10x xp problem.

    For those saying it doesn't make RP sense, I think you are missing the very start of the storyline. All our alts are the same person just a different representation.
     
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  16. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    This isn't a fix to the 10X change. This was a change that was bad from day one. As mentioned, an employee who didn't play the game, made this change without talking to anyone else on the team because a player told him it would be a good idea. I have said this was a bad idea that constantly caused problem but hard to undo on probably a dozen streams. While some players like it and think it is convenient, unless a number of other big changes are made, it opens up a number of serious exploits and issues. The 10x XP thing was just the latest thing that made it clear that it is just handcuffing design in a number of ways. Basically, either you are ONE unit that shares everything including all quest flags OR your characters are truly split and each has their own xp pools and quests flags. That is just one of many issues that has come up from this. There are a half dozen ways we could work around it but all of them are hacky and will piss someone off. The obvious other options would be to just dramatically reduce quest XP for the main story line or make main story line quests account based. Still, there are other issues with it as well that would have to be solved.

    We can't keep working around this bad change just because some players want to more easily power level alts without the alt ever playing. The idea that the best way to make a crafter is to have an adventurer power level his XPs just makes it clear that the shared XP pool isn't the problem but rather that crafting XP rewards are just poorly setup for crafting. Again, this should have been fixed right after it happened but it involved server down time data migration and a lot of code changes. Changing it back was not easy or it would have been done long ago. Very sorry for those that planned characters around this.

    To mitigate the issue for those who have put all producer into an alt and want move the producer XPs to their main, I'll set all producer skills to 100% unlearn for the next week. If XPs are in your pool when the change is made, they will be able to go to either character. Only new XPs will be stored per character.

    tl;dr
    • Change was never intended and opens up too many exploits and doesn't make sense
    • The 10x quest XPs was just the catalyst that reminded us how broken the shared pool
    • Needing to PL your producer XPs with your adventuring character just proves that there are issues with producer XP generation and THAT is what needs to be fixed
    • All producer skills will be set to 100% return in the next patch in case anyone wants to unlearn skills on an alt
    Sorry this wasn't addressed sooner. The buck DOES stop here though. We have to choose our battles, especially lately with the massive distractions we all face. I'm sorry this change isn't popular with some but it needs to happen or other, more painful changes need to made. From the looks of it, the new character doing quests and then being deleted over and over again has been the best way to get producer xps for a while and the 10X xps just made it more visible. That isn't how it should work. Producers should get most of the producer xps from producing.

    Chris
     
  17. Elrond

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    Just here cause Chris mentioned crafting , we are beaten and broken...fix us . :)
     
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  18. HannahAlpenglow

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    No worries if you think this was a bad change and need to fix it, but continuing to tell us all that this was an unknown change made by a former employee, is well...

    From the R65 release notes draft (draft, so literally the change was known about ahead of time) -

    • Quality of Life
    • Hot keyable toggle for tooltips for inventory: Added option to disable tooltips for inventory list, added key mapping to toggle option, defaults to "," (comma).
    • Gold and Pooled Experience: These are now shared between characters on the same account.
     
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  19. Tiina Onir

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    It's good to see that the problems with crafting XP are (finally?) recognized.

    Strictly speaking, I have no objection to separating the pools, but at the same time, if we're separating everything, it needs to be EVERYTHING. It needs to be virtue.
     
  20. Chris

    Chris Tech Lord Moderator Ambassador SOTA Developer

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    On it starting next week. :)

    Yep, agreed.
     
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