Abusing the hell out of control point loot chests

you wont be able to log in and out very easily. The zone is very buggy when you get over a dozen people in it. In fact, I seriously doubt you can log back into the zone once you leave it.

 

I am not really sure what your point is here. I was in a guild run tonight,we held the control point with a party of eight, in friends mode. There is no reason to be in multiplayer and allow anyone else to loot the chest, unless you are trying for the 25% PVP bonus, which we never do. And if someone decides to do that and ignore the chest and let others have it, I still don't see what the problem is. They are holding the point, getting their XP and letting other folks loot,that is their decision.

I will add here we rotate the folks looting chest and it isn't a issue with one person looting all the chest for the other seven to hold the control point ( yes Vertas) with the right group combo of players. ( and no I don't mean level 100's either,the right players with the correct skill trees.) It doesn't take level 100's to do Vertas, what it takes is communication and knowing what skill trees work best against the mobs. So we rotate the looters each time so everyone in the party get to loot and start the loot list at the top again.

So you and your friends are in Deep Ravenswood in multiplayer. While you are focusing on killing wolves, spiders, skeletons, some one in multiplayer is harvesting every ore node, tree and cotton plant they see. So how is this not a "easy button" also? While your group is grinding XP as fast as you can,the guy behind you is harvesting everything he sees. So how does this hurt anyone? You pass up harvesting to grind XP, should they not be allowed to harvest what you don't take time to stop and do? This same principal applies to the control points in multiplayer and chest. Although this would be a waste of my time,looting chest all the time while someone else held the control point, if a group doesn't care and they let others loot, that is their decision, not yours nor mine.

 

So I think the problem understanding you're running into is that your viewpoint presents 3 arguments here which are self-contradictory and/or don't relate.

1. You did a control point in friends mode, people should just do that
2. If someone's doing it in multiplayer, they must ignore the chest for others to be able to loot it
3. If they're doing the point, they must allow the other player to loot it

The first one is irrelevant to the discussion, not in a dismissive way but in a "yes however thats not the issue". Whether someone "should" do something in one mode or another doesn't affect a discussion of "This is what happens when someone does do it in multiplayer". It's like saying "You should drive on the correct side of the road" when someone's discussing an accident where someone crossed an undivided highway into oncoming traffic.

The second one is provably false. Even if you are looting it, there is nothing that prevents anyone in multiplayer, whether in your party or not, from looting the chest as well, outside of you intentionally abusing a game mechanic to grief another player.

The third one is also false, in that no permission, party joining, or otherwise is required to swoop in on someone else's session and loot.

Great, however that's also irrelevant to the discussion.
The point isn't one person looting.
The point is you doing the control point with your 1 looter, then 10 people looting the chest who aren't affiliated.
Usually 1 person using 7 other accounts that are all low level.

Multiple reasons! First off, resource nodes in scenes can only be grabbed by one person, whereas the chest can be grabbed by everyone in the scene, every 3 minutes. So there's not a rate-limiter on how much gold a single chest can generate outside of number of people in the scene.
By comparison, a node can only be harvested by a single person, and takes a determined amount of time, that is factored into the balance. It also has a respawn requirement, and a requirement of movement that engages the player into both risk and downtime, which the chest does not.

As discussed above, the difference is not in the generation, but the imbalanced, unbounded generation.

I think we've covered this well enough, but just in case not, to re-summarize:
1. The group caring doesn't matter not do they "let" someone get the chest. Someone in multiplayer can loot the chest even if the group doesn't want them to, unless the group sacrifices 5 of their people to permanently lock out each chest.
2. It wouldn't be a waste of time, because it is arguably and (more importantly) provably one of the fastest way to generate an economic advantage, on par with 4x the rate of the shuttered eye was before it's last nerf. Which means, that for less risk than the shuttered eye (you had to be able to survive the climb), and less time (3 min reset vs 6 minute), you get 4x more loot than shuttered eye was before it's nerf.
3. This scales unboundedly(up to the zone player limit) and without risk, as a level 1 character has the stats and skills neccessary to get to the chests in these control points safely, and barring intentional griefing action on the part of the players in the control point, is not stoppable.
4. Which leads to people using all their alts and just rotating through them.
15-25k gold free an hour? Not that big a deal.
100-200k gold free an hour for sitting and doing nothing? A bit easier to see how this is imbalancing to the economy.


Hopefully that clears things up!

 

No, it doesn't. I don't get your point.

 

Imop this is beyond broken, and the 100 people doing it know its broken and expect changes for r37. you may think this is chump change loot but thats very far from correct. many people now have piles of gems piles of scrolls piles of resources of maple and pine wood and much more. some of these cps run 10 hours only stopping for reg refills, while all this is going on the instance is full of chest looters.

Chris said a fix was coming for CPs I do hope this one is on the list. Its not an expliot or a bug imop but maximing guild stratigies. 1 group in ur guild grinds the cp 2 other groups in your guild gets rich.

 

Every time Chris says there is a fix coming for control points,they change them to be harder for the groups trying to do them. Our guild group which is 8 people in the group, hold the control point and loots the chest, one person at a time. Well except for me, because I always pass on my spot for loot rotation, I let others have whatever is there.

 

We have noticed if one person zones out to get reagents, it causes serious lag issues and that is just eight of us there.

 

Made just less than 15k gold selling everything from the chest after an hour of being there. 15k/hour is not OP and will not harm the economy. If it was 30k+ per hour, then Chris would probably take a look at it. The gold/time factor is the only thing that matters. The "I don't like this activity" attitude has nothing to do with anything. If you think an activity is an exploit or cheat and could ruin the game, compute the gold/time and present that. If it's over 100k/hour then you probably have a point.
I can make about 15k/hour in my favorite grinding spot PLUS get about 200k adventurer experience. There are only a few teams of players that can run the control point at the highest level and they only do it a few hours a day. Plus, the instance is usually locked at max people. So, the opportunity to loot chests is very limited already.

Arguments:
- Economy flooding for no reason: Nope. 15k/hour is not 'economy flooding'.
- Using alts: Irrelevant. Alts can already be used to collect resources in game. If this was a problem, Port would have done something by now.
- No risk: Irrelevant. The game is not setup based on risk as much as time limiters. You fight a mob before looting a node not as 'risk' but as a time sink to slow down your gathering rate. If you die, it just takes more time to collect the resource.
- Looting a chest every 3 minutes: Irrelevant. The amount of loot in the chests isn't enough to worry per the gold/hour presented above. Doesn't matter if you can loot every 3 minutes, 1 minutes, or even every 10 seconds.
- Level 1 players will get mad loots: Irrelevant. If they are smart enough to do this, then more power to them. If a low level player can survive for an hour and get 15k gold, that would be a nice haul. I hope there are many strategies for them to employ in multiplayer to get ahead. Makes the game more interesting. For example, a low level player could follow a high level player around and get the loot left behind.

I will admit on the surface that this appears to be an exploit but looking deeper we find...nothing.
This is a non-problem that the devs will 'fix' because people are screaming at them.. like so many other 'problems'.

Hopefully that clears things up!

 

15k from chest sales. Did you include the gold you made while looting the chests in that total?

 

That was about 8k pure gold looted and another 6k or so from selling potions, repair kits, weapons, and gems. All of those items were sold at NPC vendors that give the highest price.

 

3 minute timer, it is possible, but hard, to make the 5 chest loop in 1 minute. So at best, you're going to have 3 characters doing the loop, making maybe 15K/hr each, for a total of $45k/hr, but to do that you have to be active every second and use a lot of computer resources. So possible? Sure. Maybe there are even a half dozen people doing it, but not an economic melt down.

 

I find that if your in a strict group with everyone looting you get better results. But I've been on runs where I've gotten more than other times, and it really becomes tiresome when a chest bugs out or someone just leaches the other 7 people looting.

 

I was doing a control point tonight. I still don't see the abuse but we just play in groups of 8 and the loot amount is very minimal for each of us as I mentioned before. There could be something I'm missing. I do love that we can all loot and especially because looting in a group in Sota is not perfect at the moment. We do the best we can, just sharing the looting of resources. I have never seen anyone in the groups I've been in abuse anything, but oh well. I'm not here to argue, just commenting on my own experience.

 

Play in Friends only

Seriously the risk of playing in multiplayer is running into other players, who may loot the chests, dead opponents, and resources available in the scene. They might even steal your kills.

The CP loot is good, but it is not that good, I think the real "abuse" is still in the xp generated by the control points.

 

Umuri hit the nail on the head with this one. It's extremely frustrating as one of the people standing on the control point, nonstop button mashing heals, (no time to take a break to loot chests for me!) while an army of noobs swarm from room to room getting rich while I lose 2k+ /hr on regs. This loot system for control points just baffles me. We're the level 80+'s and we don't get to loot, meanwhile we're PVP flagged, getting harassed by griefers, killing monsters that require a full group of 80+ with multiple healers, and amazing AOE dps. Why don't we get loot? Why are randoms getting loot instead of us?

We can't kill the people who don't PVP flag. I'm not interested in giving up the XP bonus to prevent it. I'm not hamstringing myself just to hamstring someone else. People who are level 40 should be doing level 40 things. Hunt in 3 skull zones, get a full group and do a 5 skull. Go gather mats and make yourself a set of gear, or trade them to a crafter with some coin if you don't prefer to tradeskill yourself.

Watching the same people night after night getting 100k+ off of our hard work while my cash flow stagnates? That's a slap in the face. Vertas Pass is NOT easy. You need competent players, who know what they are up against, have all the right skills leveled up, and have lots of magical gear. Nobody in our group is below 550 hp base. Most of the people are over 700. If we bring two or three people who are over adv lvl 100 we may be able to hold it with 6 or 7 but BARELY and that means no potty breaks, for anyone, at any time.

As far as the XP. Considering we get 0 income, it requires constant attention and minimal breaks, I don't think going from level 80 to level 82 in 8 hours is anything gamebreaking. It may be easier for other people to get to the level where CP is a viable option, if there was a place with similar flow of lower level monsters. Sanctus Spine was the perfect warmup, being able to pull ~1/3 of the xp we're pulling now PRIOR to the PVP bonus. I was doing Sanctus with 8 ppl at level 40.

If another CP were to be tweaked to fill the gap that the Sanctus Spine "fix" left, there would be no reason to complain about the XP we're pulling. As far as random people out of party looting the chests that we're unlocking, while we're not able to loot them, wtf pls fix.

edit: typo

 

LOL If you wanted loot...you can go get loot. What you want is the insane amounts of exp times 1.25 . Just run around with everyone else and get it....

Or is the exp more important?

I wish there was some way we could moon the people stuck on the cp as we run by on our way to another free chest.

 

I want to group with high level players, do challenging content, and when we succeed, I want to be rewarded.

 

That's why Pre-Trammel UO was so great. I dare you to try and loot my monster scrubby!

P.S. Go earn your own!

 

I will still maintain that if you are wanting chest, don't flag PVP and do it in friends. If you want to flag PVP and are worried about the extra 25% XP bonus, you risk someone else looting chest. Maybe the developers need to look at botting in control points again, to be sure bots are not in play while all this CP stuff seems to be a issue. Bot fighting and bot looting, maybe there are bots parked looting chest that you are unaware of? But anyway, you stated you are unwilling to give up your 25% PVP XP bonus, I wish I had a answer on how you should be able to get everything you want,the way you want it.

 

What does the mode I'm doing CP on have to do with me being unable to loot the chest, due to being too busy actually playing my character. The heals are THAT close. Honestly the DPS is that tight too, they can't be taking breaks to loot unless we have a really overpowered group.

This is the problem. Why am I unlocking chests for other people? The whole point of the system was to incentiveize us flagging PVP, and hunting in open multiplayer. Surely there can be a better loot system where loot goes to the person who is killing the monsters. Examples of said loot system can be seen in just about every modern MMO.

If anyone is botting in my groups I am entirely unaware of it. I have never and would never bot. I would not lend my hand to any person who I believed to be using 3rd party programs. I quit playing EQ Live entirely when I found out that just about everyone bots. The only fun I'm getting from video games is through APM. That's why I play games with fast paced action combat.

Are you suggesting that I'm being selfish or naive to believe that when I'm hunting monsters I should receive my share of the loot rewards? This is an obviously broken system that desperately needs a fix. I honestly feel bad for people who are spending hours doing nothing other than looting chests. It's pathetic. This is not your typical "PVnothing" gathering. This is people receiving some of if not the highest GPM available (without doing some form of RMT.) The loot should be reserved for the players who are clearing it, so they can continue progressing their characters. Instead of the level 40's buying our Silver and Gold ore, with the money that WE earned them, it should most CERTAINLY be the other way around.


I want to add that I am wholeheartedly and unabashedly against the idea that people are quite literally looting these chests on multiple characters, influxing hundreds of thousands of gold a day, without ever having killed a monster, crafted an item, mined a node, interacted with another player (trading, working) or donating to Port anything more than the $45 to open each extra account. This type of error will quite literally destroy the economy if it's not rectified soon. People will not stop abusing it.

I don't understand why we aren't simply receiving X amount of gold for each wave, with a chance for the random stuff you see in chests, or some other similar system.

This is a similar situation that led me to take my 2+ month break in the first place. I got to high level. I had a party of high level people to play with. We go to kill dragons, trolls, and explore the deepest darkest dungeons. Our rewards for success were nothing short of pennies on the dollar for what we farmed in low level zones, both money and experience wise.

Do you think a bunch of level 80s, or level 100+s should go back to farming 5 skull zones, or watch another group fight on a control point and loot chests mindlessly for hours just to compete economically? If that's the game I'm out.