Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[DR_Mechano]

2 minutes ago, Peerless Girl said:

My guess is dev resources were busy...y'know actually making the game work at that point. Please do remember this is a VOLUNTEER team who are not getting paid for this. This should've been done back 15 years ago by Paragon, by your logic (and yes, it should've been).

Yes this was also the time when they seeded the market with salvage, so yes they obviously had ideas to fix the problems of the past, so don't give me the whole 'making the game work' malarky, if they wanted to they could have fixed this the moment they seeded the market but chose not to an instead nerf it now...as I said...after the horse has bolted.

[Peerless Girl]

2 minutes ago, honoraryorange said:

So first, I don't necessarily disagree with this change, but....

 

The fact that this was slipped into the final build without getting comments on the test server is extremely underhanded and a very shitty move on your parts.

Exploits do not go into Beta patch notes, for what should be very obvious reasons.

[Inflated Donkey]

2 minutes ago, Peerless Girl said:

More or less it is. There was no working emulator/private server during Paragon's time. SEGS never actually got anywhere to this day, to my knowledge.

man, did you manage to dodge the whole drama that lead to homecoming's creation?

[Indystruck]

Allocation of resources and priorities be damned, if you do something that you end up deciding is bad, never fix it, because it is too late and you should've done it already.

[hazygreys]

2 minutes ago, Peerless Girl said:

More or less it is. There was no working emulator/private server during Paragon's time. SEGS never actually got anywhere to this day, to my knowledge.

I'd lean that towards the less side of things considering what SCoRE had going.

[Inflated Donkey]

2 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

All kinds of drama here, fun! But seriously, this change will most likely not be nearly as doom-y as some people are claiming. And if it is, the devs have already demonstrated their willingness to undo changes or make additional changes based on new circumstances/data. People should chill a little bit.

not doom, just annoying and seemingly targeted at a specific group of people.

[Foxfyre]

2 minutes ago, Peerless Girl said:

More or less it is. There was no working emulator/private server during Paragon's time. SEGS never actually got anywhere to this day, to my knowledge.

This is being intentionally obtuse.  You know what he was referring to.

 

 

[Targren]

1 minute ago, Peerless Girl said:

Exploits do not go into Beta patch notes, for what should be very obvious reasons.

The reasons are obvious, yes, but you need to read further into the thread. The exploit could have been fixed without the nerf. They chose to go ahead with that, too, for "game health" reasons. 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Targren

[Foxfyre]

2 minutes ago, Peerless Girl said:

Exploits do not go into Beta patch notes, for what should be very obvious reasons.

Can we please stop calling it an exploit?  It doesn't even fit the definition of one.  

The devs choosing to turn off a feature that was implemented YEARS ago at this point, that everyone knew about and everyone used is NOT an exploit.

Edited March 31, 2020 by Foxfyre

[MunkiLord]

3 minutes ago, honoraryorange said:

So first, I don't necessarily disagree with this change, but....

 

The fact that this was slipped into the final build without getting comments on the test server is extremely underhanded and a very shitty move on your parts.

I disagree. Not all changes are going to be up for debate if it is deemed important enough. All that would have accomplished is a giant distraction then accusations of ignoring players when the changes happened anyway. There was nothing to gain as this appears to be something that was already decided.

[Peerless Girl]

1 minute ago, DR_Mechano said:

Yes this was also the time when they seeded the market with salvage, so yes they obviously had ideas to fix the problems of the past, so don't give me the whole 'making the game work' malarky, if they wanted to they could have fixed this the moment they seeded the market but chose not to an instead nerf it now...as I said...after the horse has bolted.

Way to go missing my entire original point. I said they had limited dev resources. They can only put fingers in so many "pies" at once, and prioritized the most important ones first. The seeding of salvage was a quick and easy measure to hold down the worst of it right away. Getting the game stable and running, working on fleshing out the remaining Paragon powersets, making needed changes and making new art and assets all take time, those were likely more important than immediately fixing this. You'd have to ask Jimmy though, he works here. I'm just going off common sense and knowing how game development works with small teams. Those who want to be angry and butthurt will continue to be, those who see logic will see it. 

[Jimmy]

Just now, Foxfyre said:

Can we please stop calling it an exploit?  It doesn't even fit the definition of one.  

For clarity (buried on page 2):

2 hours ago, Jimmy said:

Simply using a level 49 map itself was not an exploit, but was an abuse of the system, which is why it was eventually going to be removed.

 

The exploit was the use of Patrol XP with this option turned on - your influence income increased dramatically without consuming the Patrol XP - and I have no doubt that many players were making use of this without being aware at all. Just fixing that alone would've resulted in a big income drop for farmers, but as this feature was simply not healthy for the game we opted to remove it.

 

Again, you need to consider this change in the context of it impacting everyone. Your income may have dropped, but so has the overall input of influence into the economy. Those who were not making use of this exploit (unwittingly or not) will not actually experience any change in their buying power long-term.

[Targren]

Just now, Foxfyre said:

This is being intentionally obtuse.  You know what he was referring to.

 

To be fair s/he might not: I'm new here myself, and would never have known about it, except that I made the mistake of going to r/cityofheroes in my newbie enthusiasm. 😄

[Peerless Girl]

4 minutes ago, Inflated Donkey said:

man, did you manage to dodge the whole drama that lead to homecoming's creation?

I'm well aware of how a lot of it went down, that has little to no bearing on this conversation about this change however.

[Foxfyre]

1 minute ago, Jimmy said:

For clarity (buried on page 2):

Did this exist on live?  If it did, I wouldn't say it's an exploit.....especially as most people were using it unknowingly.  At most, it's just the reversal of a bug.

[Targren]

1 minute ago, MunkiLord said:

I disagree. Not all changes are going to be up for debate if it is deemed important enough. All that would have accomplished is a giant distraction then accusations of ignoring players when the changes happened anyway. There was nothing to gain as this appears to be something that was already decided.

That's exactly what I meant by "it's telling:" they made the decision internally and anticipated the pushback they're getting. They ducked it and, now that it's going live, it's hitting harder. 

[DR_Mechano]

1 minute ago, Peerless Girl said:

Way to go missing my entire original point. I said they had limited dev resources. They can only put fingers in so many "pies" at once, and prioritized the most important ones first. The seeding of salvage was a quick and easy measure to hold down the worst of it right away. Getting the game stable and running, working on fleshing out the remaining Paragon powersets, making needed changes and making new art and assets all take time, those were likely more important than immediately fixing this. You'd have to ask Jimmy though, he works here. I'm just going off common sense and knowing how game development works with small teams. Those who want to be angry and butthurt will continue to be, those who see logic will see it. 

And you're telling me disabling the double inf when exemped option at that time was somehow a truly difficult task requiring hours upon hours of work. I'm sorry if I don't believe that.

[ForeverLaxx]

8 minutes ago, Inflated Donkey said:

Or i'm overthinking it.

 

You are. Most changes are done incrementally to reduce their impact to the overall game over time, not in some desperate bid to maintain a playerbase.

[SwitchFade]

1 hour ago, Foxfyre said:

You're expecting the in-game economy to follow normal economic rules.  However you defeat your own premise with the first statement.

"Inflation causes every unit of influence to be worth less per unit, so rampant addition of influence to the exomoy devalues each unit of influence."

If money is devalued, that means thing should cost MORE as each influence is worth less.  However as we've seen everything on the market house currently is essentially dirt cheap - because there's so much of it.

Which means once you restrict the flow of money, the next logical thing to happen is that prices will increase to make up for that lost money flow.

That's not how it works. If you reduce inflation and normalize monetary distribution, prices fall and more people have more buying power.

[DMW45]

2 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

For clarity (buried on page 2):

I have to ask, *how* is it an abuse of the system, really?

 

It's using it as it was designed to be used--exemplaring and getting double inf for no XP, no more, no less.

 

In fact, it's even costlier to use it now than it was on live if you're under Vet Level 100

[Foxfyre]

2 minutes ago, Peerless Girl said:

I'm well aware of how a lot of it went down, that has little to no bearing on this conversation about this change however.

It does actually.  He was responding directly to what you said:

 

"And a year ago there were ZERO CoH's and there never would be again"

 

What server was in existence a year ago?

Edited March 31, 2020 by Foxfyre

[Number Six]

Just now, Foxfyre said:

Did this exist on live?  If it did, I wouldn't say it's an exploit.....especially as most people were using it unknowingly.  At most, it's just the reversal of a bug.

It did not, because on live you stopped earning XP at 50.

[Targren]

Just now, DR_Mechano said:

And you're telling me disabling the double inf when exemped option at that time was somehow a truly difficult task requiring hours upon hours of work. I'm sorry if I don't believe that.

Hey, you never know. I've seen code so tightly-coupled it made a grown man want to cry... (I settled for day-drinking instead!)

[Zeraphia]

7 minutes ago, honoraryorange said:

So first, I don't necessarily disagree with this change, but....

 

The fact that this was slipped into the final build without getting comments on the test server is extremely underhanded and a very shitty move on your parts.

That's really not a completely fair statement. A lot of people assumed that we were going to get costume changes, Electric Affinity, and the new IO sets. Some may have heard about the Katana changes. Many heard of the Dark Melee changes and the revisions and after that they just didn't care very much for the newer changes at all because they got their hopes up for Dark Melee and never really looked back into it. Therefore, because this AE nerf wasn't stated in its original form and was only very recently in the last few sets of the changes, I am not at all calling this a "shitty move" on our parts. Lots of people had no idea about it because they had already tested EA, DM, costume, IOs, and Katana changes and didn't feel the need to keep getting on to retest. 

 

Again, placing blame on "players" who may or may not even have heard of these changes to test and calling it a "shitty move" is very one-sided from one perspective and doesn't encompass the majority or take into account why a large variety of people may have not noticed this change.

[Jimmy]

2 minutes ago, Foxfyre said:

Did this exist on live?  If it did, I wouldn't say it's an exploit.....especially as most people were using it unknowingly.  At most, it's just the reversal of a bug.

Honestly not sure.

Either way, yes it is definitely a bug - but an exploitable one. And definitely one most people weren't even aware they were using (or not using) hence us not wanting to draw attention to it by having this discussed before the change went live.

 

Edit: Six with the answer 3 posts up!