Discussion: Disabling XP No Longer Increases Influence

[Haijinx]

DOOMED!!

[Gremlin]

10 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

what would help the economy would be for the devs to run a script that across the board deletes 50% of every toons inf. 75% if that toon has more than 1.75 billion.

The evil part of me would love the devs to announce that. Imagine the chaos that would follow. First of all there would be massive panic buying as everyone with spare inf tries to turn it into something that won't be deleted. After the inf deletion, prices would crash hard. Eventually things would return to normal. The ebil marketeers would make out like bandits.

 

... but it would help to curb inflation a bit.

 

10 hours ago, ivanhedgehog said:

This change will do nothing for inflation, there is too much cash out there already and the marketeers that have most of it wont be giving it up. everyone would feel the pain so no one would feel left out.

 

If you go over to the market forums, you'll find that ebil marketeers do things that don't fit this rather nasty view. For example, we'd quite like to have other in game methods of burning inf. At the moment I'm experimenting with buying and opening Hero and Winter packs. (Buying a Winter Pack extracts about 27.5 million inf from the economy.) People occasionally push the price of some desirable item down. They lose a ton of inf in the process but that's what passes for lol's when you've got more inf than you can spend. Other's simply stop trading because there's no point making more.

 

You say that the marketeers hold most of the inf. There's a lot of confusion and bitterness in that statement. First of all, as others have pointed out, a very high proportion of the player base trade. If they buy low and sell high then they're trading for profit. I suspect that the majority of players do this to some degree. The second misunderstanding is to think that marketeers are significant somehow. Either they "hold most of the money" or "they drive up prices". The thing is, the game economy is absolutely huge. A few billion inf is peanuts compared to the amount of inf that flows through the market daily. Marketeers occasionally try to use their piles of inf to make a splash in the economy. (Losing inf in the process of course.) Even chucking 10 billion into the market tends to just cause a very small ripple that disappears in a few hours.

[Gremlin]

This patch reduces the inf flowing into the game. What can we do to increase inf flows out of the game?

• increase Auction House fees (may cause hording)
• create Ebil Merits which can be bought for 1 billion inf each and let the marketeers remove the inf. You can't do anything with an Ebil Merit except admire it.
• sell new Packs which contain account bound incarnate salvage

Any more suggestions?

[Grouchybeast]

56 minutes ago, Gremlin said:

Any more suggestions?

Reactivate Supergroup Prestige, but keep all base items, upkeep etc, free.  Prestige will have no effect on base function.

 

Remove the statue over the base portal in Atlas, and replace it with one that uses the phasing tech to display a frequently updating hologram statue of the leader of the sg on that shard with the highest prestige.  Have an info terminal next to it that displays the top ten for the shard.  Put an equivalent somewhere on Redside.

[Murcielago]

10 hours ago, skoryy said:

but why

Make INF great again!

[Murcielago]

9 hours ago, Saikochoro said:

This would only serve to make things more expensive as less people would do the conversion routine. Converters are not a problem whatsoever. They only help the market. The devs have even stated that they don’t want to discourage conversion as it is very helpful to the market. 
 

There is nothing bad about converters whatsoever. Discouraging conversion would only serve to increase prices, which is counterintuitive to the devs goals. 

I'm going to lobby the devs to make this change. It might be against the devs goals but its not against mine, I would stand to make billions of INF once they adopt my proposed changes. 

[Dazl]

11 hours ago, Peerless Girl said:

 

Some would argue that's an exploit. I'd be one of them, so it's probably good decisions are not up to me. 

 

Nobody hacked the game code, they took advantage of game features that may have not been intended to be used that way, but there none the less. This wasn't a big secret, heck there has been a post on these forums about how to do it. This could have been changed a long time ago. Players don't have any control over how the game is coded, but you can be sure that people smarter than me will always find ways to make the most of it. Like when someone figured out the degenerative interface incarnate power was borked, and people could zerg the hami without clearing the mitos. The dev's could have hot fixed it right away, but they didn't and people took advantage of it.

 

None of this is good, but players don't control the code.

[Seigmoraig]

9 minutes ago, Crimsonpyre said:

they took advantage of game features that may have not been intended to be used that way

That`s what exploit means

[AerialAssault]

3 hours ago, Gremlin said:

This patch reduces the inf flowing into the game. What can we do to increase inf flows out of the game?

• increase Auction House fees (may cause hording)
• create Ebil Merits which can be bought for 1 billion inf each and let the marketeers remove the inf. You can't do anything with an Ebil Merit except admire it.
• sell new Packs which contain account bound incarnate salvage

Any more suggestions?

Give your Inf to @Aerial Assault it's for a good cause.

 

(I will spend it on opening Super Packs)

[Grouchybeast]

1 hour ago, Crimsonpyre said:

Nobody hacked the game code, they took advantage of game features that may have not been intended to be used that way, but there none the less.

 

That is the literal definition of an exploit, yes.

 

1 hour ago, Crimsonpyre said:

This wasn't a big secret, heck there has been a post on these forums about how to do it. This could have been changed a long time ago. Players don't have any control over how the game is coded, but you can be sure that people smarter than me will always find ways to make the most of it. Like when someone figured out the degenerative interface incarnate power was borked, and people could zerg the hami without clearing the mitos. The dev's could have hot fixed it right away, but they didn't and people took advantage of it.

This is exactly how devs should handle exploits: look at what effect it's having on the game as a whole, and then prioritize a fix accordingly.  Just because something doesn't get hotfixed as soon as it's identified doesn't mean it's not an exploit.

 

This happened over and over with AE on live.  You could tell that a new AE exploit had been found because it had incredible characteristic effects on market prices.  As long as it didn't spread out of control the devs would quietly fix it some time later.  The only time they acted immediately was when the exploit was too egregious to ignore, and people were filling toon after toon to the inf cap, like with the MM exploit (I think that was the one).  Then they shut the AE down for a few days while they hotfixed the problem.  But obviously it's better to take a measured, proportionate approach and schedule fixes into the normal development stream.

[Parabola]

1 hour ago, Crimsonpyre said:

Nobody hacked the game code, they took advantage of game features that may have not been intended to be used that way, but there none the less. This wasn't a big secret, heck there has been a post on these forums about how to do it. This could have been changed a long time ago. Players don't have any control over how the game is coded, but you can be sure that people smarter than me will always find ways to make the most of it. Like when someone figured out the degenerative interface incarnate power was borked, and people could zerg the hami without clearing the mitos. The dev's could have hot fixed it right away, but they didn't and people took advantage of it.

 

None of this is good, but players don't control the code.

The semantics of whether it should have been classed as an exploit or not are irrelevant. Yes the devs described it as such but even if they hadn't it would still have been a game system that was producing an undesirable outcome and the fix would have been the same. A problem doesn't have to be whatever I, you, or they class as an exploit in order to be worth fixing.

 

The fact that this has been around for a while and openly advertised on the forums suggests to me that the devs were probably taking a wait and see attitude as to whether to intervene. Perhaps it has taken a while to monitor whatever metrics they have to be sure that they needed to do something. Whatever the case a problem is a problem and it should be addressed, no matter how long it has been around.

[skoryy]

3 hours ago, Murcielago said:

I'm going to lobby the devs to make this change. It might be against the devs goals but its not against mine, I would stand to make billions of INF once they adopt my proposed changes. 

Against the devs and most everyone else's goals.  I'll go lobby the devs' to rename all your characters '2 Billion Inf PvP IOs'.

[gunterrr]

So when a change like this is made in the name of creating a better experience overall, it's good to have analytics, survey data, and other research methods that inform the decision making process. Is the homecoming team measuring outcomes and using any design methodologies to inform design decisions? I was not pleased by the change initially, but after reflecting realized that if team is already, or is in the future, willing to share research and analytics findings, it's probably worth a shot for us to all review that when the data comes in before jumping to conclusions.

 

Can someone from the homecoming team speak to this? I've been struggling to find any info on what is being measured and what outcomes they are expecting...other than general claims of helping the average player -- that may just be because the signal to noise ratio in this thread/patch notes has been overwhelmingly noise.

 

At the end of the day I also realize this is a private server and my opinion is not really needed, nor is my dollar, so I understand I have no bargaining power and am more curious than anything.

 

_{Thanks HC team for your time though, this is my first post but I've been playing a lot and it's been fantastic nostalgia!}

[Ukase]

On 4/5/2020 at 4:12 PM, thunderforce said:

I wouldn't, but... it takes 10 days to accumulate a full load of Patrol XP, which is about equivalent to a level's worth of ordinary XP. In other words if you (for example) devote 250 slots to farming characters, your overall Patrol XP accumulation will make you one full load every hour. I don't know how long it takes a farmer to earn a level's worth of ordinary XP, but it does seem like you'd need hundreds of characters, not 3, or 1 on each server, to have Patrol XP coming in as fast as you can use it up.

You're likely correct. I hadn't thought about that.

[Peerless Girl]

2 hours ago, Seigmoraig said:

That`s what exploit means

 

Thank you. Yes, that's exactly what it means, and this person knows that, and is simply pushing their agenda.

 

1 hour ago, Grouchybeast said:

 

That is the literal definition of an exploit, yes.

 

This is exactly how devs should handle exploits: look at what effect it's having on the game as a whole, and then prioritize a fix accordingly.  Just because something doesn't get hotfixed as soon as it's identified doesn't mean it's not an exploit.

 

This happened over and over with AE on live.  You could tell that a new AE exploit had been found because it had incredible characteristic effects on market prices.  As long as it didn't spread out of control the devs would quietly fix it some time later.  The only time they acted immediately was when the exploit was too egregious to ignore, and people were filling toon after toon to the inf cap, like with the MM exploit (I think that was the one).  Then they shut the AE down for a few days while they hotfixed the problem.  But obviously it's better to take a measured, proportionate approach and schedule fixes into the normal development stream.

 

Yes. This. And I'm nearly sure that's what they did. As for what metrics and analytics they have access to, that's not really our business, and it might be detrimental to them to share that with us. This is not a happy-go-lucky Kickstarter where all aspects of development and decision-making need be shared with the community at large. It's not a democracy. It's nice when we get info, but it certainly isn't required. 

[MunkiLord]

I wonder how much influence currently exists in the game? @Jimmy is that information yall have, and if so something that you're willing to share?

[Dazl]

2 hours ago, Peerless Girl said:

 

Thank you. Yes, that's exactly what it means, and this person knows that, and is simply pushing their agenda.

I'm not pushing an agenda because I don't have one. I've already said this change doesn't effect me much, and I don't really enjoy farming. I'm just pointing out the truth about "exploits". It's up to the devs to fix the "exploits", not the players.

[Peerless Girl]

2 minutes ago, Crimsonpyre said:

I'm not pushing an agenda because I don't have one. I've already said this change doesn't effect me much, and I don't really enjoy farming. I'm just pointing out the truth about "exploits". It's up to the devs to fix the "exploits", not the players.

 

Looks to me like they have. Next issue.

[Murcielago]

3 hours ago, skoryy said:

'2 Billion Inf PvP IOs'.

Those were the days, you know you made it when you had a few of them hoarding away in your base storage. Back when scarcity was a thing. 

[Murcielago]

17 minutes ago, MunkiLord said:

I wonder how much influence currently exists in the game? @Jimmy is that information yall have, and if so something that you're willing to share?

At least 100 INF

[Haijinx]

29 minutes ago, Murcielago said:

At least 100 INF

Would have been 200 INF if not for those nosy kids and their dumb dog.

[Corruption]

This change and the rationale given are lame.

[Blastit]

5 minutes ago, Corruption said:

This change and the rationale given are lame.

They do still have legs, tho.

[Peerless Girl]

6 minutes ago, Corruption said:

This change and the rationale given are lame.

You are entitled to your opinion. You are also entitled to be wrong. In this case, both of those are currently true. 

[Corruption]

Just now, Peerless Girl said:

You are entitled to your opinion. You are also entitled to be wrong. In this case, both of those are currently true. 

Funny, considering I have the same exact opinion of you.