Drunkard's Walk Forums

Full Version: Positron Speaks on MA Farm Abuse (Official Forums)
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
Link to board post

Quote:When we created Mission Architect, the goal was to have an outlet for players to craft cool stories, using our assets, that other players could play and participate in. Other players could rate those stories and the best-of-the best would rise to the top.
While we have accomplished some of those goals with the initial launch of Mission Architect, some have found ways to abuse the system we put in place. We are not blind to this happening, nor did we not expect it. However, it is time to take action regarding it, so please be aware that we are about to implement a zero-tolerance stance on the extreme abuse we are seeing in the system.
One thing was made clear to me when I interacted with the players on our Anniversary. It was that you guys really don’t like the powerlevelling that is going on with MA. The constant spam of MA PL teams forming, requests for “Meow” missions, 5 star badge cartels, and the inability to find quality content in the Mission Architect listing are all things I heard complaints about over and over while I was logged in on Tuesday.
So here is a list of things that are going to happen:
• Players that have abused the reward system egregiously may lose benefits they have gained - leading up to and perhaps including losing access to the characters power-leveled in this fashion.
• Currently, some badges are being modified, and some may be removed from the game entirely. The list of changes being made to the MA badge system is not final yet, but you will be made aware when we have a concrete plan.
• 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.
• Players who have a story arc banned for any reason, will have it continue to use up one of their publishing slots. Players will NOT be able to unpublish this slot without Customer Service’s help. This sets up a “three strikes and you’re out” policy. If an individual gets three story arcs banned, they will no longer be able to publish since their slots will all be used up with banned arcs.
•• This lock will not take place on the first level of “complaint banning”, where an arc has received a larger number of complaints. Players will still have a chance to fix the arc.
•• If Customer Service looks at an arc and determines it was banned in error, they will mark it as “unbannable”. At that point the arc can not be banned for any reason. The unbannable flag will reset if the player makes any changes to the arc at that point, and the arc can be banned again.
•• Remember, publishing slots are account wide, so players will not be able to log in another character on their account and use their slots instead.
•• Players are urged to avoid using common farming terms in their story title and/or descriptions. Even if it’s a joke, DO NOT run the risk of having an arc banned and requiring Customer Support to grant you your publishing slot back.

Some of you have taken the stance of “how does powerlevelling hurt the game?” and “shouldn’t I be able to play the game the way that I want?” What we want to make clear is in order to keep the game fair, balanced, and challenging, we have to maintain a risk:reward ratio. This is a ratio we’ve spent years attempting to achieve. Mission Architect is not immune to this, and we are taking swift action to see that the problems players are seeing and are being exposed to are remedied.
EDIT: I was simply going to draw attention to this without commentary, but it bears mentioning - there are, naturally, a lot of folks upset regarding the threat of possible character removal (or at least character lock) - it's not clear whether this will apply going forward to folks who PL via MA exploits, or whether it'll also apply retroactively. 
Personally, I doubt they'd smack everyone who just got a handful of levels from this. Indeed, I doubt they'd make it retroactive either; too much risk of pissing people off.
But, y'know, right now...you can see the supernova flames on the forums (and in Atlas Park) from orbit.
 
-- Acyl
I'll take this as a very real threat.

So no more farming for me.

Terr? you may want to pull that ritki/bomb mission.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
Y'know, the funny thing? With the exception of one character, a new one I rolled up couple days ago... all of the farm runs I've been on have been
more about playing than farming. The XP and such was nice, but it really seemed like we were there hanging out,
RPing, and chatting more than, y'know, grinding away for XP.

Not that that'll matter -- after all, the devs can't peek in our heads and see what the motivations were, and they can't take our word for it
either -- but I'm somewhat amused in a dark way by the thought that, because I was actually playing and having fun with friends but just in the wrong
fashion that one (or more) of my characters might get axed.

Or worse, I guess. Posi sounds pretty pissed.

Anyway. Guess we'll see what happens.

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
I'm pretty sure they'd only banhammer really blatant and ridiculous cases.
There's naturally a lot of folks who are unhappy that the criteria for your characters going poof is...nebulous at best. What's the line? Is this gonna be retroactive or not?
And that's fair, I think - it's the sort of statement that makes folks nervous. It's a big threat, and the uncertainty hits many people. After all, many folks have at least been on a farm by this point, and this is the kind of visceral threat that conjures worst-case scenarios. Pushes all the emotional buttons too. My character! Mine! You're not taking it away! BAD NCsoft! Bad!
On the other hand, I see why the devs might not want to be too clear about that threat - I mean, they certainly don't wanna say...okay, it's fine if you powerlevel up to this point, but after that, no! Precise guidelines would be sorta silly here, and counterproductive.
I really doubt they'll go around hammering the crap out of most players; that'd be silly and a good way to alienate most folks. Also bear in mind that the vast majority of players do not read the forums. Indeed the changes pushed out in today's patch came as a shock to many people.
I suspect we're safe on that front.
As for blatant farming missions, well - I'm not in favour of farming as such, but I recognize why people like it. 's entirely possible to still make vast and difficult XP-crunching maps - like Terr's Roman thing, for instance - without them also being obviously banhammer material. I can think of a few ways off the top of my head.
Also bear in mind - the primary concern here is abuse of exploits, and MA missions becoming all about the quick rewards instead of storyline. One can always make a mission both resonably profitable and amusing, story-wise. The two are not mutually exclusive.  
EDIT: As an aside, today's patch is massive - 38 mb, I think. Probably because there were a whole lot of MA tweaks, and it ain't just nerfin' the comm officers either. The power breakdown for standard/hard/extreme difficulty on critters has been tightened up to address the ZOMG CUSTOM CRITTERS ARE OVERPOWAHED problem, for instance.
-- Acyl

Render

I think Positron is putting players on notice that action can be taken against them as well as the creators of the arc. I don't know what they consider
egregious, but I think they're looking more at the gold farmer turned ticket farmer who's screwing up the game economy than the casual player who
pushes a character up a few levels.

I expected them to close exploits and take action against people who write nothing but farm missions, or continue after being asked to stop, but I didn't
expect them to do anything to the player, so I appreciate having some warning. Personally, I doubt they'll make it retroactive unless someone went from 1
to 50 without leaving the AE building or something.

In my case, even if they did, I'm not sure I'd care. I played the farm because certain toons aren't as fun to play through the 'right' way.
Why do I even have those characters still? They're concept chars or archetypes I didn't want to just give up on after putting time into them, but
I'm sick of grinding through levels hoping things will get better, or that I'll eventually hit 50 so I can 'retire' them. Maybe I should just
re-roll those characters or delete them myself, and stick to toons that are fun to play for their own sake.
I think quite a lot of people used the comm officer farms (and others) for specific instrumental reasons. For instance, OpMegs and myself ran lowbie spiders up
to 24 so we could get the crab arms. Stuff like that. Given that so many folks powerlevelled in some way, I doubt action - if any - will be that broad.

They'd have to drop a nuke on Atlas. It'll be the only way to hit everyone.
-- Acyl
I think Terr's safe - he's never gained a level with a Meow mish, and he's only got a Boss Farm published - and thanks to Acyl, that boss farm
isn't a 'bare' farm, it's got a cloak of decency over it's naughty bits.

I also defy someone to claim that that mission is lacking in risk.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies
Them's fighting words Posi! Smile
oh I fully agree that romangeddon should be safe as a challenge mission.

It's the mission we were running this weekend (ritki w/ bombs) that is iffy.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
Yeah The Rikti missions were not mine, Just romeageddon Smile and Wire's right again is -I- didn't get a single level while Meowing, granted I did help
others get..multiple levels, and I ended up getting tickets in the process...lots of tickets.
Quote: Wiredgeek wrote:

I think Terr's safe - he's never gained a level with a Meow mish, and he's only got a Boss Farm published - and thanks to Acyl, that boss farm
isn't a 'bare' farm, it's got a cloak of decency over it's naughty bits.




I also defy someone to claim that that mission is lacking in risk.
Well....

It is.

If you're Terrence.

And solo.

And your mind has been compressed to the level of sheer diamond so that the endless hordes of Romans are the APPEAL, not an endless drudgery only made up for
by the XP/Inf rewards. Tongue
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
Ahhh OM your snarky comments always amuse me, but one day I'll have to smite you in mock rightous anger for all your taunts *grin* but for now..I suppose
you may continue to live..

But the mission isn't risk free For me..2 spawns so bout 6 bosses and the pressure is on to kill them before they pound me into the dirt because of cascade
defence failure

..and yes romans are appealing...the rewards are nice too Tongue smartass
-teh farmer cracks knuckles-

Oddly enough, I loath that farmers are abusing the MA system. It's a beautiful concept... allowing players to create their own lil worlds and express
themselves. The MA abuse will only lead to removal of this small bit of creativity (aside from the character creator itself) players have been allotted.

All the MA I've played since the start has had content outside of the farming aspect and I've really, really had a whole lot of fun running through
other player's arcs. Not a single farm among them (assuming we're not counting TK's roman map). So... farmer be damned, I'm standing with Posi
on this one and I LOATH his TF with a fiery passion.
For anyone not following the official forums, Positron has made a follow-up post

Quote:After reading most of the thread spawned by my “Abusing Mission Architect” post, I figured I needed to follow up on a few of the points I brought up. You guys had a lot of the same questions, so I think I can answer them FAQ style.
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 don’t 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 don’t 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) “Why are you removing badges we worked so hard to get?”
A) I apologize in advance if we remove a badge that someone got legitimately through normal gameplay. We didn’t want MA to become a badge farm (hence why kill-count badges don’t work in MA). Unfortunately the number of “count” badges we put into the system promoted some pretty aberrant gameplay. People forming voting cartels to get Hall of Fame badges, missions whose sole purpose was to tick a badge count clogged up the searches, etc., made finding the honest-to-god story arcs harder than it needed to be. We hope that by removing these problem badges (and adding some new, non-problem, ones in the process) we can see a better play experience throughout the entire MA system. These changes won’t happen until I15, but we’ll get a list of the alterations to you guys early next week.
Q) “Am I going to get banned for farming for badges?”
A) Absolutely not.
Q) “What if people who have a grudge against me complain about my arc and get it banned? Why should I permanently lose a slot over that?”
A) The first time your arc is pulled because of complaints, you do NOT lose the slot. If you get an arc banned and you do lose the slot, your only option at that point is to contact Customer Support. They are the gatekeepers to the slots, and can give you your slot back if it was banned in error.
Q) “You say not to use the word “Farm” in the mission or description. Is that how you are blanket banning things?”
A) We do not do blanket banning based on keywords or phrases. When customer service bans an arc, they are looking at the arc in question when they do it. I ask you not to use certain words in your title or description because players can still complaint-ban your arc, and then there is the fact that we are only human, and even if your “farm” arc is a complete joke/parody ABOUT farm arcs, someone might mistake it for a real farm and ban it, causing both you and us a headache in getting the arc unbanned.
Q) “What about all the farming and abusing that goes on in the normal game? How come you guys don’t 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 can’t 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.
Q) “Why did you guys wait until after the reactivation weekend to do this?”
A) We had a publishing blackout during the reactivation that prevented us from putting new code up onto the live servers.
In the end, we hope you all understand that the changes we’re making, no matter how drastic they might appear to be, are in the best interest of the game and those who truly enjoy playing it. Out goal has always been to make Architect fun and enjoyable for both the authors and the players. We feel that with these changes we’re helping bring about the realization of this goal.

Seems fair enough to me.
-- Acyl