Everyone heard about Goons exploiting the faction warfare loyalty point system. Before you'd comment that it wasn't an exploit, let me quote Jinrai Tremaine from the goblinworks channel who told it very elegantly: "they were manipulating prices with the sole intention of affecting a CCP algorithm rather than the ingame market [of players]". CCP agrees, there are already rollbacks.
Sidenote: if you find a loophole and try to test it, simply do not interfere with other players while doing so. If the Goons would just amass 5T worth of datacores, screenshotted them and publish the results they would be the heroes of the day. They would probably got some reward from CCP. Now they look like caught cheaters crying over the lost loot.
However this post is not about bashing Goons. Not even to blame them. If not them, someone else would exploit it. And actually many did. Practically everyone in FW who openly stopped defending PLEX-es and traded systems just like the WoW players in the Tol Barad disaster. By the way I can't believe that at CCP there isn't an employee whose job is to play the #1 MMO to learn good moves and to learn from the bad ones. The funniest thing in the Goon post was that they couldn't cash out Amarr side because other exploiters always plexed the systems back. It starts to remind me of the botmaches of Alterac Valley when in off-hours both sides were filled by exploiters who were AFK-leeching on the spawn point.
This post is about how this exploit was necessary and coming from a fundamentally bad design. I mean that if you run a bank in a simple building with no guards or safe deposit or anything, you'll get robbed. The robbers are still bad guys and deserve punishment. The employees still failed to do their job so deserve to be reprimanded (like the moron who coded the price algorithm). But we can see that the whole situation was explosive and robbery could only be avoided by excellent work of the employees (what is unlikely as people fail) or especial honesty of the local population (there are bad guys everywhere).
What made the situation a powder keg waiting for someone with a cigar? Allowing players to create wealth. Players must never have any control over creating items or currency in any game. All items must be created totally independently from players who can only obtain the already existing items. Of course it doesn't prevent exploiting or cheating. However it significantly limits its effect since the only way to exploit is to gain faster (or without human effort via a bot). Both are limited by other factors, for example if you could exploit Diablo 3 making your character oneshot everything, you'd still had to travel between mobs and spend time looting and you still could only loot what the mobs had. Also, if there is a way to increase DPS, people will surely use it in PvP, causing enough forum rage to reveal the exploit in a day. Even if the exploit is PvE-only (like mining bots), if the resources are limited, players who are outcompeted by exploiters will surely inform developers (even if not in a rational way). If the exploiter creates resource, no one is directly harmed (everyone are by inflation) so no one will bother to find it and report.
EVE Online is littered by fundamentally bad mechanics where players can create items and the game hangs on devs being able to prevent players from using these mechanics differently than they "should". Some examples:
The resource creation must be fully remade to prevent such abuse: ores and rats must spawn on their own pace. Players can claim them when they want and can, but there shouldn't be any mean for them to make them spawn faster. Please note that respawing is such control. The rocks shouldn't appear faster or more in farmed systems than not farmed. It can mean that overfarmed systems run empty and abandoned systems can have huge belts. The same for rats is creating an interesting gameplay: leave a system unfarmed for a month and you'll need supercaps or an alliance-fleet to clear the accumulated rat army. Overfarm your systems and they runs empty? Time to gain some more space from those who can't protect theirs.
Missions shall be a similarly limited spawning resource. Mission agents would have an LP and ISK budget and get new batch of ISK/LP every day. Player overuses the agent: he starts to pay less for a mission. (The mission NPC loot and salvage is calculated into the payment.) Agent left alone for days: he pays a premium. The only exceptions should be career (newbie), COSMOS and epic arc missions but even they could be compensated by taking their rewards from all normal agents equally.
Waves must not be controlled by players in any way. They must be timed. If you can't loot the mission objective before the guards arrive, too bad. If you can't finish the first wave before the second, the lower level agents are your friends. If you killed the first wave in no time and don't want to wait for the second, go to harder missions or incursions. Sleepers should either hide behind no-capital acceleration gates, or have an army that can only be broken by capitals or a large subcap force.
FW must not give any form of rewards for any PvP or plexing activity. They should give access to agents and another resources, but these must exists regardless of PvP. So the agent (with properily tuned rewards) is always there but only those can access it who control the system. To reward actually fighting instead of just being in the Minmatar militia, some kind of "combat activity rate" can be on the character page and the best agents only talk to you if it's high enough.
I know it's lot of programming, but it shall only be done once and then there won't be any more exploits.
Please comment and discuss. After this idea is finalized, it's copied to the official forums as suggestion.
The moron of the week is the unnamed member of the goblinworks channel (I don't name him since he confessed himself and admitting is the first step): "I was travelling through low-sec, started to read some article on the web and forgot about eve". The next line was a link to a loss report with his podkill with full crystal set, 2.8B. Don't go AFK in lowsec!
Saturday morning report: 62.4B (1.5B spent on main accounts, 1.1 spent on logi, 0.5 on Titan, 0.4+0.5 on Rorqual)
Sunday morning report: 64.1B (1.5B spent on main accounts, 1.1 spent on logi, 0.9 on Titan, 0.4+0.8 on Rorqual)
Monday morning report: 65.2B (1.5B spent on main accounts, 1.1 spent on logi, 0.9 on Titan, 0.4+0.8 on Rorqual)
Sidenote: if you find a loophole and try to test it, simply do not interfere with other players while doing so. If the Goons would just amass 5T worth of datacores, screenshotted them and publish the results they would be the heroes of the day. They would probably got some reward from CCP. Now they look like caught cheaters crying over the lost loot.
However this post is not about bashing Goons. Not even to blame them. If not them, someone else would exploit it. And actually many did. Practically everyone in FW who openly stopped defending PLEX-es and traded systems just like the WoW players in the Tol Barad disaster. By the way I can't believe that at CCP there isn't an employee whose job is to play the #1 MMO to learn good moves and to learn from the bad ones. The funniest thing in the Goon post was that they couldn't cash out Amarr side because other exploiters always plexed the systems back. It starts to remind me of the botmaches of Alterac Valley when in off-hours both sides were filled by exploiters who were AFK-leeching on the spawn point.
This post is about how this exploit was necessary and coming from a fundamentally bad design. I mean that if you run a bank in a simple building with no guards or safe deposit or anything, you'll get robbed. The robbers are still bad guys and deserve punishment. The employees still failed to do their job so deserve to be reprimanded (like the moron who coded the price algorithm). But we can see that the whole situation was explosive and robbery could only be avoided by excellent work of the employees (what is unlikely as people fail) or especial honesty of the local population (there are bad guys everywhere).
What made the situation a powder keg waiting for someone with a cigar? Allowing players to create wealth. Players must never have any control over creating items or currency in any game. All items must be created totally independently from players who can only obtain the already existing items. Of course it doesn't prevent exploiting or cheating. However it significantly limits its effect since the only way to exploit is to gain faster (or without human effort via a bot). Both are limited by other factors, for example if you could exploit Diablo 3 making your character oneshot everything, you'd still had to travel between mobs and spend time looting and you still could only loot what the mobs had. Also, if there is a way to increase DPS, people will surely use it in PvP, causing enough forum rage to reveal the exploit in a day. Even if the exploit is PvE-only (like mining bots), if the resources are limited, players who are outcompeted by exploiters will surely inform developers (even if not in a rational way). If the exploiter creates resource, no one is directly harmed (everyone are by inflation) so no one will bother to find it and report.
EVE Online is littered by fundamentally bad mechanics where players can create items and the game hangs on devs being able to prevent players from using these mechanics differently than they "should". Some examples:
- Value is created when a player ship is destroyed: exploited by the recent Goon move, people who self-destruct insured ships when insurance payout is larger than material cost.
- Value is created via plexing FW: abused by practically every living body. I mean 100M/hour in a rifter with no risk, skillpoints, investment or anything? (the original plan was surely that it's risky and hard because of the defenders of the plex)
- Rat spawns are triggered by rat deaths: exploited by titan (bot) ratting
- Ore spawns are triggered by ore removal: exploited by mining bots
- Missions created in unlimited number when players talk to mission NPC: exploited by missioning bots, abused (not considered exploit) by mission-blitzers
- Waves triggered by killing trigger mob: abused by practically everyone and his mother to decrease the difficulty of the missions
- +6 sleeper battleship for carriers: abused by practically everyone in larger wormholes
The resource creation must be fully remade to prevent such abuse: ores and rats must spawn on their own pace. Players can claim them when they want and can, but there shouldn't be any mean for them to make them spawn faster. Please note that respawing is such control. The rocks shouldn't appear faster or more in farmed systems than not farmed. It can mean that overfarmed systems run empty and abandoned systems can have huge belts. The same for rats is creating an interesting gameplay: leave a system unfarmed for a month and you'll need supercaps or an alliance-fleet to clear the accumulated rat army. Overfarm your systems and they runs empty? Time to gain some more space from those who can't protect theirs.
Missions shall be a similarly limited spawning resource. Mission agents would have an LP and ISK budget and get new batch of ISK/LP every day. Player overuses the agent: he starts to pay less for a mission. (The mission NPC loot and salvage is calculated into the payment.) Agent left alone for days: he pays a premium. The only exceptions should be career (newbie), COSMOS and epic arc missions but even they could be compensated by taking their rewards from all normal agents equally.
Waves must not be controlled by players in any way. They must be timed. If you can't loot the mission objective before the guards arrive, too bad. If you can't finish the first wave before the second, the lower level agents are your friends. If you killed the first wave in no time and don't want to wait for the second, go to harder missions or incursions. Sleepers should either hide behind no-capital acceleration gates, or have an army that can only be broken by capitals or a large subcap force.
FW must not give any form of rewards for any PvP or plexing activity. They should give access to agents and another resources, but these must exists regardless of PvP. So the agent (with properily tuned rewards) is always there but only those can access it who control the system. To reward actually fighting instead of just being in the Minmatar militia, some kind of "combat activity rate" can be on the character page and the best agents only talk to you if it's high enough.
I know it's lot of programming, but it shall only be done once and then there won't be any more exploits.
Please comment and discuss. After this idea is finalized, it's copied to the official forums as suggestion.
The moron of the week is the unnamed member of the goblinworks channel (I don't name him since he confessed himself and admitting is the first step): "I was travelling through low-sec, started to read some article on the web and forgot about eve". The next line was a link to a loss report with his podkill with full crystal set, 2.8B. Don't go AFK in lowsec!
Saturday morning report: 62.4B (1.5B spent on main accounts, 1.1 spent on logi, 0.5 on Titan, 0.4+0.5 on Rorqual)
Sunday morning report: 64.1B (1.5B spent on main accounts, 1.1 spent on logi, 0.9 on Titan, 0.4+0.8 on Rorqual)
Monday morning report: 65.2B (1.5B spent on main accounts, 1.1 spent on logi, 0.9 on Titan, 0.4+0.8 on Rorqual)
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