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Thoughts on the PvP Rift "exploit" and Trion's lack of action.
For those that don't know, there has been an ongoing scandal regarding players working together with alts or members of the opposing faction in order to gain prestige ranks in a fraction of the time it would take to gain these ranks legitimately in warfronts. It was brought up in numberous threads on their own boards which were quickly locked and/or deleted.
The ability to farm this mechanic has been taken away but no action has been taken on those players that [ab]used it while it was available. There has been (of course) a post in one of the threads by TW staff stating that cheating isn't tolerated and action will be taken.
(1) Do you think anything will happen to these players, or is TW playing lip service to those upset by the abuse?
(2) Do you consider it an exploit/abuse of mechanics when enemies work together to subvert the intention of a PvP mechanic in order to gain rewards more quickly (in grind mechanics)?
(3) What do you think this says about games that base PvP viability around a gear-centric grind mechanic?
I personally think that because Trion removed the ability to gain prestige in the way it was previously used that it certainly constitutes an abuse of game mechanics however I don't think anything will happen to any of the players that gained rank this way as Rift needs all the players it can get, and TW certainly doesn't want to lose any more subscriptions prior to the inevitable loss coming with GW2, SWTOR, and other upcoming games.
Thoughts?
Comments
1 - No idea, I don't play the game.
2 - Of course it is.
3 - It says more about trion's lack of fore-thought than anything else. Introducing, at the very least, diminishing returns in order to combat farming in PvP is standard fare for any PvP MMORPG. I don't think it says anything about the viability of a game or of being gear centric.
any time a system to gain rank is easily exploited, it will be.
as an example: back when i was playing warhammer online, and they added the free tier 1 accounts, i was making some alts on my subbed account, in t2 there was literally little to no action, but if you know the maps you can run that tier 1 capped alt to the t2 lakes, and farm him for local area reputation needed to buy the rr exploits, 100 a pop, needed to kill him about 50x in each lake area to get your epics. total time to do all three areas of tier 2, about 2 hours (as opposed to ?? hours of trying to get legit keep flips if people were even flipping them, which alot of the weekdays they never changed hands)
t3 was nearly as dead, but you couldnt get a free account character to abuse that, but im sure people werent unwilling to buy another account to farm t3 and t4 lake rep as the gear held you until you got the high rr sets.
the policy was clearly against such activity, but i never once saw anyone chastised for doing it, geared up 8 alts in t2 gear myself this way before getting bored of the game on my main and deciding it wasnt worth a sub and never got so much as a warning.
Two things:
1. This is exactly what used to happen in Aion when people would trade general kills for para/silence god stones.
2. This without a doubt proves that giving people objective based open world pvp in this type of game will not work. Trion is going to act and some people are going to get reduced down to Rank 6 because of it.
I mean come on idiots they can see you got from rank 6 to rank 8 in 6 hours. They are not morons and have shown they will deal with this. SO for people who said "wahhhhh wahhhh we want open world pvp to have more rewards and wahhh wahhhh it has to be worth more for us to want to do it".
This is why we called you idiots with no MMO historical reference to why everything is instanced to begin with. MMO players will exploit if you give them the oppurunity. PvE servers treat it like a raid rift that they can farm because the entire idea behind a pve server is to be friendly with the opposite factions and those "hardcore pvp'rs" on pvp servers arranged to exploit it.
The solution is simple. Drastically reduce the favor/prestige/rep rewards from doing them.
http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-general-discussions/general-discussion/240251-pvp-rifts-being-abused-3.html#post2948930
James "Elrar" Nichols
Community Manager
www.riftgame.com
1) I think Trion needs to be careful with resetting Prestige. They have to make sure they get the people who abused the system, without penalizing people who didn't. They also have to make sure their response makes sense. For instance, removing all the prestige points earned using the exploit method would be perfect. Acceptable would be resetting prestige to pre-exploit levels for anyone who abused the system. Unacceptable would be resetting everyone's prestige levels to pre-exploit levels. If it takes longer to have a measured, acceptable response, then that's OK.
2) Why would you even ask this question? Of course it is.
3) A gear centric grind mechanic is pretty standard and it works. I don't know if I like it...I'd rather have something else. But it works for a lot of people.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I have to give it to Trion that they really deilvered a ton of stuff in a very short time.
But looking back through their patch history, they have barely ever released anything new that actually worked right away! Heck, they even managed to mess up such simple things like the wardrobe or a questline containing a total of 3 steps.
Did you believe that it would be otherwise with PvP-rifts?
Trion goes by the motto "release first and test it later"
Well this is pretty simple then. When they say
http://forums.riftgame.com/official-rift-news/news-announcements/233140-pts-event-today-3-30pm-pdt-whitefall-escalation-pvp-rifts.html
Stop expecting other people to test it for you.
http://forums.riftgame.com/public-test-shard/233298-escalation-whitefall-pvp-rifts-feedback-7-27-test.html
That thread IS THREE pages. Not a single person said "hey Trion I know you trust players not exploit and pu faith in your player base, but this is going to get exploited".
""I think they were both great but the PvP rifts needed greater reward as an incentive for people to do them, also I feel like Shimmersand is a poor location choice due to the amount of mobs.""
""The actual loot from the rift was pretty disappointing, standard rift loot drops. I was hoping for some cool unique PvP essences (greater or lesser).""
""What is going to happen is exactly the above. In a month, the newness will be worn off and you will be left with a game that still has crappy PvP. You NEED to make a new zone and have objectives and incentives that make it worthwhile to go out and attack and/or defend.""
Those are the only comment they got. Like I said the "hardcore pvp'rs" wanted incentives and obvjectives and the first thing they did was abuse it the moment a company gave it to them. Like people keep trying to tell GW2 players and others. These MMORPG's today look this way for a damn good reason. All pvp is instanced for a reason.
You have to choose the lesser of two evils:
A. Make world PvP meaningless (WoW) and make exploiting in this manner unprofitable.
B. Make world PvP mean something and have this happen.
http://forums.riftgame.com/official-rift-news/news-announcements/233140-pts-event-today-3-30pm-pdt-whitefall-escalation-pvp-rifts.html
Stop expecting other people to test it for you.
http://forums.riftgame.com/public-test-shard/233298-escalation-whitefall-pvp-rifts-feedback-7-27-test.html
That thread IS THREE pages. Not a single person said "hey Trion I know you trust players not exploit and pu faith in your player base, but this is going to get exploited".
""I think they were both great but the PvP rifts needed greater reward as an incentive for people to do them, also I feel like Shimmersand is a poor location choice due to the amount of mobs.""
""The actual loot from the rift was pretty disappointing, standard rift loot drops. I was hoping for some cool unique PvP essences (greater or lesser).""
""What is going to happen is exactly the above. In a month, the newness will be worn off and you will be left with a game that still has crappy PvP. You NEED to make a new zone and have objectives and incentives that make it worthwhile to go out and attack and/or defend.""
Those are the only comment they got. Like I said the "hardcore pvp'rs" wanted incentives and obvjectives and the first thing they did was abuse it the moment a company gave it to them. Like people keep trying to tell GW2 players and others. These MMORPG's today look this way for a damn good reason. All pvp is instanced for a reason.
You have to choose the lesser of two evils:
A. Make world PvP meaningless (WoW) and make exploiting in this manner unprofitable.
B. Make world PvP mean something and have this happen.
There will eventually be a third option where you have world PvP that has some meaning, but isn't exploitable. It may require a reduction in 'meaningfulness', but it should at some point be possible.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
How due you mean like Aion?
C. Hardy har look at me I am Imitatio Dei and we played Guid Wars and we were bad ass's now you have to worship us for our awesomeness because we captured a fort and did not want to work with anyone else, so f you guys!!
or
D. Hey here is a fort. We have to give you a reason to capture it. Ok here is some pve to get some pvp. uhohhh one faction got it alot now the other faction is useless and dominated for the next 16 months.
I can not count how many times I have seen a mmo company bow down and give pvp a objective and incentive and then watch it start to get abused literally the next day. As long as there is gear in pvp this is never going to work in a mmorpg even then people will still try and exploit it.
C. Hardy har look at me I am Imitatio Dei and we played Guid Wars and we were bad ass's now you have to worship us for our awesomeness because we captured a fort and did not want to work with anyone else, so f you guys!!
or
D. Hey here is a fort. We have to give you a reason to capture it. Ok here is some pve to get some pvp. uhohhh one faction got it alot now the other faction is useless and dominated for the next 16 months.
I can not count how many times I have seen a mmo company bow down and give pvp a objective and incentive and then watch it start to get abused literally the next day. As long as there is gear in pvp this is never going to work in a mmorpg even then people will still try and exploit it.
I don't really know. I'm not a game designer and I'm not really arrogant enough to think I know better than people who spend their lives actually designing and writing games that work and are profitable.
One thing Trion has going for them is that their development is pretty Dynamic. They can add and remove things from their game faster than any company I've seen. They don't mind admitting their mistakes and they are quick (relative to other developers) to fix their mistakes. If there is a push for meaningful world PvP that isn't exploited, they will get to that solution.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
For people thinking they do not already have a list of people who have exploited then you are wrong. This type of thing happened before when you could like runebreak...re buy..re sell or some crap and get insane amounts of cash. Well what happened is those people logged on one day and all of it had be reverted.
These idiots wasting their time doing this instead of war fronts are going to log on one day and all there rank 8 gear will be gone and they will be rank 6 again. The community has been told it is a exploit as of 8/9/2011.Anything after that is going to get reverted and those derps will have the nerve to blame Trion after they continued to exploit it.
It was a nice experiement, but it needs to be modified obviously.
This is what happens when you give players the ability to control aspects of a game.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
1) At this point, I'm certain it's just lip service.
2) It obviously is.
3) I don't like the concept in general, but it's fine as long as it's not centered around it. Everyone should be ABLE to win in PVP. However small that chance is in an RPG, it should be there (when you're on the same level obviously). I think my keypoint is (in regards to Rift): There's a difference between working towards 10% better gear than everyone else and 200% better gear. Someone at Trion took their balancing stats from action animes.
They definitely do need to fix this. I really dislike going into a WF with my r6 gear playing vs players with r8 gear who I know did not get there legit.
This reminds me of Age Of Conan in the months just after release where quite alot of people exploited, Nothing happened to them too.
Best way i have seen Developers deal with this kind of game play 'is to lift the rug up' and 'brush the exploits under it', moderate the forums so all posts are deleted about such things, then to pretend nothing happened.
...
Been there, seen it all before.