I would not really call it an exploit, after all it is not like someone is shooting threw a wall (course some could compare the situation).
Really kiting NPC's back to camps has always been done in slash and bash type MMO's. Used to do this all the time in WoW to get past certain quests. Maybe they just did not expect so many ppl to do this but to me it has always been acceptable in MMO's over the last 10 years.
It was totally Funcom's fault because they knew about it as soon as it started.. however everyone was on vacation and nobody could fix it in time (I guess nobody can work remotely?)
Since it was their fault, they didn't punish the exploiters and rather said "sorry we screwed up with this" and gave everyone the items.
The whole event was poorly thought out unfortunately.. making grinding grindy grind events for the event items is almost as bad as making you buy them in a store.
There's a quest in Kingsmouth that actually teaches you how to do this "exploit". If Funcom had actually punished players for using it, it would have been extremely hypocritical. [mod edit] For the record, I got enough Mayan'kin to buy 3 weapons and that was it. I didn't stand at any camp and mindlessly pull mobs into wards, that looked so boring. I just killed the mayan mobs that spawned while I was out questing. That said, I'm not for one second going to think I'm better than someone that used the wards to farm them, it's just a damn game.
It was totally Funcom's fault because they knew about it as soon as it started.. however everyone was on vacation and nobody could fix it in time (I guess nobody can work remotely?)
Since it was their fault, they didn't punish the exploiters and rather said "sorry we screwed up with this" and gave everyone the items.
The whole event was poorly thought out unfortunately.. making grinding grindy grind events for the event items is almost as bad as making you buy them in a store.
Ok, so now it is Funcoms fault is it ?
This is quite beyond evil.
Everyone using this exploit knew what they were doing. They did not outsmarted the developer, they abused and willfully misused a system of which was obvious that it wasn't meant to be used in such way because it isn't fair play.
Regardless of this was a one time event or a main stream mechanic, the use of the exploit can only be regarded as basicaly unfair behaviour.
Sadly such social unacceptable way does not always get what it deserves. I find Funcoms elegant solution very mature and sensible.
Even if they made an eror in the coding that does not make them necessarily responsible. A thief finding the backdoor of your house wide open, still does not have to steal anything and does not have to complain to a judge " your honor they are at fault because they left the door open"
Rated M for Mature - May contain content inappropriate for children
I learned about the exploit shortly after joining the game last week. I had no idea what was going on the first time seeing it. second time around I noticed that there were TONS of loot sitting there while these people were "attacking" everything as it spawned.
So I thought, what the heck, why not loot since they are not...720creds here and there, mostly quality 10 items worth 3-12k. So, I loaded up my pack, even bought 2 pack expansions...and would just run from the mourninglight camp to the vendor, then back to the camp, load up again...repeat.
So now I have near 600k credits and dont have to worry about money for a while. I couldnt care less about getting the kills for a pointless title or pet that does nothing. I can always count on Funcom to not stop exploiting until its too late, and I have never seen them ban people when a LOT of have done it.
I look forward to the next event that will bring another exploit that will take a long time to fix and not get banned for doing it.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
This isn’t the first game that events have been exploited and definitely wont be the last .But I do believe Funcom are slowly but surely rebuilding a broken reputation from AoC and TSW is fast becoming an OK game to be associated with in the general mmo populaces eyes .
This response to a game mechanic being used as it wasn’t intended to be used is in my mind the best thing they could have done so many past exploit’s have been grey area's were sometimes the fact your using them isn’t clear and can be done mistakenly.
The world is to full of negatives we just escaped the end of the world for Christ sake ..lets have more positive reactions like this from devs.
I actually saw this exact thing happening. I walked into that camp and all of a sudden my game started lagging really bad, I couldn't figure out why since I've never really had lag. Then enemies started appearing, hundreds of them and dying instantly, over and over and over. It was crazy looking. now I know why they were doing it. That's sad.
i saw lots of poor mayans being exploited at the hippie camp (lol that sounds so wrong)....anyway, i tried it for a couple minutes without even knowing there was any rewards for killing them. Killed about 10 mayans and got bored and continued with my regular questing. Exploits are never fun.
All I know is I was really getting sick of the zombies showing up. I died in more than a few fights because a zombie would rise up in the middle of an AoE attack or something. Funny the first few times, but it gets to the point that you couldn't walk 10 feet without having another one rise. You basically have to leave the zombie for last as well, because if you try and kill it first, another will come up right away.
That is a shoriuken right into the jaw of any exploiter!!! good job funcom!! I do not play the game, but instead of banning people...rewarding the honest player, to piss right off the explotiers instead of banhammering them seems like a really good strategy (don't lose player+hopefully prevent them from going the wrong path=profit)
Calling this an exploit is a little strange, considering there is a quest on innsmouth academy that actually teach you to use the force field to your adavantage, but still the event could have used some tweaking to avoid them dieing to the forcefield for instance.
Arenanet needs to look at this as an example of how to handle possible 'exploit' situations, rather than taking the easy way out and just banning people (without confirming or denying that it is indeed an exploit to begin with).
Originally posted by Rednecksith Arenanet needs to look at this as an example of how to handle possible 'exploit' situations, rather than taking the easy way out and just banning people (without confirming or denying that it is indeed an exploit to begin with).
Yep, think it will go down as a learning experience. The event was a lot of fun, in any case, and I think this was the best possible outcome for everyone.
Funcom made the right choice in how they dealt with it. There has to come a time when developers and not the players take the flack for faulty game mechanics, it happens too often these days that players use what is there, intelligently in most cases, only to find themselves slapped with a ban, so well done Funcom for using some sense.
Originally posted by Vannor Exploits like that should be added 'into' the mechanics in the first place. That's what they should learn from this; players like pulling things into force fields. It's just fun.
That is a really interesting consideration. I suppose I have been so used to devs blocking discoveries that I had not considered that this should be encouraged. Perhaps keep it from being the only viable option, but still keep it as one. I don't play TSW but I can agree that making things kill themselves sounds fun.
Did the dev's say they were blaiming anyone? They just found it unfair that people used the mechanic had an advantage over the other players so gave out the reward out to everyone. Kudos to funcom for treating there players more fairly than Anet did with the karma exploit.
Good solution, was positively surprised when logging in and finding my reward. Regarding the who's fault is it question. The forcefields are an intended mechanic, you get quests for pulling zombies and puppets into the runes at the Church and Academy, while the one at the morninglight camp is being shown killing zombies during a cutscene. You can use those outside of the quests too, however any mob killed that way did not grant any experience nor loot. Now with one exception: the event mobs that will drop loot when pulled in and cout toward the competition (not sure about xp though). That was an oversight by Funcom and the way they handled that in the end is a very positive one. The event itself was mosty big fun, even it could get a bit annoying sometimes when you wanted to do something else...
What are you talking about. If you read the thread you will notice a Massive approval rate on what funcom did.
Anyways i am happy to hear that people are starting to warm back up to Funcom. they really are among the best of the MMO Developers. TSW is a great game, its really hard to deny that unless you are Anti Themepark. Personally i approve of what they did, Ill also enjoy talking to the Devs on the forums since they are incredibly active on them.
Because i can. I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out. Logic every gamers worst enemy.
It been inthe game since day one. The church in kngsmouth has wards and you can easly pull any and all zombies there and kill them. It not an exploit it is bad game design and just about everybody I saw did that so they could clean out the area to do quest objectives without being overrun.
That's not an exploit -- it's storyline. The church is protected by a ward from the army of undead.
The barrier around the Morninglight camp in KM, same situation, different story element.
Mentioned elsewhere, the Innsmouth Academy doorway that has a ward, this is so much a story element that it's zapping of undead denizens of the Academy are featured prominently in at least two of the quests given in an office around the corner from the doorway/ward -- you are instructed to pull "familiars" to the doorway to kill them, then loot their anima essence which is used to create a clickable item that allows you to lay a ward symbol at other strategic locations to "protect" the Academy from the various monsters who have overrun the area.
Oh, and someone mentioned using the wards/forcefield/barriers to pull the 2.2 million HP world boss Harbinger to insta-poof for great rewards. I don't think this was possible. The Harbingers had to be debuffed with 5 runes that were drops from the Mayan Remains loot bags and seemed tethered to specific areas. I never saw anyone attempt to pull the big guy in Savage Coast to the Academy door (the only ward available in that zone that was insta-zapping the lesser Mayans).
If someone actually was able to do that, I'd be interested to hear about it, must've been one heck'uva pull, kind of like when those wacky WoW hunters would pull Doomlord Kazzak to Stormwind (across multiple zones).
My comment is merely to point out that I love Funcom and their games...although not a fan of TSW, just couldn't get into it. But still, I love Funcom. Lol
"Life is not judged by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
They picked the best of a poor set of choices to solve this problem. The pet is a bit odd though, we are meant to be fighting for the good guys right? having pet demons looks a bit odd. Or maybe we are all fighting for the bad guys and don't know it!?
Kiting mobs into wards has never granted XP, it does increase kill count (for the "kill 10,000 zombies achievement &c.) but kill count on the Mayan spawns wasn't a factor in the contest, what was scored was the number of "Mayan Remains" goodie-bags opened & these could be traded.
Whoever referred to kiting Harbingers into the wards was possibly mixing them up with the 277k "Servant of Seven Deaths" bosses that spawned at the end of each cycle of the zombie / mayans. I'm not 100% certain but I would think that owing to the thing's patrol route and leash distance, never mind the fact that it's several times bigger than the front door, it would have been impossible to pull the Savage Coast Harbinger to the Academy wards with its shield down ("instant death" mechanics in TSW generally work by dealing ~1,000,000 points of damage).
Actually the church wards didn't work on the Mayan zombies. My guess is that the church wards are coded to only affect a single creature sub-type, the "runner" zombies which are normally the only spawn within leash range of that door, whereas the Morninglight and Academy wards are within range of multiple creature types (wendigo, zombies, draugr for the former, familiars and spectres the latter) & so were just coded to affect everything.
Prior to this event the ward couldn't have been seriously abused for farming purposes since mob density and spawn rate meant that you would have been better off just blitzing through the surrounding area spamming Blade Torrent / Clearing the Path while 2+ QL over the "on level" point for the zone.
Preferred fix IMO would be to code so that mobs dying to the wards never drop loot, the only reason they ever needed to was the Innsmouth Academy mission where you needed to gather anima charges from familiars, and that got changed around launch time because the huge number of unclaimed lootbags caused serious graphics lag around the Academy.
It wasnt force files but anti undead wards in two places in whole game world. People concocted that undead Mayans can be killed in large amount this way and I dont see it as an exploit, somebody used his brain. FunCom didnt foresee it. Later a some more people started to do it and it became a problem. Any way I sympathy for those who wasted hours of their life farming mobs instead of doing something better. And akab pet is so ugly...
Comments
I would not really call it an exploit, after all it is not like someone is shooting threw a wall (course some could compare the situation).
Really kiting NPC's back to camps has always been done in slash and bash type MMO's. Used to do this all the time in WoW to get past certain quests. Maybe they just did not expect so many ppl to do this but to me it has always been acceptable in MMO's over the last 10 years.
It was totally Funcom's fault because they knew about it as soon as it started.. however everyone was on vacation and nobody could fix it in time (I guess nobody can work remotely?)
Since it was their fault, they didn't punish the exploiters and rather said "sorry we screwed up with this" and gave everyone the items.
The whole event was poorly thought out unfortunately.. making grinding grindy grind events for the event items is almost as bad as making you buy them in a store.
Consume. Be silent. Die.
Ok, so now it is Funcoms fault is it ?
This is quite beyond evil.
Everyone using this exploit knew what they were doing. They did not outsmarted the developer, they abused and willfully misused a system of which was obvious that it wasn't meant to be used in such way because it isn't fair play.
Regardless of this was a one time event or a main stream mechanic, the use of the exploit can only be regarded as basicaly unfair behaviour.
Sadly such social unacceptable way does not always get what it deserves. I find Funcoms elegant solution very mature and sensible.
Even if they made an eror in the coding that does not make them necessarily responsible. A thief finding the backdoor of your house wide open, still does not have to steal anything and does not have to complain to a judge " your honor they are at fault because they left the door open"
Rated M for Mature - May contain content inappropriate for children
I learned about the exploit shortly after joining the game last week. I had no idea what was going on the first time seeing it. second time around I noticed that there were TONS of loot sitting there while these people were "attacking" everything as it spawned.
So I thought, what the heck, why not loot since they are not...720creds here and there, mostly quality 10 items worth 3-12k. So, I loaded up my pack, even bought 2 pack expansions...and would just run from the mourninglight camp to the vendor, then back to the camp, load up again...repeat.
So now I have near 600k credits and dont have to worry about money for a while. I couldnt care less about getting the kills for a pointless title or pet that does nothing. I can always count on Funcom to not stop exploiting until its too late, and I have never seen them ban people when a LOT of have done it.
I look forward to the next event that will bring another exploit that will take a long time to fix and not get banned for doing it.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
This isn’t the first game that events have been exploited and definitely wont be the last .But I do believe Funcom are slowly but surely rebuilding a broken reputation from AoC and TSW is fast becoming an OK game to be associated with in the general mmo populaces eyes .
This response to a game mechanic being used as it wasn’t intended to be used is in my mind the best thing they could have done so many past exploit’s have been grey area's were sometimes the fact your using them isn’t clear and can be done mistakenly.
The world is to full of negatives we just escaped the end of the world for Christ sake
..lets have more positive reactions like this from devs.
I have to say that Funcoms responce to the exploit was the best ever!
Not much gain for the wicked!
Funcom has ALWAYs had the best humor of all gamedevelopers, something you will notice everywhere in the game.
Names of npc's. Roadsigns. Quests. Small things here and there that make their world pure awesomeness!
I love TSW and im eager to see what will come next!
All I know is I was really getting sick of the zombies showing up. I died in more than a few fights because a zombie would rise up in the middle of an AoE attack or something. Funny the first few times, but it gets to the point that you couldn't walk 10 feet without having another one rise. You basically have to leave the zombie for last as well, because if you try and kill it first, another will come up right away.
Haven't played in 2 weeks out of frustration.
You make me like charity
Yep, think it will go down as a learning experience. The event was a lot of fun, in any case, and I think this was the best possible outcome for everyone.
That is a really interesting consideration. I suppose I have been so used to devs blocking discoveries that I had not considered that this should be encouraged. Perhaps keep it from being the only viable option, but still keep it as one. I don't play TSW but I can agree that making things kill themselves sounds fun.
What are you talking about. If you read the thread you will notice a Massive approval rate on what funcom did.
Anyways i am happy to hear that people are starting to warm back up to Funcom. they really are among the best of the MMO Developers. TSW is a great game, its really hard to deny that unless you are Anti Themepark. Personally i approve of what they did, Ill also enjoy talking to the Devs on the forums since they are incredibly active on them.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
It been inthe game since day one. The church in kngsmouth has wards and you can easly pull any and all zombies there and kill them. It not an exploit it is bad game design and just about everybody I saw did that so they could clean out the area to do quest objectives without being overrun.
That's not an exploit -- it's storyline. The church is protected by a ward from the army of undead.
The barrier around the Morninglight camp in KM, same situation, different story element.
Mentioned elsewhere, the Innsmouth Academy doorway that has a ward, this is so much a story element that it's zapping of undead denizens of the Academy are featured prominently in at least two of the quests given in an office around the corner from the doorway/ward -- you are instructed to pull "familiars" to the doorway to kill them, then loot their anima essence which is used to create a clickable item that allows you to lay a ward symbol at other strategic locations to "protect" the Academy from the various monsters who have overrun the area.
Oh, and someone mentioned using the wards/forcefield/barriers to pull the 2.2 million HP world boss Harbinger to insta-poof for great rewards. I don't think this was possible. The Harbingers had to be debuffed with 5 runes that were drops from the Mayan Remains loot bags and seemed tethered to specific areas. I never saw anyone attempt to pull the big guy in Savage Coast to the Academy door (the only ward available in that zone that was insta-zapping the lesser Mayans).
If someone actually was able to do that, I'd be interested to hear about it, must've been one heck'uva pull, kind of like when those wacky WoW hunters would pull Doomlord Kazzak to Stormwind (across multiple zones).
"Life is not judged by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
Kiting mobs into wards has never granted XP, it does increase kill count (for the "kill 10,000 zombies achievement &c.) but kill count on the Mayan spawns wasn't a factor in the contest, what was scored was the number of "Mayan Remains" goodie-bags opened & these could be traded.
Whoever referred to kiting Harbingers into the wards was possibly mixing them up with the 277k "Servant of Seven Deaths" bosses that spawned at the end of each cycle of the zombie / mayans. I'm not 100% certain but I would think that owing to the thing's patrol route and leash distance, never mind the fact that it's several times bigger than the front door, it would have been impossible to pull the Savage Coast Harbinger to the Academy wards with its shield down ("instant death" mechanics in TSW generally work by dealing ~1,000,000 points of damage).
Actually the church wards didn't work on the Mayan zombies. My guess is that the church wards are coded to only affect a single creature sub-type, the "runner" zombies which are normally the only spawn within leash range of that door, whereas the Morninglight and Academy wards are within range of multiple creature types (wendigo, zombies, draugr for the former, familiars and spectres the latter) & so were just coded to affect everything.
Prior to this event the ward couldn't have been seriously abused for farming purposes since mob density and spawn rate meant that you would have been better off just blitzing through the surrounding area spamming Blade Torrent / Clearing the Path while 2+ QL over the "on level" point for the zone.
Preferred fix IMO would be to code so that mobs dying to the wards never drop loot, the only reason they ever needed to was the Innsmouth Academy mission where you needed to gather anima charges from familiars, and that got changed around launch time because the huge number of unclaimed lootbags caused serious graphics lag around the Academy.