"Exploits, Nerfs, Banning and Overequipping" by Gaute Godager

[Docmax]

This is my first RPG game ever and I have invested a lot of time learning strategies, spending IP, acquiring equipment based on the current rules of the game. I shudder to think how hard it will be to start over and have all my strategies put into question.

How was I supposed to know putting the best gun in my hands was an exploit? It shouldn't be called an "exploit" if it's the fault of the game code, it should be called a "bug".

In any case, please, no more changes to the rules of the game. I like the game how it is. All of these dramatic changes should have been done before letting people play and pay.

Imagine starting a 2 hour game of Monopoly then after an hour in, someone say's "hey, lets make it so those who own Hotels can't charge as much."

Start a new server with the new rules. Leave this server alone.

[Cathail]

Originally posted by Mescale


No I don't think its any of the above.
Its getting buffed up by any means then equipping an item whilst buffed (armour, weapons etc.), and then when the buff wears off you still have the item equpped, so your using an item above your level and above the objects required stats.

For instance I have elec eng of 20 I got buffed up to 36 for 30 minutes in that time I equipped a floating torch because a whole bunch of my mission were in absolute darkness. After the Buff ran out My Elec Eng dropped back to 20 but I still had a working floating light equipped.

Hence I'm over equipt because my skills do not meet the requirements for the light. But I still have it and use it.

Actually, that would have been choice number "1", anything equiped with base stats. And I already posted my reasons for that being an unreasonable solution.

[______________Eowyyn]

Originally posted by ReetJoo
This is my first RPG game ever and I have invested a lot of time learning strategies, spending IP, acquiring equipment based on the current rules of the game. I shudder to think how hard it will be to start over and have all my strategies put into question.

How was I supposed to know putting the best gun in my hands was an exploit? It shouldn't be called an "exploit" if it's the fault of the game code, it should be called a "bug".

In any case, please, no more changes to the rules of the game. I like the game how it is. All of these dramatic changes should have been done before letting people play and pay.

Imagine starting a 2 hour game of Monopoly then after an hour in, someone say's "hey, lets make it so those who own Hotels can't charge as much."

Start a new server with the new rules. Leave this server alone.

Here Here! That monopoly thing killed me..

[_____________Borrace]

if you (FUNCOM) didn't want players to be able to use things beyond their level why create:

1. general stat buffs
2. special profession stat buffs useable on other players
3. clusters and implants?

if you do the work to buy the implants and find the friends to help you wear the equipment, then you should keep the equipment.

this is not a bug, or a flaw...it is just a reality of rubi-ka. whoever plans their life on rubika the best, gets the best equipment.

you need:

1. planning
2. money
3. friends

if a player takes the time to earn the cash to buff up his or her character with implants and buffs to "over equip," then that player will receive those benefits.

what really gets me is that people who choose not to do this because they don't want to take the time to plan, or earn money, or make friends to get these advantages cry cry cry cry cry in order to get funcom's attention.

"wah wah wah...i didn't make my character as powerful as that other guy who spent 1.5 million credits on implants and equipment, it's not fair...make me equal and take away all the work that the other guy did."

that is essentially what has happened.

and predictably...funcom is standing in the batter's box with the nerf bat waiting to come up to the plate once again.

i'm almost level 55...i've been saving money since level 30 in order to prepare for upgrades in armor, implants, belts, NCU memory, nanos, and weapons. i figure i need about 2 million credits to do what i want to do. that money represents a lot of time and planning, and for crybabies to get funcom to screw around with mine, and hundreds (if not thousands) of other players, simply because they don't understand that you are supposed to take advantages of features instead of get rid of them is truly pathetic.

[______________Tedric]

Originally posted by ReetJoo

Imagine starting a 2 hour game of Monopoly then after an hour in, someone say's "hey, lets make it so those who own Hotels can't charge as much."

That would be fine if this was a short, one-off game, but it's not. Board-game analogies, while fun, are not that helpful.

As Gaute said in his article, they change the game in order to make the max. number of poeple happy. Currently, some people are happy with the current equipping rules (usually the ones with twinked equipment), and some people are not. I think that the second group is the larger one, but I don't know for sure.

What is known is that the current game ruleset forces everyone to play the "let's twink our characters and forget about game design intentions" game in order to survive. I hate that, and see this whole game spiraling into a situation where only the twinks can survive "normal" monsters, while players who try to follow the spirit of the rules (instead of the loopholes) find 50% missions more and more difficult (and impossible, at some point).

At some point, the non-twinks are going to leave because of this. The $100 question for Funcom is, of course, which group is bigger. Because no matter what happens, some group of players is going to be disgusted with it. Funcom needs to decide what they want the future of the game to be, and act accordingly - and realize that they will get flak, either way. The current system is a design flaw... but some people don't want Funcom to correct this one, because it would degrade their twinked/exploited/whatever characters.

Ideally we could set up two servers, like you said, and have one server continue with the current ruleset and have the other be the "nerf" server for those of us who prefer balance to powerlevels. Unfortunalty, I don't think Funcom has the resources for something like this.

[Betablue]

Frankly, you shouldn't have talked about overequipping with agents. Now I'm going to go right into everything that is insanely wrong with being an agent so Funcom can nerf them (as they should be).

Agents

A level 50 agent can go to FP trader mode to equip a weapon that is QL 110. That's 60 QLs higher than the level they are. Its easy. They use the deprive/ransack lines to buff everything including apprentice nanos to buff for higher end scopes. As it is now agents can defeat anyone their level due to this overequipping.

Lets talk about other things that an agent can do now.

Agents can use FP - MP mode after they are overequipped with their uber 60 QLs higher rifle to summon a healing pet and a combat pet. What is sad about this is they can summon one better than an MP can!! Oh don't know how here is how you can do it.

Agent goes to FP-Trader mode. Agent waits until 5 min before it wears off and then deprives/ransacks 3 lines so they can have unbelievable nano abilities. Time it so that FP-Trader mode disappears. Swap to FP-MP mode and buff mastery nanos. All of this takes exactly 1 min and 20 seconds. YOu still ahve 1 min and 40 seconds to go. Zone to political zone. Summon a higher level attack pet and a healing pet that no other MP your level can do. Yes the agent now can summon pets that are stronger than an MP can create.

What do we now have here? An uber agent with a rifle QL 60 levels higher than they can use, a healing pet and an attack pet higher than an MP their level can use, and 20 minutes of death for anyone that they want to fight.

I will stop here for now because I play an agent and if I wanted too I could show FC a way to nerf everything they should about an agent. So for that last poster that said Agents should overequip, shut up now or seek your own doom.

[Mightykirby]

Wow, so many people are posting, it's really hard to answer everything. First, someone said they got killed by some uber agent with QL 93 gripo. Errr, if you say so pal. And tedric here is whining about everyone posting having overequipped characters. Gee pal, what level are you? 15? 20? Everyone favoring disabling "over-equipping" doesn't seem to grasp that EVERYONE DOES IT. I don't care who you are, if you're above level 75, you have gear on above level 75. It's not an opinion, it's a fact. If you're level 75, and you don't wear implants, you should seriously consider getting a catscan. Getting rid of this feature disables many, many, many of the moneymakers today. No essence = poor enforcers. No Iron circle = poor doctors. No wranglers = poor traders. This is something built in to the fundementals of the game, you can't simply ask funcom to change the entire game because someone is better than you. It's a fact of gaming. No matter what you do, no matter where you go, someone will be more skilled, faster, more twinked out, and overall better than you. There is no reason that your faults should spell the company ruining everyone else's fun. Honestly, does anyone have a problem with overequipping outside of PVP? I've been in level 50ish groups before where we've had an agent that hits for 500 and crits for 1500. Am I upset because my group kills faster and gains more experience than other groups? I've been in level 80 groups where I'm as strong as someone 10 levels below me. Do I get upset? Do I moan and whine and beg them to change it? No, I don't.... do you? Do I get upset when a level 35 fixer (you know who you are) can kill my baby engineer in 3 hits? You bet I do. The problem here isn't the game itself, it's pvp. People get frustrated when competition is involved. Don't ask for a fix that changes the entire game when all you want is a fix for 25% of the game. Oh, and don't give me the whole speech that most newbies give- "I pay my 12.95 a month just like everyone else, I deserve just what they do." Reality check, you may pay 12.95 a month, but everyone else does too. And guess what, there's more of them.
EDIT: Oh yeah, why is there something wrong with twinks if you're going to become one yourself hmm?

[Wild Weasel]

The answer to all the over-equipping issues is pretty easy actually.

Cause everyone to lose ALL of their items on death and have to recover them at the reclaim terminal.

This includes armor and implants...

Currently, there is no real penalty for death, which I find kind of a pointless.

Eventually, everyone dies, and will have re-equip items..

[Mightykirby]

Sir, you have apparently never lost 7 million experience to the instant death bug. There is a VERY large penalty in dying.

[______________Othgar]

Hello Everyone,

I have read all the responses in this thread as well as the original article. This is really a tough issue so before I posted I wanted to check some things out. Here is what I found.

Background: I am a Level 160 Agent (Omni)... I have 14k in unused IP I have no Evade, Dodge or Duck skills to speak of. My Nano skills are all maxed as are my attributes and Agent skills (rifle, AS, Conceal(LOL) and of course RUN) I can self buff into QL200 Implants, Armor and Rifle with ease. Currently wear QL200 in all of these areas.

With maxed skills wearing, equiping the best of everything I can not kill a yellow one-on-one, not even using FP MP and and healing pet. I lose 10 out of 10 in my tests. I can take a green one-on-one with a healing pet but not without. Sneaking missions is still possible even at 100% for me but it is a tedious risky process that take many hours to complete even a single mission ans they sometimes have to be abandoned. In a team I do extremely well.

Now I know I am gonna hear tons of crap about the evade, dodge, duck but you know what as I have seen multiple times in multiple posts when you are 150 the IP crunch goes away and I am here to tell you thats horse crap. I cant see maxing them until possibly level 185-190. So I have no idea where all this "extra" Ip is supposed to come from, I just know I dont have it.

Test: I de-equiped everything, including implants and put on a full set ranging from QL125-QL170 figuring that to be average for the test. I also put on armor in the QL150-170 range and equiped a QL168 Diss. Rifle. I ran only buffs of QL160 or below.

Results: I died 10 of 10 running fulling easy missions and was also unsuccessful in completeing all but 1 of 10 sneak missions at full easy. I went out and tried to solo a green the same exact guard i had killed before as a matter of fact and he layed waste to me in a matter of 20 seconds. I dropped him by about 1/16th of his max health in that time frame.

My point with all this is if you change overequiping or reduce the effects of equipment with the current state of "God like MoB's" for some of the classes then you will destroy the game even more than it already is.

I am in favor of the de-equip/IP reset plan IF you balance the MoB's and put Player Level Req's on all implants and weapons to make sure that overequiping isnt possible. This will probably be the best for the Roll-players in the game and if thats what your trying to cater to. You will loose all hardcore gamers to other games with such a change though, so be prepared for that. Some people play for the fun of making the best character and wearing and using the best stuff. Thats what they like. your skill system alone with all of its choices made me come to this game to build the best I could build but with all the changes I'll never level again even equiped with the max available unless I want to team.

Sorry for the long post and I wish I had ways to solve this for you but that isnt my thing... I am here to have fun in teams and alone and right now it isnt possible. Furthermore, I dont believe it has anything at all to do with overequiping. The game was more FUN in beta and just after release even with all the problems. I have not truly enjoyed playing this game since 12.5. I hope that this has helped in some way but i truly doubt anyone cares about having fun anymore......

Othgar

[___________MrTeatime]

I think we all agree on exploits: one warning then goodbye.

I don't think we'll ever agree on equipment and nerfs. Some want to be as good as everyone else their level no matter what, some want the time they spent planning and building a character to matter.

"Overequipping" concerns everyone, as everything in the game has to be challenging even for those who spent a lifetime preparing their character for combat. A "twink" might think he doesn't bother anyone, but after a while FunCom has to make the enemies harder etc. because of the power of a fully prepared character.

I'm leaving PvP out of the discussion because it should be balanced on it's own, with more detail towards how each profession will perform and so on.

Buffing
We all have our buffs, either general ones or profession-specific. They improve either one or more skills or abilites, and come in three forms: self-only, single person or team.

If FunCom didn't intend buffs to be used the way they are, I can't see where they have been the last four years. Buffs like Iron Circle can't be used any other way..what would you want +20 str/stam for if it weren't for using stuff with str/stam requirements?

All professions have their buffs, so if you want some extra strength, you have to ask a Doctor or and Enforcer. Anarchy Online is not a single player game, there are many professions with special advantages willing to share them with you for a small fee.

Implants
The treatment centre bug was bad, and let people equip really high implants. It might do some good to unequip all implants, but I wonder how many implants would disappear because of "unforseen bugs" during the unequip. Because this has been fixed, it will not have that big an impact on the player vs mob balance.

Still, I have maxed my treatment and added some extra treatment clusters in my implants and I can wear ql 90-100 implants at level 65 without the +80 Doctor buff. All it takes is a few levels worth of IPs.

"Exploit-implants" are mostly a PvP problem in my opinion.

Armor and weapons
This is what we're really discussing. Should I be able to wear a piece of armor or use a weapon even though I don't have the ability to wear it at the moment?

Most of the "solutions" offered are highly unrealistic, but the general idea behind the solutions are valid. So what can FunCom do?

Armor:
Give each type of armor a few negative effects if you don't have the skill requirements. Maybe it could be a lowered nanopool for nanomage armor or lower runspeed/weaponskills for strength-based armor. You get my point. Maybe reduce the AC as well, but add some interesting effects to the game. If you want to have uber AC, fine, just don't expect to be able to cast your nanoprograms.

Examples of this can be seen in almost every other MMORPG.

Weapons:
First of all, increase the chance to miss if you can't wield a weapon properly. Don't reduce the damage. No weapon ever lost damage potential just because some recruit tried to use an expert's weapon. You might miss more, yes..but a bullet does the same amount of damage whether a recruit or a sniper fired it. A sniper would hit more and better of course.

Then, increase the damage bonus your weapon skill grants. If you wield a massive sword, an extra 50 points of strength would definately increase the damage you deal. A sniper would be much more accurate with a high rifle skill, so you increase his hit vs miss ratio. This will encourage more people to raise their skill, instead of their weapon.

Lastly, lower the amount of damage a weapon does to compensate for the skill bonus gained.

Weapons vs Nanoprograms
Remember, you have to upgrade weapondamage if you do the above. People with weapons will do less damage, people with nanoprograms will do just as much as before.

Monsters and NPCs
Now, once you have balanced all the above, you'll have a bunch of people with reduced damage potential on your hands. That's why it's extremely important to balance the mobs at the same time. Reduce their HPs and so on to make them more suited for the new environment.

These are just my ideas, some may be good, some may be bad, but at least it's a suggestion. Feel free to post even better ideas, as we all just want to improve the game.

As a last thought, I'd like to add that I only using one char, and I've never received free money or equipment from anyone (Except my coat, thanks to a nice guildmate). I use equipment I've found or bought myself, and I'm having lots of fun upgrading my character. I do not level fast, because I like where I am at the moment..so my char is probably a bit more powerful than those who rush by me while teaming all day. I buy or get buffs from others, because that's why they are there.

[___________MrTeatime]

Oh yeah, please don't make AO the buff-every-10-minute hell also known as AC. Please please please please please.

I quit AC because of that crap. It's not fun at all, so do not go there.

[__________Specialone]

If over-equipping is not intended, why is there a seemingly undless variety of ways to do it?

It's obvious that it is an intention component of the game - we can use IP to build and install implants that give us higher weapon etc skills, all classes can buff certain skill types, etc...

If FC didn't want us to "over-equip" it's a little late to start thinking about it now.

It's like saying they didn't intend us to form groups and hunt spawns...

The game is geared so that one must equip weapons 25-50 ql above lvl JUST to kill greys and greens. My 49 fixer just went from a ql66 to a ql 85 mausser and the difference is staggering. All implants + 10 pts MG/SMG thx to a friendly trader buff - hardly exploitation.

The buffs are more or less AO's "tradeskills" since the tradeskills are so poorly coded and nearly completely unimplemented.

Expolits are not categorized by doing what the game designers originally intended the players to do.

Running missions? Not an exploit - why? It's a trade-off: I kill everything in a mission for xp and token. The cash is nice but as a casual player with limited time, missions are my main xp. Running missions just means no xp. So what?
Sure, some higher lvl chrs could run 25 missions for 1 lvl's worth of xp. If they can stand the repetition, so be it. I can't. Boredom is an intrinsic part of the AO experience. Missions are boring, whether they're run or methodically scoured. Duping and other similar loopholes should be eliminated because it's a coding error.

[______________Hodaka]

To look at another issue, when funcom does come up with a solution they like, they need to seriously look at:

• Will players still be able to do 50% missions?
• Will these end up wasting a lot of money/IP for players?
• What will be the PVP impact?
• Will the game be so tedious, it's no longer fun to play?
• Is the solution even worth it? After all, the complaints seem to be involving PVP. Maybe they should be addressing that instead.
• Will the system be easy to implement (i.e. can we say bugs?)
• How will you make it up to those who make a modest income off of selling buffs, which will no longer be in demand.

If they don't address these issues, as well as probably a bunch more, then no matter what solution they give, it will be a bad one..

Maybe we need to step back from the equipping issue and look at the problem as a whole. I've suggested not being able to buff those who are gray to you. I have another idea that I don't even like and haven't really looked into, but how about not being able to buff a skill beyond a certain percentage of your current unbuffed skill. (i.e. buff caps). I personally don't like the idea, but I'm throwing it out to show that there are OTHER ways of addressing the issue than just "disable everything". It seems that too much of this is addressing the end result rather than the source..

[______________Tedric]

Originally posted by Mightykirby
Wow, so many people are posting, it's really hard to answer everything. First, someone said they got killed by some uber agent with QL 93 gripo. Errr, if you say so pal. And tedric here is whining about everyone posting having overequipped characters. Gee pal, what level are you? 15? 20? Everyone favoring disabling "over-equipping" doesn't seem to grasp that EVERYONE DOES IT. I don't care who you are, if you're above level 75, you have gear on above level 75. It's not an opinion, it's a fact. If you're level 75, and you don't wear implants, you should seriously consider getting a catscan.

Ummm, you misunderstand, I think we're stuck on semantics here.

By "overequip" and "twink", I have meant the common practice of having someone buff you so you can equip something that you normally could not. Since the current (broken) ruleset only checks skills at equip time, this makes it possible for lvl 50 characters to equip lvl 100+ weaponry with a one-off buff.

I do *not* mean to say that it's categorically bad to use equipment above your level. That fine, and a part of the game. I just think the requirements should be met at all times (with a buff, implant etc), not just at equip time.

I'm currently at lvl40 and I use lvl50-60 nanoformulas, because I've boosted MC with implants in addition to maxing it. That's fine in my book. The same thing to MA attacks (I run a +20 buff all the time so I can use MA attacks above my level).

Contrast this to the typical case of an agent or similar profession, who has a trader buff him *once* so he can equip with an uber-rifle <insert any other example here>. That requires no skill or planning, just a friend or some cash to pay the trader with. Wheee.

That difference is what I'm complaining about: currently you can use weapons and armor of arbitrary level once you manage to equip them - which is not that hard, since it only needs to be done once. The same does *not* apply to MA attacks and nanoformulas, to give some examples.

So to sum things up: I think the rules should not allow the use of equipment if your *current* stats do not allow it. If disabling is too harsh, then at least some degrading should be done. Like I said, a hard limit is already in place for MA and nanos. Weapons and armor should follow the same logic.

[_____________Raddrik]

Balance Nano to weapons.... OK
FC take out all those 1130-2000 dmg, 3 second nukes and all that stuff from all the NT's and they will frigging quit whining about dmg of weapons...
Compare a agent with a avg sniper their lvl doing around 200 points dmg / shot around lvl 65-70 and then comes a NT lvl 55-60 and do close to 2000 points dmg every 3 seconds... thats not balance...
So dont nerf weapon users cause those nano users keep whining...
You chose a NT, you chose to do massive dmg fast, but if your debuffed you lose that power.... something a weapon user dont get, but on the other hand the weapon user dont do the SAME massive dmg...
So a balance whould be to double or quadruple weapon dmg
(but that whould be EXTREMLY lame)

PS:
Anny more mega nerfs or serious f***ups like 12.6 and im deleting AO from my HD, and cancel my subscription, i dont need **** like that..
(most my friends moved to DAoC annyway)

[_____________Raddrik]

Uhm who Mightykirby did say he got killed by a ql 93 gripo?
Got this to say to that guy!
<Got confirmed from FC ingame> Grippos dont exist over ql 50!!!
So if you get killed by someone using a ql 90ish Gripo, then i got 2 explanations... 1 He's full of **** or 2 Your full of ****
Take your pick!!!

[_______________Orb!t]

hm.. what about trader skill wranglers then?? do we lose functionality of that whole line of nano's then? it's not like it's used for anything else then so let other ppl over-equip weapons.. besides, i don't see that as exploiting since the buffs to over-equip where in the game from day 1..

[Mightykirby]

You misunderstand the problem however. Like so many people, the problem is rooted in PVP, and competition. It's like playing monopoly (as someone earlier stated). If you play by yourself, nobody gets jealous of what you have, nobody cares if you cheat, it's all just fluff anyway.
If you play with other people, you may all start out the same, but it gets tricky. For example, one person trades are bargains to get properties he doesn't own, earning himself the right to build houses (as in someone getting buffs to equip better stuff). Sure, he may get good stuff for himself, but that money had to come from somewhere, someone had to give it to him right? Another example, someone turns to the person sitting next to him and says "I'll give you five real dollars if you give me park place". We all know what this means.
I may be straying off the main point, but think of it this way. If a player manages to get all the hotels and houses on 3/4 of the board, the other people may complain that it's not fair, because they have no chance of winning the competition.
In many ways, this is similar to our little problem here. Some people manage to get something better than we all have, and as long as it doesn't keep us from winning we don't mind. My opponent can have every space on the board with a hotel, but I don't care as long as I win right? You just need to put it all in perspective. PVP is the issue, not twinks.

[_______________Orb!t]

believe me, i'm all for getting rid of exploiters, just not for calling intended features bugs all of a sudden..