Please fix handling of link dead team members

[Bima]

[Reposted from the temporary 14.6 forum, which is now closed.]

In an attempt to fix an exploit, you have inadvertently hurt a lot of people. Damage by the team getting wiped when someone leaves is unfair to those of us who have never done anything like it but who end up in a team where someone goes link dead.

It happened on teams I was on several times last night. A boss gave remarkably reduced experience. A few borgs worth of experience was also lost. "Only play with people who have stable connections" is not a good response. And the poor guy who normally has a good connection but is experiencing some flakiness ends up starting to feel even worse about what used to be merely the inconvenience of his link deaths because he is now depriving people of xp.

There is a fair solution to the exploit that it seems to me would be fair to everyone. When a team is formed, it is known whether there is a member that is too high for someone else to receive experience. The "will be out of range" flag should be set for every member who is too low as any new fight is started. If that team breaks up during a fight, even due to link death, then that experience is wiped for people who would have been too low.

As an aside, it sure would be nice if "/team loot all" really worked properly when a team mate is out of zone but his irrelevant turn in the invisible loot rotation comes up.

[Beartwo]

....



FIX IT

[_____________Brandon]

What exploit are you talking about.

[Dyna18]

I agree.... It's not fair that you don't get experience if a team member goes LD during the boss fight!

[Dharshar]

The teaming with Highlvls to Powerlevel Exploit. Wont go into details on how its done, but this was appearantly done to counter that.

A real bad solution I might add

[______________Thromp]

Yep, Funcom swallowed the spider to eat the fly on this one. Whatsamatta's solution would be perfect. Please implement it.

[Splity]

Yea I think this is a great idea. Please add this to your very long list.
Thanks
Xzule

[__________Wraith God]

Shoot, the exploit has been closed, and its important for people to know how it worked so they can evaluate the 'solution'.

How it worked: A team of low levels, with one very high level player, gets a team mission at 100% difficulty. The high level player does all the killing, but leaves the team after the Mob is below 50% health to finish it off. All team members got xp under conditions because the team had done over 50% damage, and the high level was no longer in the team when they got xp so the level check never kicked in. The high level player then rejoins the team, and goes on to the next Mob.

Very nice and easy xp for the low levels, and also excellent loot.

Funcom's 'solution' is to wipe all damage done when anyone leaves any team. Yes, this deals with the problem, but it also catches 20 other legitimate situations where a team member leaves the team in the middle of a fight. It is therefore brainless.

Whatsamatta's solution focuses on the illegitimacy of the team, and is therefore superior because it solves the exploit without messing with anyone else.

The only issue I have with the flag he suggests, is that adding data fields to objects is a tougher job than simply running an algorithm. I would therefore just have the team levels checked at the point when someone leaves the team to determine whether the damage should be wiped. If a player too high for the team leaves in the middle of a fight, then the team damage is wiped. Under no other conditions would wiping need to be done.

[_____________Brandon]

Thanks for the clarification. Yeah ****ty exploit and ****ty 'solution'. Not like the player community really cared about it. I think when they made it bannable all high level NTs were like what the ****. I am not gonna get banned to help some little **** I dont even know except in the game. Too much time invested and such.

[______________CoreMP]

Yeah realy FC. This idea was toaly rediculous. Let others suffer tons of lost exp for some exploiters. Totaly wrong to judge all by what a few did!

I bump this 1miljon times!

Besides, even if people utilize this exploit when FC fixes it back, why not make it so you have something that recognizes LD and LEAVING A TEAM?

If the packets dont return, because u do have packet control? then the user is LD. If packets still return the user just left. No big deal with this, so damned easy to implement and think of yet u screw with all!

[_____________Brandon]

Yeah make some sort of distiguishing between LD and Leaving team.

[Greybear]

This is a throw back from the days of Ultima Online. Its called Unplugging.

So inorder to fix the NT exploit, they had to wipe exp when a member left. The games cant tell if someone has Unplugged inorder to drop or if they are truely LD. I think some people can even stop the data flow upstream and maintain a connection long enough to return after the EXP has been given, then rejoin team again.

My opinion, mine alone.


How did EQ finally fix this? I know I used to hear alot of bad things when it took so many players to kill something and people continually went LD.

[Darkbane]

Originally posted by Wraith God
Shoot, the exploit has been closed, and its important for people to know how it worked so they can evaluate the 'solution'.

How it worked: A team of low levels, with one very high level player, gets a team mission at 100% difficulty. The high level player does all the killing, but leaves the team after the Mob is below 50% health to finish it off. All team members got xp under conditions because the team had done over 50% damage, and the high level was no longer in the team when they got xp so the level check never kicked in. The high level player then rejoins the team, and goes on to the next Mob.

Very nice and easy xp for the low levels, and also excellent loot.

Well, not quite, the real trick was for the high level to kill the MOB then leave the team before the xp award... Which is why high level NTs with AoE nukes were so popular for it. What you are stating is almost the standard power-levelling method which doesn't involve teams...

[Hornsbuck]

I'll have to speak up here also. While this was mildly irritating at first, my experience with this during a crucial battle was inexcusable. Right before we felled the level 200 dynacamp Mantis boss that roams on the outskirts of the Mantis Hive in PW, I went LD when the boss was less than 2% health. When I came back, the beast was dead, no XP was gained and the corpse coud not be looted. It took us almost an hour to kill the frickin' thing and we got NOTHING! With all these uber bosses running around, it takes DAYS to get together a competant team and a considerable amount of work to kill them. If someone gets kicked off the server why should ALL of us be penalized? This fix, while well intended, is simply monstrous to those of us who legitimately play the game. There needs to be something done about it and fast, otherwise players will start to discriminate other players based on the off chance of an LD, or worse yet, nobody will bother teaming because of the high probability of someone going LD during a protracted engagement. That's my 2 cents and I hope Cz makes a note of it, because its hurting us high level players BADLY.

[Jayde]

Originally posted by GreyBear
This is a throw back from the days of Ultima Online. Its called Unplugging.

So inorder to fix the NT exploit, they had to wipe exp when a member left. The games cant tell if someone has Unplugged inorder to drop or if they are truely LD. I think some people can even stop the data flow upstream and maintain a connection long enough to return after the EXP has been given, then rejoin team again.

My opinion, mine alone.


How did EQ finally fix this? I know I used to hear alot of bad things when it took so many players to kill something and people continually went LD.

When people go LD, you get a message "Team Member went Link-Dead." Obviously, there is some kind of detection here. Make it an exception.

A LD character does not get dropped from the team for a good 20-30 seconds. This would not be easy (if possible at all) to exploit like before. This exploit requires quick and exact timing, really...

BTW, for the record Horns...the boss was QL 230.

-Jayde

[__________Wraith God]

Jayde, while I understand your sentiment here, IMO it is never a good idea to hack a mistake. Funcom needs to rip out their first attempt, and do it correctly. They need to know exactly what the problem is, and fix exactly that. If they don't, they'll be hacking it forever.

[Darkbane]

Indee, this feels like a quick-and-dirty fix to the problem. Testing all team members when a fight starts (ie when any team member starts combat or otherwise aggro's a MOB) and flagging those that don't meet the minimum level strikes me as a more robust solution.

[____________Alantria]

So this is why its happening? this was the solution they came up with?
In the last 3 days i have lost the xp and loot from the boss 2 times because a member ld'd for 20 seconds, it is totally unfair to the players and has to be attended to very quickly, till then ill just have to very likelly uselessly /petition.

[Hornsbuck]

BTW, for the record Horns...the boss was QL 230.

-Jayde

D'oH, I was thinkin' of the other one. /me <-- silly 'Trox.

[Mercatura]

We had to live with the "Take it Easy" for half a year or more just because people loved QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ-Hammers, this doesn't suprise me at all.

However, it also happens even when no one leaves the team.