A different look on development (Kael)

- I'm not here to support or nonsupport ' exploit ' or using Giants to kill namers.

What I don't understand is the reply (after several weeks of threads on the topic) by a Developer to say that playing the game in a certain way will have your account in trouble.

We go into Kael, get a mission.. and have to hail 2 NPC's. EACH NPC is surrounded by the giants. A group member says: " that is one of the mobs we need "... So we pull it.

What upset us was the giants KS'd us! what a ripoff! We were so upset that the mobs were kill steeling us. So we really had to try hard to out dps these giants. WE pulled the Giant, why did the others jump in to KS our pull. WE thought oh this is a challenge the developers put in as part of the group mission? How interesting!
It was kind of fun, and different.


Now, then players realized.. hmm, we could use this to our advantage!! lets try! and then became the " exploit ".
Pulling a namer to giants was not fair.

A SECRETE nerf was put into place to ease this and make it harder for players to do this.
Then, the answer was you will have account consequences.

What I don't understand is, why program this in the first place?
The end result was to blame the player and threaten to punish players and their accounts in the final reply from a developer.

By the way, the reply was horrible. Capitalize the first letter of your sentence, you are at fault for the bad programming that some players liked, but also representing a million dollar company to the community.

Like I said, this is a different look on Kael. It is not all meant to be "YOUR EXPLOITING!! YOU ARE WRONG!"

No, you programmed this for players to use, it was challenging to not allow mobs to KS your pull, it is not the players fault.
You put this action and mechanic of the game right at NPC's you had to hail for a group task. What did you expect?

I am just making a point, the player isn't at fault. Players like to put blame on players that did this... but if the developer didn't have this in the first place.. it wouldn't have been a fun challenge / exploit (as some say).

All this did was cause others to fuel an argument/discussion to blame players for playing the game. This is unhealthy in the game all around.

It's amusing that your grammar is as bad as it is, but you're admonishing someone else for theirs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. New and exciting way to play the game, yadda, yadda, yadda. Heard it all before. Get over it and work on your own grammar before you point fingers at some one else.

The argument regarding Kael NPCs is lost. For those that found this mechanic helpful, I'd recommend making posts requesting NPC vs NPC combat made a main feature to a select few zones in the next expansion.

Tank mercs will always be bad, but this could be a viable and lore/RPG friendly way to get people to utilize new content.

Shh It's a "SECRETE". And be sure not to be caught "steeling". BTW, I, and most everyone here misspells words at times, but doing it when you are telling a developer to remember to "Capitalize the first letter of your sentence" just makes you look bad and seem foolish.

Sorry about the words auto correct did not catch. I CAN'T spell!
Also,

You missed the point.

They never said anything about taking action to accounts that had previously done it. They came out, stated that it was considered an exploit, some people tried to wordsmith what they said and that is when they stated that yes, if you keep doing it they might take action, end of conversation. They were just getting tired of people trying to use obtuse arguments of what if? At least that is how I read the thread.

Bad content design is bad content design. It’s not an exploit. Stuff like this gets complained about in beta and even gets acknowledged by the devs, but it always gets patched into live.

Bad content design can lead to exploits, which then lead to nerfs and fixes. Casting heals under water without taking any AE damage was an exploit (yet bad content design), and was patched. Being able to drag a mob to a spot where your foot is in a hole and you are unable to take any melee damage is a geometry issue and an exploit that is patched when devs find out. The (unfortunately) repeated warring-factions-as-lore-leading-to-exp-exploits-and-nerfs is still an exploit and eventually gets patched when it makes it a high enough priority.

Bad content design can be abused, but to an extent that it’s an exploit? I hold a more traditional view on what an exploit is. The devs designed the live giants to assist and years of experience on how to properly implement it and they made a bad decision.

But I think the implementation of fix, was done in a fair way.

Geometry is a bad example. The devs don’t purposely design bad geometry, but they did purposely design giants to assist.

I agree that the fix makes it pretty much useless now, but even beyond that they have come out to say dont use it or else. I only say that because it sounds like you were thinking its ok now.

Unless you're brand new to EQ, in which case I don't know what a person would be doing in T2 content of the latest expansion, you know that anything other than you as a player (or group) doing and taking all of the damage from a mob in game, is exploiting. Anything else is being disingenuous. If the bank makes a mistake and puts extra money in your account, you know it isn't your money and that there will be consequences if you spend it.

This has nothing to do with a bank.
There is a thing called entrapment. Lets look further:

As he said

This is bad development to put it past beta, without warning do a ninja nerf, then say it is an exploit.

This is not a ' hole you fall into, or a crevice that allows you to not take damage, or a behind the wall game playing'... this IS a programming mechanic put into the game.

Could the giants not roam into the area? YES they could. Could the good giants NOT KS your pulls? YES they could.. But they don't. They are programmed to do exactly what they do.

So to put this idea into the game and shun the player for ' playing the game ' is stupid.
Players shunning players for playing in Kael zone the way it is made, is stupid. (It was passed from BETA!)
Again, I AGREE it is not cool to have namers come in and good giants help kill so you can solo namers! that is stupid.
The entire idea that the Good Giants try to KS your pulled mobs IS the issue. NOT the player or even players bashing players.

This is the point of this thread, it was passed and purposely programmed to do the mechanic it does. If this was to be fixed (nerfed without any notification) then it should have been FIXED.

To go against a player who is paying for the expansion, paying to play a zone and mission which is part of the game is ridiculous. Either by developers, or by others blaming a player for cheating.
This is the way it was designed.

If this was a ninja nerf, why did I know about it ahead of time?

The patch notes, the only thing I read was the quest NPC won't agro.

From what players said, agro is adjusted, damage was adjusted.

What is your stake in all this even? You are arguing for what exactly? To impose your judgement upon designers and be agreed with by others? Your style of criticism is very accusatory and some of it false or baseless (entrapment, lol). Everything contained here within has been not been constructive to anything.

I stopped reading at the word SECRETE. I could barely follow up that point.

So let me see if I understand, you think the programmers designed a mechanic to entrap you into an exploit to ban you and reduce their income? How about the programmers made a mechanic and did not fully test it and an unintended consequence occurred and they warned people not to exploit and fixed it. Which of those statement seems more likely?

Bringing up that they knew in Beta and not fixing it really has little bearing. You think they would delay an entire expansion over a issue that honestly 99.7% of the EQ population would know not to do. I think they handled it well, hopefully the cheaters got suspensions and learned a lesson. It was a non issue for the rest of us because we never did it.

The live giants didn’t wake up one morning and start assisting players killing dead giants. Some dev physically coded the giants to assist. It’s a designed game mechanic. No one who used live giants to assist in killing dead giants did any cheating. Abused poorly designed content? Maybe, but exploiting? Not a chance.