What are we doing about the Turn-in exploit?

[Joe]

Yes, I used the E-word. We screwed up handling the situation with the turn-ins in several ways, but the biggest is that we didn't call it an exploit and condemn it in the first place. Mea culpa.

As a direct result of the fact that we didn't label using the turn-in missions in this way as an exploit from the start, we can't very well go around punishing the people who did it. They spent hard-earned doubloons putting those ports into contention using the rules that the game enforced. Then they won the port battles. It took us far too long to fix those rules, but we spent the whole time specifically avoiding calling it an exploit, so we can't very well treat it like one retroactively.

So the first thing we're doing is that we are not resetting port ownership or conquest state on any port on any server. Somebody suggested that this first conquest victory be considered a practice run, and I think that's a good idea. You decide how much credit you want to give the first server victory, but to me the second one is worth a lot more in the way of bragging rights. We are looking into what it would take to give the same rewards to both winning and losing nations for the first server victory. If we can do it, hopefully that will take some of the sting out of the loss.

The second thing we're going to do is fix the port contention system. Over the past month we've been applying a series of bandaids to try to make what we have work. Things are better than they were (you now can't push a port all the way to contention with any time to defend), but the system is still fundamentally flawed. One of the things on our list for 1.3 is to fix those fundamental problems.

I can't tell you exactly what those fixes are (because we don't know yet), but these are the issues we want to address:

• * Instant state changes - Players are supposed to have a chance to react when another nation starts to influence their ports
• * Little econ impact once a port goes pirate PvP - Turning off the unrest missions at pirate PvP locks econ players out from participating.
• * Too easy to push noobland ports into hotspots - These ports are supposed to resist contention more forcefully than higher level ports. They aren't doing a great job of that now.
• * More hotspots in general - When a port battle happens another hotspot should open fairly quickly. There are too few of these hotspots.
• * More port battles - More hotspots will naturally lead to this, but port battles should be happening all the time. Fighting is fun!
• * Available of spawns around contested ports. (new)
• * Original owners should be able to take their own newbie ports back more easily than they were to take in the first place. (new)

Please bear with us as we work on these things. I'll do my best to keep you in the loop and respond to your concerns, but it's going to take some time to get conquest fixed for real.

(Edit: When I wrote this post originally I didn't realize Antigua had already had a victory and that the Spanish won fairly. My "practice run" comment wasn't meant to refer to anybody who won legitimately, including the Spanish on Antigua. Sorry about the unintended slight.)


Joe

[Aameron]

Many thanks for the response and clearly demonstrating to the players that you recognize the magnitude of the problem. Hopefully you can equalize the rewards, and then we can all move on with a bit more experience under our belt ready to duke it out "for real" in the next round. We all learned a lot, and hopefully most of us had fun doing it. So the next round should be a lot more interesting, and fair.

[DancingPigeon]

I'd like to thank you for finally acknowledging it as an exploit.

I can understand your reasons for not punishing players or reverting ports... I can't say I like them, but I can understand.

I made a suggestion that would fulfill many of the design criteria you're currently looking at to fix port unrest, unfortunately, Danica closed it without reading it, as she thought it was part of all the complaints about the exploits, back on Sunday.

Let me see if I can dig it up...

Here's the link

For ease of reading, and those afraid of following links , I'll copy it over here, too.

Just a quick post before I go to bed- and I'm not sure if this has been suggested before;

As a possible solution instant-bombing a port with unrest supplies, what about the possibility of having unrest points 'trickle' over time, rather then directly apply.

The more handed in from the offensive nation, the faster it trickles, and the higher it goes, while similarly, the more the defensive nation hands in, the slower it trickles, and the lower it adds to.

You could even report the rate of change of the unrest on mouse over, so rather then it saying:

Pirates: 0
Spanish: 0
Britain: 5323

It would say;

Pirates: 0 (0/s)
Spanish: 0 (0/s)
Britain: 5323 (12/s, 6430)

Where 12/s is the rate of change of unrest, and 6430 is what it WILL get to.

This eliminates the entire "bomb" issue, without having to restructure the checks for handin's and quests- in fact, the BEST thing about this solution is that it's win-win for all. No more instant-port change over, AND the 5k from unrest supply limit would no longer be needed- economic PvP would be JUST as viable- which, IMHO, it SHOULD be... it just shouldn't be so the defending nation has NO opportunity to do anything but say "See you at the port battle", but having said that, the idea of having this abstract limit of only 5000 unrest seems strange- I think FT guilds SHOULD be able to get a port into contention through only hand-in's- but just not instantly.

I know this is being 'fixed' on Monday, but I'm curious to know if others think this would be a better system in general.

EDIT: Forgot something in my idea

I am very glad you guys have finally said something on the subject.

EDIT:

Oh, and no offense, unless you REALLY want to annoy some people, I would change the bit about having lost the port battles.

This is an issue for a variety of reasons, but the primary one being that France on BB has 70ish people on at peak times, these days. Without this exploit, we wouldn't have to do 3 port battles within 15minutes of one another. We can only viably form the numbers for one, maybe two of battles. Saying, "Well, you guys DID lose the battle, so..." is a terrible excuse, and I think its one thing people will single out and attack.

I wasn't/won't be able to make the PB as I'm not with my windows box, at the moment

[Marcus Adelie]

Well thank you for finally responding on the issue. Even if I'm not happy with your stance, at least you took one finally.

What prompted the huge outrage, and what you don't address is that yes 'they won the port battles' but take a look at the black beard server. They specifically put three ports into contention with this exploit in rapid succession. We do not, physically do not, have the population to fill out all three battles, they knew this, we knew this and when it came to pass, thats exactly what happened. So the Brits used this exploit to gain two free ports. That sucks and isn't much fun.

However... we too are willing to call this first round a 'do-over' but that can't happen til one side wins, since you're not willing to reset the ports. Near as we can tell, the Brits have no actual interest in winning the map, only in spiting the French. This is evidenced by the fact that more than half our Spanish population is sitting out til the map reset, yet the brits do not attack any Spanish ports. So, we are now stuck in a situation where one side took advantage of your indecision and frankly inexperience about how MMO's work. This makes playing not much fun. By not much fun, I mean it sucks. Further, there are still problems with port spawns; for instance, they got Cayo, it has rapid decay but there are no British NPC's of any significance spawning out of it. And the Brits certainly won't come pvp near it, because that would be foolish of them. So we can't retake our deepwater port.

Thats why we would like either the port or the map reset. You don't want to punish them for exploiting something you didn't want to call an exploit in the past, fine. But you shouldn't let them reap the benefits of it either.

[Hitangel]

So tell clearly that it's an Exploit right now and tell peoples not to use it, at least it won't happen again till you find a solution Oo ... we don't need another mea culpa in two days ...

And they WON nothing since there were 3 ports battles and French players are 30/40 playing at this time, so we can't fight the 3 battles .. lol ..

[Danjak]

Thank you for recognizing an obvious exploit as an exploit. A practice run for the first map "victory" is fine with me.

I'm satisfied with the solution.

[asurob42]

First, thank you for calling what has happened an exploit. It is, the player base knew it was (including those who were happy to use it.)

Echoing what marcus said above. The Brits will never win Blackbeard. So the map will never reset. It is not their interest to actually "win" the game. They prefer to "spit" at the French who they know are superior fighters to them. What they are essentially doing is an organized griefing of the server by not winning the map. They have the strength to do it anytime...the Spanish players on the server have long ago quit...yet they dont.

What needs to be done is a "do-over". Give the Brits of blackbeard the win for the first map. Reset the map and let those who remain in the game (and the french have suffered a 50 percent population loss because of this exploit) a chance to actually play the game as intended...port battles, pvp, economy ...etc. Given the huge population advantage the British have on blackbeard the French have enough things to overcome...having the exploit turn the map the way it did (And the Brits will acknowledge they would of NEVER taken Cayo without the exploit) we have no chance now.

Reset the map....round two starts now.

[TheCraftyHippo]

Thankyou for acknowledging the issue. I don't particularily like your stance, but am grateful that you've acknowledged the issue and are moving to rectify it.

[Danjak]

Also, for those saying that because the devs hadn't previously acknowledged this as an exploit excuses what they did.... well, I don't need to be told that rotten fish stinks. Anyone with half a brain knew it was an exploit from the get-go.

But... whatever. A trial run is fine. Let the Brits have their empty victory so we can get back to playing the damn game (assuming they bother with actually winning the map, that is). Hopefully the exploit hasn't driven away too many people.

Speaking of which, I think it's about time we talk about that server merge too.

[flymetothemoon]

is it only blackbeard players that are posting here and affected by what happened? irc, another server is already in round 2