For those of you who may have already read this particular post regardng the issue at hand, I apologize. For those that haven't, I though this was one of the better (if lengthy) posts on the subject. Please bear with the author's long windedness.
I am reposting this here, as well as in the releveant Broadcast Depth thread, because I honestly feel that everybody needs to read it. I will also be posting it on several other MxO forums over the next day or so.
To read the original post to which this is a reply, please see
http://mxoboards.warnerbros.com/forums1/thread.jspa?threadID=3800&tstart=0My post follows, unedited by myself.
Dear William Westwater,
Thank you for attempting to clarify the reasoning behind this patch. However, perhaps some of us have not noticed this, perhaps you yourself have not realized, that your response has simply danced a neat circle around the issue at hand: exploits. Percieved exploits, actual exploits, the differences between them, and their seeming confusion with another hotly debated topic, powerlevelling.
To be perfectly honest, I feel that your actions and your response at the top of this thread are terrible ways to do business, both in an online game and in the real economic world.
> Investigating the reports, we
> discovered that missions were rewarding players
> regardless of the effort required. Short missions
> (less than two minutes) were giving as much XP as
> long missions (twenty minutes).
I believe you have been confused here; The truth is, Hard missions done quickly are (were) giving as much XP as Hard missions done slowly. Easy missions, regardless of time, would consistently give less XP than Hard missions assuming that comparable actions were taken by the player (clearing the mission area of NPCs, searching for loot in containers, etc.)
Given that Hard missions gave out Hard XP regardless of time, what is your reasoning behind forcing players to take longer? If a player can finish a mission with 100% goals completed, and manage to eradicate any extra targets in the area, why should it matter how long they take? By your reasoning, I should be earning 150% the XP points for a mission if it happens to take me longer than the prescribed timer. Why isn't this happening?
> Stepping back, we looked at the goals of the system.
>
> 1) Fair rewards for the risk involved.
> 2) Plenty of room for better players to earn XP
> faster without the game feeling too easy.
These two points make sense. I don't want the risk of multiple deaths and loss of code/$Information for taking a Hard mission if I can receive identical rewards for doing an Easy mission. At the same time, I would like to feel like I am accomplishing something; that I have done something of some relevance, that I have earned my rewards (items, $Info and XP).
But your actions in the controversial Monday Patch don't really seem to address these issues, do they? Is there any player among us who feels they are getting a fair return for their investment, if their playtime is suddenly depreciated in value by a factor of 15 (which is the current best estimate by players, as seen on these very forums)? Sunday I could jack in, do a mission, and get a certain amount of XP (an amount, I might add, which always seemed proportional to the risk involved). If I were to do the same now, I would suddenly be receiving far less XP for my risk; this does not make sense, as I am still doing things the same, I am still clearing the mission area of NPCs, yet I am suddenly rewarded far less? The reward hardly seems worth the risk now.
And you may have noticed, that in the entire preceding paragraph, I did not mention time.
This is because time was never an issue with missions; the dev team (and perhaps yourself, Mr. Westwater, I do not know how involved you are with the patch planning) seems to think that people aren't taking long enough for the missions they are assigned. I can only assume that the Dev Team does not actually play the game for which they provide support; Dev Antivirus posted time estimates for a mission that are remarkably unrealistic and flawed (and in fact, seemed to me to have been made up to fit with the timing guidelines implemented in the Monday Patch). Many players quickly posted their own timed results, showing a consistent average far below that demonstrated by Antivirus.
Now I say that time was never an issue, because we (the players) never had any timer of any sort for missions. It didn't matter how long we took, we could be stuck on a difficult mission for an hour and we would still receive the same amount of XP at the end. Due to this system, the system as it was in Beta and as it existed until the Monday patch, players were encouraged to find better ways to complete missions; Spies were given reason to use their skills to avoid combat, Warriors were given reason to practice their combat skills to be more effective killing machines. And most importantly, players were trained (by your system!) that missions should be completed quickly and cleanly for the best return on their investment, the XP rewarded for the time they invested (aha! a mention of time!)
In essence, what you have done with the Monday Patch is destroy any sense of fulfillment from completing a mission successfully. 'Quality vs. Quantity' (or a job done right instead of a job done quickly, if you will) was one of the reasons given for the change; the ingame Operators and Mission Contacts expected a quality job done by their subordinates, the Players.
What I fail to see is how a job cannot be done in such a quality manner. Missions are quite simple really; I will explain it from a players perspective for you.
I make contact with my mission providor; I choose the type of mission I would like, and I am given a mission outline with the option to accept or decline. Barring a mission that is two kilometres of distance, I typically accept. At this point I am breifed on the situation, and given my mission objectives . The mission then commences; I have to complete my objectives in order to finish the mission. If I fail to complete my objectives, the mission is considered a failure, and I receive no reward.
To sum it up: EVERY operator expects a quality mission. And EVERY operator gets that quality; if they do not, the player does not receive the reward. Therefore, since quality must be provided by the player before reward is received, every player has always provided a quality mission. Why now does quality translate to playtime?
> As a stop-gap, we rolled out a system on Monday that
> tracked the amount of time players were taking to
> complete missions and adjusted the exp rewards
> accordingly. Along with providing a greater challenge
> on short missions, this has provided invaluable data
> for further efforts to correct the imbalance and
> provide more equitable environment for all players.
This quote I will dissect a little more indepth (sorry to the folks who don't like to read, but bear with me here)
As a stop-gap
I take this to mean you are acknowledging the fleeting nature of the Monday Patch, as a temporary measure instated under special circumstances. Of course, it could also be taken as meaning the Dev Team didn't know what to do, and therefore took the (perceived) safe route of 'nerfing' the problem.
A system...that tracked the amount of time players were taking to complete missions and adjusted the exp rewards accordingly
By this statement, are you stating that the system implemented was designed and intended to reduce the amount of XP given based on the amount of ingame time invested by the players? This is the only possible conclusion I could reach; the Dev Team (or perhaps Monolith in general) is creating a system that will require players to invest more paid game-time (roughly 15 times more) into the gameworld in order to receive the same rewards they were getting previously. In no way shape or form would such a system actually benefit the players; regardless of your perspective, players are being punished for being skilled in the system you gave them, both in pre-release beta and in the full released version of the game.
Along with providing a greater challenge on short missions,
Pardon my ignorance, but how precisely does this provide a greater challenge on short missions? I have observed that in fact the complete opposite is true ; a shorter mission now provides less XP for the same challenge as a longer mission.
...this has provided invaluable data for further efforts to correct the imbalance and provide more equitable environment for all players.
I can only hope that your further efforts to correct the imbalance do not involve complete and utter ignorance of the imbalance in the first place: the exploit and the players who chose to use it to their advantage as it went unfixed, to this very day.
This exploit of fast mission running (please note that many MANY players do not see running missions quickly as an exploit, but rather as a viable source of XP stemming from understanding the gameworld and knowing how to play the missions they are given) has been documented since the beta test; since the beta test there have been petitions sent, complaints filed, and angry forum threads all dealing with this topic. However, the first effort to fix the problem seems to ignore the problem entirely; this time-based mission theory is punishing players for doing what they do best: playing the game, and playing it well. Meanwhile, those players that chose to use the decline-mission exploit (a true exploit that needed, and still needs, to be fixed) are sitting pretty at level 50, and this halfhearted attempt to (metaphor if I may) fix a broken ceramic doll with pliers and duct tape does not seem to affect them in any way, shape or form. How can this be called an equitable environment for all players?
We will be adjusting the current timers as the changes have impacted far more players than we intended.
By this do you mean to say that your system-wide, server-spanning patch 'was not intended for most players?' Who was it intended for, if not for everybody? A game client patch affects any and everybody who uses the game, you cannot selectively pick and choose whom you wish to apply the patch to. From a programmers perspective it would be a nightmare of code, which would easily cause more problems than it would solve. From an ethical standpoint it would be seen as unfair treatment, and every player would be fearful of getting chosen for the patch.
In the long term, we are investigating better ties between what you do in a mission and the rewards that you get as well as improved systems for rewarding casual gaming.
I noticed one thing missing in this statement; there seems to be no mention whatsoever that time taken to complete a mission will impact the XP reward given. Curious, no?
To sum up the questions I now have in response to your statement, Mr. Westwater:
Question 1: What is your reasoning behind forcing players to take longer to complete a mission?
Question 2: Why is the reward given for completing a mission now suddenly far less than it was prior to the patch?
Question 3: Why has there been a complete turnaround in the 'value system' in the game (completing missions faster results in more reward, therefore missions should be done more efficiently)?
Question 4: Why is 'mission quality' cited as reason for this patch when there was already an all-or-nothing quality system in place? A system, I might add, that was working beautifully.
Question 5: Why now does this 'mission quality' suddenly mean playtime invested, rather than the completion of mission objectives?
Question 6: How can you state (in paragraph 5 of your original post, second sentence) blatantly obvious falsehoods regarding a game that YOU support, in a forum populated entirely by players who will know that this statement is untrue?
Final question: The impression is given that players are not investing enough time in the game; what are your expectations for players regarding this? Are we expected to sit and wait for 80% of our mission time in order to feel rewarded? Are we expected to sit and wait for 80% of the next fiscal year in order to feel wanted as players?
I thank you for taking the time to give us your reply originally. I also thank you for taking the time to read my reply. Furthermore I thank you for taking the time to reply honestly to my questions, in order to allay the fears of myself and many others who, until recently, were happy players.
Thank you for the hard work you provide for this project. I personally have never seen anything this ambitious, this grand in spectacle executed so well (in fact, working much better than I had anticipated). Please don't destroy the wonderful thing you have created.
Please don't force its destruction by complete and utter alienation of its strongest support: the players. Your customers. Us.
DocGonzo@thematrixonline.com
Cinco de Mayo
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