1 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

Lupus Aurelius wrote:

Well, after my statement yesterday, about Mancs, after a long convo, agreeing that I was correct and that the NIC i had was legitimately earned, turned around today and arbitrarily removed it again, after a 2 hour convo trying to show that even though I had not personally earned NIC or advantage thru this, because of my association to the corp and the activity, i was guilty.

Well, this is ridiculous. Zoom, any comment? Or can we expect NIC randomly disappearing and reapearing for months now deppending on which cycle of the moon has what effect on the given Dev who did this nonsence?

I thought you said you guys have learned a lot out of this, yet you turn around and do another proffesionalism slip on the same day.

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2 Reply by Saha

(13 replies, posted in General discussion)

As useful as lolaird.

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3 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

DEV Zoom wrote:

First off, I don't know which one of us DEVs said that "yes, please go ahead and exploit the insurance system and ruin the economy", but please provide any log or at least something because if this is true I'd like to have a serious "WTF WERE YOU THINKING!?"-talk with him.

rule #14 wrote:

Do not openly discuss actions taken by the forum moderators or correspondence with GMs or DEVs. They are to be settled only between the offender and the Perpetuum team.

No.

DEV Zoom wrote:

But I'd like to kindly ask those running around screaming "It was the DEVs fault!!" - what do you expect from us? That we give back the fraud money and pat your backs with "We're sorry, carry on destroying the game."...?

http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/18740/#p18740 (t4 storage was a misunderstanding which was cleared later on that night with the Dev, so sorry for rude words for that)
http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/18760/#p18760
http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/18845/#p18845
http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/19029/#p19029

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4 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

Dromsex wrote:

The game is always better of with less players, but people who dont exploit. The thing is - they wont stop - i know some of these guys from other games - and they did it in Neocron and MO - and *** up markets or the game in general.

Ohh, self righteous hero who has grudges from the past. Since I've never bothered with Neocron, who/which clan you was on MO? Wonder if you'll have the balls to answer, since in MO 0 clans of any significance had clean hands. Starting with Myrms dupped cronite back in beta, to Prophepcy dupes, CIRs pocket HCs, continuing to Bizzies gold and ghost boulders, to AQ/Reign duppes to TOP molvas. Yes, my own is in that list as well. Hopefully I will not have to break ELUA signed with SV back in the days to point a finger at you.

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5 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

Ember wrote:

But you say it's the DEV's fault for not closing the exploit fast enough? Your like the rapist who gets caught and believes she was asking for it.... those silly DEV's shouldn't have dressed that fraud so sexy, they were begging to have you exploit all over them weren't they? Well you really showed them by coming on the boards and ranting didn't you!

They not only dressed her, mind you not in a dress, but told her to grab her ankles. Unless devs in return to raised concerns stating "it's not possible and it's not profftable" can be interpreted otherwise.

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6 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

Saha wrote:
Annihilator wrote:
Saha wrote:

...Do YOU want to play a game where one day you might wake up and let's say an extension in which you invested 40k EP is missing because Devs considered it to be overpowered or whatever?

unrealistic example, as removed extensions will free the spent EP...

Yes, example was poor. But it seems you got the message, which is good wink


Actually, now that I think about it.... As a person owning an account with 2 characters with full insurance extensions and insurance being diabled atm with extensions still being there... That was half arsed example=P

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7 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

Arga wrote:

... than agin, it can't hurt to have a few billion NIC to buy kernels to help that along either.

According to devs only close to 1 billion nic was involved in insurance fraud as their investigations show. Stop over-exagerating things!

big_smile

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8 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

Annihilator wrote:
Saha wrote:

...Do YOU want to play a game where one day you might wake up and let's say an extension in which you invested 40k EP is missing because Devs considered it to be overpowered or whatever?

unrealistic example, as removed extensions will free the spent EP...

Yes, example was poor. But it seems you got the message, which is good wink

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9 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

Wraithbane wrote:

Laughter!... Oh, I'm quite aware of whats going on here. Bottom line, those involved EXPLOITED an in game system in a fashion it was not intended to be used for, to their own benefit, and now they are howling like banshees because the fruits of their exploits have been taken from them. All of the rest of the smoke and mirrors some are attempting to use are just obfuscation, meant to distract from that fundamental point.

I have to give AC credit. Even with a small team and limited resources, they much more quickly addressed a serious exploit, in a more timely fashion than I've seen CCP do in some cases in EVE. That speaks well for their concern about the games economy. The fact that they also didn't perma ban those involved, speaks well of their even handed approach.

Are you trying to look ***? Since you are succeeding quite admirably.

I'm one of the most posting persons on the issue. I haven't lost a single NIC. Nor do I mind that my corp did. For last 2 months I don't think I've had more than 3 million NIC myself, yet I'm able to fit t4s and to actually afford losing them. From the talks with the guys, they don't give a *** about lost NIC either. It just doesn't matter enough to make a fuss about it. And no, it doesn't matter not because we frauded enough NIC. No, it's because we know how to make stuff properly.

Yet you together with bunch of other clowns are jumping in joy thinking EXPLOITERS GOT PWNED LOL. We didn't. Devs, in your lingo, got PWNED LOL by their poor handling of the issue and that is concern we are raising. You are applauding them for technically letting poor system go live, then ignoring the warnings given by loads of people and then removing in game stuff which was generated by their ignorance.
Do you want to sit there and fap while under your nose a precedent of Devs covering their mistakes by blaming players is happening? If this goes untouched once, it'll happen again. And again. Do YOU want to play a game where one day you might wake up and let's say an extension in which you invested 40k EP is missing because Devs considered it to be overpowered or whatever?

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10 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

Wraithbane wrote:

Nonsense. In the type of complex client/server apps that MMO's require, mistakes are going to happen.  Especially with a small team on their first game.

Insurance *** up doesn't have anything to do with complexity of client/server apps of MMOs. The topic mostly discussed here is not even that. It's another *** up - how did they handle the first *** up.

Wraithbane wrote:

If those involved had done the responsible thing, and reported the *exploit* involved, and then moved on, we'd not be hearing all of the howling that we are now. But that wasn't nearly good enough for some.

Instead, they decided to use it to their advantage and produced huge amounts of NIC, which distorts the in game economy. I'm just glad it didn't take AC years, like some in EVE did to get corrected.

I'm glad that you had some time to read the thread and get some knowledge on the topic you are discussing. Ohh wait.

Wraithbane wrote:

Sure the mistake was made by the Dev's, thats a given. But the players who exploited that for their own gain, made their own choice as well. In many games, actions like this would have resulted in a perma ban.  Fortunately for some, AC decided not to go that route. This time.

Once again, failing to read _or_ comprehend on WTF the issue actually is.

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11 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

Shaedys wrote:

To multiply it past billions you would need an impossible amount of lines and hauling.

Lines isn't an issue. Hauling yes, to an extent. I'm sure if we really wanted we would of found a corp which would have hauled for cash. What would have stopped this nic "generation" is only the limits of how much materials can be supplied due to either available manpower or hard cap via mineral respawn. When reaching the cap, the price would go up and make insuring not profitable anymore.

What I've been saying for close to 2 months now is that Devs have perfect tools to control mineral prices and therefore ALL market prices via mineral respawn rate. Yet they refuse to properly use it and instead have watched insurance fraud for months as well as shutting down insurance overall now. Silly if you ask me and, like several people have pointed out, will hurt the small or more casual PvPish corps most.

Hell, there were countless other ways which were even simplier to prevent insurance fraud without having to disable insurance as such. How about tying it to minerals market value which is required to produce the bot/mech? But I guess pointing fingers and playing white knights is far easier than actually analyzing problem and finding proper solution.

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12 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

Gaulois wrote:

Well... apparently, the simple fact that you could use the the insurance system the way it was designed... is an exploit.

It was a flawed design from the start. Just like we could consider that everyone that sold kernels before the price change, or everyone that produce T4 modules before they require the new material, were exploiters!

I think the devs are forgetting that the bots cost money to produce. It's not a miracle 1 million gain each time. No, it's 10 time less in reason of the production cost.

Plus, I believe it was helping the market to stay healthy, lots of buy order for basic materials, as they could be directly converted in bots, and the in cash.

It's like selling material to NPCs smile


People that exploited this didn't made that much money in the end.  devs removed 5-10x what they should have.

Poor logic. People using insurance with proper prod chars were making 400% cash a week, if not more. Asume you start with 25 million nic. In a month you'd have 6 billion+. Obviously profitability via sellig was better, but due to small market trading just couldn't cope with the volumes required to make proper amounts of cash. Devs actually intervened at a critical point where billions would have turned into 100s of billions causing rapid inflation as well as allowing individuals to dictate the market.
The market health wise, yes, you are right. You'll see a nice economy crash now due to market losing majority of it's opperational NIC. And no, around 2-3 billion NIC removed from economy is not a huge deal. Huge deal is that those 2-3 billion NIC were actually active part of the market paying the alpha miners who in returned payed the producers.

Was there a solution? Yes. But it would require devs actually spending time monitoring market and adjusting mineral respawn accordingly. Controlling the amount of minerals availability is by far the simpliest way to control market, prices, inflation and actually insurance. But I guess it was too time consuming or too complex. Doubt we'll see any decent economy in this game until devs learn the basics of economics.

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13 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

DEV Zoom wrote:

Saha: would you like to share your secret with us? If we don't know about it, it's only logical that such amount didn't come up during our investigation so we couldn't have removed it either.

First of all, going to forum fight with random consumer is poor choise. Same as was poor choise to transfer 1 NIC to account after wiping it. It just shows you became personal.

Now let's get to the point. Are you claiming that investigation did not show any corp with more than 1 billion earned via insurance fraud? Because if so, you better get ready to pay back some cash as there were corps who lost quite a lot more than 1 billion NIC during your crusade.

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14 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

Tiggus wrote:

It's cool devs took care of it after they investigated.

Glad to hear that. At least something is being done properly after first *** up. Would have been lovely if they did investigations first and wiped *** after though instead of randomly targeting "suspected frauds" as Zoom calls them in his post.

@Zoom:

There were no players or corporations who have owned over 1 billion NIC all by themselves at the time of our investigation.

Not really. You perfectly know you're wrong, same as I do. Nice touch with 1 NIC though.

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15 Reply by Saha

(268 replies, posted in General discussion)

Ember wrote:

You got caught gaming the system... Insurance exists to indemnify not enrich, you should have known that without having to be told.  Blaming DEV's for your own F-UPs is weak, admins that actually enforce penalties for exploiting are good...

IMO, every major producers considered running an insurance fraud, not all of them followed through.  Having a bit of NIC wiped after exploiting isn't unduly harsh so just take it on the chin and move on.

Try rereading what I wrote earlier. NIC wipe is not an issue at all, at least for me (actually I personally lost 0 NIC). Issue is how it was handled, starting from time it took react to how actually "fix" was performed to how DEVs pretended to be white knights fighting the insurance fraud.
While actually those people who are being named and shamed today were pointing out the insurance issues to devs months ago as well as providing with variaety of possible solutions. So yes, go ahead and play white knights. Some people will believe it. But fact is you, Devs, *** up big time and try to channel down your own *** up on people who were actually trying to help you months ago. Way to go.

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16 Reply by Saha

(21 replies, posted in General discussion)

Syndic wrote:

If its in-game its a feature. big_smile

Just like having HCs in your clan giving out gold and friendly assisting with teleports. Ohh wait, this is not MO forums.

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17 Reply by Saha

(20 replies, posted in General discussion)

On insurances:
The fix will not solve the problem which it is aiming at. Simply since the issue is generated not by insurance itself but by too low raw materials prices.

At the moment market is pretty much dead besides raw materials market due to stuff being sold there with at least 250% profit margins. This simply forces everyone towards manufacturing goods of need themselves rather that letting trade flourish.
Prices can not drop lower than they currently are due to insurance pay outs. Yes, only bots/mechs give insurance but that insurance is dictating the market prices for everything else, since frankly, why would someone produce something which is less profitable.

Knowing those 2 things, let's get to cause and possible solutions.
Cause is pretty obvious. Low raw material cost. It is mostly caused by amount of materials generated on alpha islands. To put it simply, you have something which is generating huge amounts of "value" without losing any "value" besides mining charges. Such things will always generate huge problems for the market simply due to messing up prices.

Solution A) Wait for raw material prices to increase, which will lower the profitability of manufacturing (market sorting itself). But this solution will take 3-4 weeks for market to stabilize at least, during which people "making" money will make 30-50 times the money they currently own (atm you can more than double your cash in 3 days via production. I will not go into detail furthermore due to obvious reasons).

Solution B) Cut raw material regeneration speed on alpha AND beta islands by 30-50%. This would automatically create a shortage of raw material in the market which would naturaly increase the market price while reducing the profitability of production. Furthermore, it would force a significant amount of miners to consider movemet to beta islands, which would overall reduce the issue of value generation without any investment which I wrote about earlier. More miners on beta as well as slower raw material generation would mean "safe" fields on beta islands would be drained much faster (you nkow, those like 500meters away from terminal) forcing beta miners to venture a bit mroe into the risk areas. Miners venturing into risk areas means they will now and then lose their mining equipment, which solves "no investement required" to generate huge amounts of market value via mining and therefore would indirectly influence the price of raw material even more.


TLDR: Faster insurance calc doesn't solve *** as long as raw materials are at prices similar to current ones. Prices should be at least 200% higher for insurance issue to be solved. Either wait until market solves itself in next month or so while several people amass billions of nic via production, or nerf mineral respawn rate and naturaly increase raw materials price due to competition/shortage/higher risk.

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18 Reply by Saha

(20 replies, posted in General discussion)

There's the problem with interference emission.

Assume situation where hostiles bring in a blob which contains healthy amount of mechs/heavies (15+).

The opposing side, even if they themselves will be small group, will suffer penalties on their ewar bots, light bots, assault bots and on short range mechs/heavy mechs if they decide to bring them in due to hostiles emiting interference in 300 meters radius.

In other words, vs hostile mech/heavy mech blob you will not be able to use anything effectively with shorter than 300 meters shooting range. Obviously, there's a general thought that if you're closer to blob than 300 meters range you're doing it wrong, but it pretty much takes out any possibility to use terrain to gain advantage for short range pounding. Medium gauss guns, medium short range lazers, medium machine guns, medium autocannons, medium compact missiles, faction slugs meet the recycler.

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19 Reply by Saha

(106 replies, posted in Balancing)

DEV Alf wrote:

EW light bots' strength is not the EW itself, only their speed (and that will be nerfed a bit), and only the speed matters, you can engage in combat when you want to engage, you are not forced to fight, until you want to. And if you got ganked by nonewar light bots,  actually you would  die even faster, their dps is about the double of the ewars, and they could still run behind cover, or run out of range when get targeted (and much cheaper!).
I remember a time when there were really strong EW, and there was a Kain without LWF restriction.

You better be joking. Listening to couple *** who know nothing but fitting their squads with plates and then crying about getting *** by ewars or speed fit mechs/ewars... If you want to "balance" game to them you might as well nerf all shooting ranges to 100 meters, speed to 20 kph, establish more safe zones and "enjoy" blob warfare while watching game die.

Don't you bloody think there's something wrong with people behind keyboard if their 200-300 people alliances who "control" beta island can't defend against 5-10 man ewar gang rather than ewars being OP? What you'll nerf next? Properly fit mech speed to 30 kph and range to 200 meters so that blobers can feel good with their assault zergs? *** that, buff light bots and arkees now or they'll keep crying something is OP after you nerf things one after another. Clue, where is it?

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20 Reply by Saha

(3 replies, posted in General discussion)

Jita wrote:

I dont say thanks enough 9and I love this game) so heres me calling out something that is fixed and works great.

Thanks for making us able to double click to lock and right click for other stuff in the gang window. Makes RR work a LOT easier.
Jita.

It was actually possible to get people on your landmark information window by single clicking in squad panel couple hours after the patch. Which was for some odd reason removed very quicky. Obviously double clicking to get primary target is way better than nothing but I loved single click -> keybind for secondary lock much better. Not to mention the beauty of single click on squad leader -> keybind for approach.

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21 Reply by Saha

(72 replies, posted in General discussion)

Arga wrote:

I don't think you are suggesting that they just throw away bots. The risk to reward isn't there for solo players to go to beta, or even for small corp members to bring 2-3 bots to beta just to have a taste of PVP; a very short taste. If your alluding to them going to beta but not coming off the gate, hard to blame them for that, I think that's less afraid of losing pixels and more just not stupid enough to step into a grinder for the thrill of pressing the space bar once and dying.

I will agree that combat pilots that farm tier 1 mobs in a mech fall into the afraid category.

2-3 bots, no. But small gangs of 4-5 can have quite some fun if they know wtf they are doing with their EP, fittings and picking targets.

But it's a closed circle of doom for them. They don't go to beta, means they don't learn, means they can't have fun on beta due to bad skills, poor EP allocation, horrible fits and no knowledge of the map. Very same situation as with mechs. If you don't know what the *** you are doing with it, it's useless and disapointing. Like that enclave guy of "woohoo I can jump into Artemis" and equip it with small lazers, geoscaners, chasis scaners and sintec crap. Thank *** he left sintec small miner out. Otherwise it would have been just a big arkee.

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