Exploited priests rewarded - Non exploiters punished?

[Eleraan 114]

4 minutes ago, Arronicus said:

 

But some people here would rather that you ban innocent players with the chance that you might catch exploiters, than you only banning people where there's conclusive proof that they actually did something wrong 

My concern is less that they didn't ban people but more that it sounds like the entire channeling nerf crusade was perpetrated on a lie. If no one was exploiting then the problem is simply that they didn't like the rate at which players were gaining channeling.  Fine, say that upfront.  Don't make excuses, rile up the community then go "oh no exploits we just felt like nerfing something and not being up front with why".  Again, I could be totally off but that is how I end up feeling after all is said and done.  

 

if this was meant for someone else, forgive me.  Continue. 

[DaletheGood 153]

I say name and shame any priest and their associated main characters who used this exploit. Every time they post on the forums or the trade chat, call them out as cheaters and make sure their reputation goes down the toilet. It's a free market, right? So you can boycott those who cheat their way to the top. Just like on SFI, I don't buy from people who I know abuse the system, or who I just don't like - and there's a lot of those, lol. Like in RL, vote with your wallet.

[Crukash 9]

1 hour ago, Retrograde said:

So to answer your questions:
1) There is no evidence suggesting any priests abused this bug; please refrain accusing any priest who sells items on the market of abusing it. 

 

If there was no evidence of any abuse why the nerf to linking at all claiming it was due to this being exploited? Just fix the bug and call it good.

[RainRain 450]

The change was made because the devs decided they did not like the fact that the best and most optimal way to grind channeling was creating several alt accounts and spamming spells that way.

The problem is that people definitely still benefited from that method, even if it was not an exploit, and there was no change made to make non-linking grinding much easier. But that change is in progress, as seen with the feedback thread they put up.

[Eleraan 114]

Then why not wait until a solution to make a change was had instead of screwing people over.  Again, I don't care that others got ahead.  I do care that things I was preparing for got nerfed with out any counter balance and we are told "Better times are around the corner" I don't want the promise of a bright future while being kicked in the mud.  Had they left it as is, not mentioned the exploit, found a balanced solution to implement then done it all at once we would not be here.  Again, if no exploiting was going on why rush to nerf things. 

[RainRain 450]

46 minutes ago, Eleraan said:

Then why not wait until a solution to make a change was had instead of screwing people over.  Again, I don't care that others got ahead.  I do care that things I was preparing for got nerfed with out any counter balance and we are told "Better times are around the corner" I don't want the promise of a bright future while being kicked in the mud.  Had they left it as is, not mentioned the exploit, found a balanced solution to implement then done it all at once we would not be here.  Again, if no exploiting was going on why rush to nerf things. 

Because the method to grind channeling was extremely effective and they wanted to get the change in before too many people used it, simply put. Most vets know of the method, they understood it was the way to grind channeling since it had been for years- it wasn't under the radar until the devs were investigating an exploit tied to the method (that you could go above the maximum amount of links).

[Eleraan 114]

Then wouldn't the arguments made that those who were going to exploit it had the chance too and now you are penalizing others for not being in the know?  Again, if it wasn't an exploit and just a problem it should have A) been fixed prior to the new servers a sentiment stated many times in the original hotfix post. Or, b) Nothing done until they had a true balancing.  As it obviously wasn't a major issue if it had been in for years and deemed ok for the launch.  Over all I think this situation was just handled very poorly.  My one wish is that they learn from their mistake but so far I haven't been filled with confidence that is the case. 

[ChampagneDragon 539]

1 hour ago, RainRain said:

The change was made because the devs decided they did not like the fact that the best and most optimal way to grind channeling was creating several alt accounts and spamming spells that way.

The problem is that people definitely still benefited from that method, even if it was not an exploit, and there was no change made to make non-linking grinding much easier. But that change is in progress, as seen with the feedback thread they put up.

No, linking is still allowed, and a valid way to grind channeling. There were some who found an exploit and were able to link MORE than their allowed links, therefore increasing difficulty and essentially having endless favor, instead of standing around praying for half an hour or more just to have enough favor for a cast.

 

It's clear who was abusing it when you look at those consistently selling casts that my 93 channeling, benediction complete vyn priest is happy to get once or twice a day. My NFI vyn priest is lucky to get an 80+ cast every few days, and I am pretty devoted in the grind. She priested within a couple days of the others, but is worlds behind..

[RainRain 450]

59 minutes ago, ChampagneDragon said:

It's clear who was abusing it when you look at those consistently selling casts that my 93 channeling, benediction complete vyn priest is happy to get once or twice a day. My NFI vyn priest is lucky to get an 80+ cast every few days, and I am pretty devoted in the grind. She priested within a couple days of the others, but is worlds behind..

Except it literally isn't 'clear', and the people you're whining about may very well people who grinded using linking by default. You have zero evidence beyond the fact that you feel like these people exploited. The gm's checked, compared channeling skills, and watched people grind the skill actively while investigating the bug and determined that there's not enough evidence to conclude it was abused (as seen in retro's post), and that there were no huge outliers in channel skill to hint that it was abused in such a way.

 

 

59 minutes ago, ChampagneDragon said:

No, linking is still allowed, and a valid way to grind channeling. There were some who found an exploit and were able to link MORE than their allowed links, therefore increasing difficulty and essentially having endless favor, instead of standing around praying for half an hour or more just to have enough favor for a cast.

 

It's still allowed, yes; they just nerfed the hell out of it. Only favor above 20 is used up from batteries, and any links past the first 2 apply a scaling % penalty to channeling skillgain- basically, nerfing the exact thing they disliked which was using a horde of batteries to spam grind channeling.

Channling with the maximum allowed number of links was still more than enough to grind the skill crazily high (4 links at 30 skill, for example).

 

  

1 hour ago, Eleraan said:

Then wouldn't the arguments made that those who were going to exploit it had the chance too and now you are penalizing others for not being in the know?  Again, if it wasn't an exploit and just a problem it should have A) been fixed prior to the new servers a sentiment stated many times in the original hotfix post. Or, b) Nothing done until they had a true balancing.  As it obviously wasn't a major issue if it had been in for years and deemed ok for the launch.  Over all I think this situation was just handled very poorly.  My one wish is that they learn from their mistake but so far I haven't been filled with confidence that is the case. 

Again, the exploit was not actually the issue- the issue was that the method of grinding was deemed too efficient (many links to spam spells- even abiding by the regular limit). But yes, it's absolutely on them for not having changed this BEFORE the new server was up, but that's likely since it's something that never came up in the talks about grinding the skill and something they hadn't considered until they realized how people were grinding the skill.

Definitely agree the situation has been handled poorly, but also the community reaction has been absolutely dumb (just look at this thread lol; people screaming about exploiters when the reality is that barely anyone exploited). I hate the fact that I'm the one doing more clarification than even retro here- and I only managed to do that because i poked the devs on discord and managed to figure out why they were doing things in a particular way. Getting answers for stuff like this is like pulling teeth sometimes.

Edited September 1, 2020 by RainRain

[elentari 848]

4 hours ago, Retrograde said:

1) There is no evidence suggesting any priests abused this bug; please refrain accusing any priest who sells items on the market of abusing it. 

 

Can always investigate evidence seeing who got to insane amounts of channeling in a certain timeframe. Realistically channeling has slow skillgain. Can always check a character's progression and see if the math adds up.

I get it devs might not actively play as priests in Wurm but that can easily be compared to general skillgain for a priest.

3 hours ago, Crukash said:

If there was no evidence of any abuse why the nerf to linking at all claiming it was due to this being exploited? Just fix the bug and call it good.

 

[Oblivionnreaver 3514]

1 minute ago, elentari said:

Can always investigate evidence seeing who got to insane amounts of channeling in a certain timeframe. Realistically channeling has slow skillgain. Can always check a character's progression and see if the math adds up.

I get it devs might not actively play as priests in Wurm but that can easily be compared to general skillgain for a priest.

 

Channeling if you're casting non-stop will be the exact same speed as other skills that don't use coc. Not to mention as retro said, they didn't track links so there was no way to know who was using the legit amount of links and who was using the exploit to have more than the intended cap of links.

 

[2020-04-18] [02:51:33] Channeling increased by 0.0153 to 62.4381 
[2020-04-24] [23:37:47] Channeling increased by 0.0012 to 89.8618

thats what 6 days of grinding with 6 links+kingdom title looks like, doing 7 links at 60 8 links at 70 got you nonstop casting even without the kingdom title it wasnt until you get 80 channeling and swapped to lurker that you'd need to stop for favor/sacc occasionally, and channeling doesn't use fatigue so if 3 people were sharing an account and grinding 24/7 it'd be way higher

if anything the people on north freedom didn't grind very well coz none of them were 80+ in the 2 weeks or so they had to grind lmao

[Ekcin 1003]

19 minutes ago, elentari said:

 

Can always investigate evidence seeing who got to insane amounts of channeling in a certain timeframe. Realistically channeling has slow skillgain. Can always check a character's progression and see if the math adds up.

I get it devs might not actively play as priests in Wurm but that can easily be compared to general skillgain for a priest.

You seem to ignore that all channeling progress was and is being gained by casting spells. The only (albeit not insignificant) advantage for those using linking (whether or not exploiting the known bug that links could be extended beyond the limits) was that favor was granted practically indefinitely. That allowed to ignore any planning for favor gain just go on casting.

 

Still the one grinding up channeling had to cast a lot to grind up. A determined group providing enough stuff to sac, some gems as far as available, and links within the at that time allowed and intended limits, and using all other legitimate buffs including SB and SP could probably have reached comparable progress.

 

Further on, mind that casting progress has lots to do with RNG, even at low levels. My priestess has enchanted mailboxes (ok they never shatter) up to 95 with 30+ channeling. So high enchants do not necessarily indicate high channeling of priests.

Edited September 1, 2020 by Ekcin
typo/grammar

[RainRain 450]

1 hour ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

 

Channeling if you're casting non-stop will be the exact same speed as other skills that don't use coc. Not to mention as retro said, they didn't track links so there was no way to know who was using the legit amount of links and who was using the exploit to have more than the intended cap of links.

 

[2020-04-18] [02:51:33] Channeling increased by 0.0153 to 62.4381 
[2020-04-24] [23:37:47] Channeling increased by 0.0012 to 89.8618

thats what 6 days of grinding with 6 links+kingdom title looks like, doing 7 links at 60 8 links at 70 got you nonstop casting even without the kingdom title it wasnt until you get 80 channeling and swapped to lurker that you'd need to stop for favor/sacc occasionally, and channeling doesn't use fatigue so if 3 people were sharing an account and grinding 24/7 it'd be way higher

if anything the people on north freedom didn't grind very well coz none of them were 80+ in the 2 weeks or so they had to grind lmao

tbf its not like we have kings to use the titles with

though im wondering if they're going to nerf those too once they realize how good they are for grinding

[Fairyshine 2816]

There was a similar situation with archery, and people who used it and gained skills faster than intended, were rolled back to a more reasonable level.  Not sure why the people doing priest channelling and got skills faster than intended, were not all rolled back to a much lower level to give everyone an even chance and level playing field.

[Loggy 35]

1 hour ago, Fairyshine said:

There was a similar situation with archery, and people who used it and gained skills faster than intended, were rolled back to a more reasonable level.  Not sure why the people doing priest channelling and got skills faster than intended, were not all rolled back to a much lower level to give everyone an even chance and level playing field.

 

dark's reply in discord ; 

 Sumbody: 

That was not an exploit in the end, no one was punished we just rolled back the skill a bit because the issue allowed you to get more skill than intended in on archery targets.

[LumpyGravy 235]

5 hours ago, Arronicus said:

 

But some people here would rather that you ban innocent players with the chance that you might catch exploiters, than you only banning people where there's conclusive proof that they actually did something wrong 

the way i see it is the market is RUINed, wipe ALL priests and delete all enchanted item or put back the long standing ways and let everyone use the "exploit"

 

goes and plays dual universe and forgets about this crappy game

[Fairyshine 2816]

3 minutes ago, Loggy said:

 

dark's reply in discord ; 

 Sumbody: 

That was not an exploit in the end, no one was punished we just rolled back the skill a bit because the issue allowed you to get more skill than intended in on archery targets.

The problem is both of these situation could have been interpreted as an exploit, or not an exploit.  Both allowed more skill to be gained than intended for something which has been part of the game for years.  Whether it was an exploit or intended has little to do with the fact that some people are allowed to keep skills which puts them lightyears ahead of others, and gain advantages in the way they spend their time in the game, the way they can earn coin in the game and they way they can PvP in the game.

[elentari 848]

49 minutes ago, Fairyshine said:

The problem is both of these situation could have been interpreted as an exploit, or not an exploit.  Both allowed more skill to be gained than intended for something which has been part of the game for years.  Whether it was an exploit or intended has little to do with the fact that some people are allowed to keep skills which puts them lightyears ahead of others, and gain advantages in the way they spend their time in the game, the way they can earn coin in the game and they way they can PvP in the game.

Remember all those hundreds of discussions about the vets using their occult in game knowledge of mechanics and stuff to quickly outpace 99% of the NFI players?

 

Well it's happening.

[Eleraan 114]

10 hours ago, RainRain said:

  Again, the exploit was not actually the issue- the issue was that the method of grinding was deemed too efficient (many links to spam spells- even abiding by the regular limit). But yes, it's absolutely on them for not having changed this BEFORE the new server was up, but that's likely since it's something that never came up in the talks about grinding the skill and something they hadn't considered until they realized how people were grinding the skill.

Definitely agree the situation has been handled poorly, but also the community reaction has been absolutely dumb (just look at this thread lol; people screaming about exploiters when the reality is that barely anyone exploited). I hate the fact that I'm the one doing more clarification than even retro here- and I only managed to do that because i poked the devs on discord and managed to figure out why they were doing things in a particular way. Getting answers for stuff like this is like pulling teeth sometimes.

 

You are 100% correct as Retro pointed out that the exploit was not the issue.  My issue is that they used the exploit as an excuse rather than simply stating they did not like the rate at which people were getting channeling legitimately.  That is both lying to my face and treating me like I'm stupid.  I hate that.   Also, for the excuse they did not consider it until people were grinding wasn't that really the whole point of the Jackal servers? So they could see what experienced vets could do on a fresh start and make adjustments based on that knowledge? Are you saying no groups of vets for Jackal got together and link grinded channeling?  I thought Jackal was a brilliant idea for getting a feel of balancing a fresh start, apparently the devs didn't think to use all this information they gathered to actually do any balancing.  Again it seems like they dropped the ball, handled it poorly, and want everyone one to just take being ###### on with a smile. 

 

You may think the community reaction is dumb.  I more or less held off on my opinion to give them time to lay out their plan.  Again, the way they handled it, their solution, and now this admission that it wasn't in response to an exploit has left me salty.  Sorry that we all don't hang out in the discord to be enlightened by their keen vision of the future of Wurm but that one must stay in discord to have any understanding is further proof they are handling information poorly. 

[RainRain 450]

11 minutes ago, Eleraan said:

 

You are 100% correct as Retro pointed out that the exploit was not the issue.  My issue is that they used the exploit as an excuse rather than simply stating they did not like the rate at which people were getting channeling legitimately.  That is both lying to my face and treating me like I'm stupid.  I hate that.   Also, for the excuse they did not consider it until people were grinding wasn't that really the whole point of the Jackal servers? So they could see what experienced vets could do on a fresh start and make adjustments based on that knowledge? Are you saying no groups of vets for Jackal got together and link grinded channeling?  I thought Jackal was a brilliant idea for getting a feel of balancing a fresh start, apparently the devs didn't think to use all this information they gathered to actually do any balancing.  Again it seems like they dropped the ball, handled it poorly, and want everyone one to just take being ###### on with a smile. 

 

You may think the community reaction is dumb.  I more or less held off on my opinion to give them time to lay out their plan.  Again, the way they handled it, their solution, and now this admission that it wasn't in response to an exploit has left me salty.  Sorry that we all don't hang out in the discord to be enlightened by their keen vision of the future of Wurm but that one must stay in discord to have any understanding is further proof they are handling information poorly. 

100% agree they messed up and dropped the ball also; and yes trust me i'm not any happy about the fact the only real information i could get was by poking at them until they gave a real response (and even then, seemingly danced around the 'did people actually abuse the exploit or not' question until now)

What I more mean by the community's reaction being dumb is not people being genuinely confused- but people being convinced that there are bad actors and demanding for skill rollbacks, bans, and all the more without actually understanding the lengths that the bug was abused (aka not to any significant or noticeable factor in this regard), while also not considering that the non-exploit use of the method (that is, using alts to fuel a priest to spam spells for skills) has been long accepted and that its not a small investment to purchase and upkeep those accounts.

They really needed to decide on this before releasing a new server- they didn't, and because of that they found themselves in a lose-lose situation. I can't say that justifies this entire thing going down the way it did, but I at least understand why it did go down this way and why some of the decisions were difficult to make. What I'm more interested in is what will be done about it now, of which the answer seems to be trying to make grinding it a bit less painful by making sacrificing more enticing. Which honestly, is alright with me- if they can pull that off right anyways 

If I have one thing to say to the staff, it's to step up your communication game. Hidden exploit fixes (like the dye thing), knee-jerk balance decisions without discussion, and keeping silent in the face of outrage isn't working out. Retrograde's post on this topic should have happened much earlier- and I will say I very much appreciate the discussion thread on sacrificing changes and the fact that more interaction is being had with the community (even though I can very clearly see why you'd want to avoid that sometimes lmao)- but even with all that said, there's a long, long way to go if you want to make sure that this steam release isn't going to end up like the other servers.

Huge problem with this game's ability to retain players is simply the lack of information on things, and part of that includes the lack of transparency between the staff and community. But I got hope anyways, even if I probably shouldn't.

Edited September 1, 2020 by RainRain

[Vedalkin 17]

If cheaters got an 11 day advantage then suspend them for 11 days. They can return after their unfair head start had been leveled.

[Eleraan 114]

13 minutes ago, RainRain said:

100% agree they messed up and dropped the ball also; and yes trust me i'm not any happy about the fact the only real information i could get was by poking at them until they gave a real response (and even then, seemingly danced around the 'did people actually abuse the exploit or not' question until now)

What I more mean by the community's reaction being dumb is not people being genuinely confused- but people being convinced that there are bad actors and demanding for skill rollbacks, bans, and all the more without actually understanding the lengths that the bug was abused (aka not to any significant or noticeable factor in this regard), while also not considering that the non-exploit use of the method (that is, using alts to fuel a priest to spam spells for skills) has been long accepted and that its not a small investment to purchase and upkeep those accounts.

They really needed to decide on this before releasing a new server- they didn't, and because of that they found themselves in a lose-lose situation. I can't say that justifies this entire thing going down the way it did, but I at least understand why it did go down this way and why some of the decisions were difficult to make. What I'm more interested in is what will be done about it now, of which the answer seems to be trying to make grinding it a bit less painful by making sacrificing more enticing. Which honestly, is alright with me- if they can pull that off right anyways 

If I have one thing to say to the staff, it's to step up your communication game. Hidden exploit fixes (like the dye thing), knee-jerk balance decisions without discussion, and keeping silent in the face of outrage isn't working out. Retrograde's post on this topic should have happened much earlier- and I will say I very much appreciate the discussion thread on sacrificing changes and the fact that more interaction is being had with the community (even though I can very clearly see why you'd want to avoid that sometimes lmao)- but even with all that said, there's a long, long way to go if you want to make sure that this steam release isn't going to end up like the other servers.

Huge problem with this game's ability to retain players is simply the lack of information on things, and part of that includes the lack of transparency between the staff and community. But I got hope anyways, even if I probably shouldn't.

 

We've been back and forth a few times in this thread RainRain.  But I feel like we are both coming from the same place.  We both want them to do a better job of communicating.  I just hope the devs actually listen.  Not just with the current issues we are discussing but in general.  I was trying to show some friends the monthly skin but couldn't find anywhere that actually showed it. You'd think there would be a monthly thread they updated to show case them, not like cosmetics aren't one of the few monetization most gamers are ok with or anything. 

 

As for doing the whole feedback on sacrificing changes, it is a step in the right direction.  But, I don't get a great feeling from how they closed it.  I read the thread when someone linked it to the town square section.  Most people did not like the proposed changes, stated they wanted a simpler fix.  Then the form was closed in a way that kinda to me at least sounded like "Well that didn't go the way we hoped.  Guess we will just close it and do what we wanted anyways."  I look forward to being pleasantly proven wrong though I do not plan to hold my breath. 

[Sovos 219]

7 hours ago, elentari said:

Remember all those hundreds of discussions about the vets using their occult in game knowledge of mechanics and stuff to quickly outpace 99% of the NFI players?

 

Honestly out of all of the dumb tricks to raise skills, I'd imagine channeling would be the easiest to figure out for a brand new player with nothing besides information from the wiki. "Hmm, I can only cast when I have favor, and I get favor either from saccing or from natural regen. If I link to someone else, I can take advantage of their natural regen in addition to my own, so why not link as much as I can?"

 

Compare that to the shipbuilding method of "Make oars, imp oars with logs, put oars into a BSB, pull oars out, oars reset to logs for imping, repeat" which is unintuitive and only known to players that understand how specific mechanics with BSBs and imping work. That being said, almost all of these supposedly Illuminati tier grinding optimizations can be found by googling "X grinding guide wurm", replacing X with your skill of choice. Even if you don't google it, most players specializing in a skill will outright tell you the best way to grind it if you just ask them.

[Damascus 249]

Wasent the exploit also dealing with being able to move away from the ground , when by rites they should have unlinked ?

Also that followers were able to link ..

As for the archery thing... how many gm,s or devs have priest that used the exploit or feature as they call bugs at times.. easy to rollback for archery since its less hassel from players then the flack they would get from priest and players doing charge back..

 

Also time to have token sell open .. coffer should be full by now...

 

 

[Melros 556]

There are priests on PvP? I thought it was only pve and on southern isles