Progress on Mode Swapping exploits

[Karamon]

If missions were generated and kept server side relogging wouldn't generate new missions to stack t.

They are generated and kept server side , but there are many servers and reloging to different modes most of the time send you to another server where you get different set of missions . Sometimes "board don't flip" and this is situation when you are going back to server you were not so long ago.

Issue with this "exploit" is that it IS AVAILABLE to everyone , it is not some dark secret , you don't need some special tools , no special knowledge .

I do not defend it , but issue is not in board fliping but in game system itself that does not provide us with options to make big money , you can make a lot of money but you have to do insane amount of low paying repetetive tasks that are slow , boring and not rewarding at all so don't expect that people always try to do those boring and unrewarding tasks in bulk to save time and play the game

And we really need bulk missions , 99% of missions are for small ship owners , cary 5 tons cary 15 tons , carry 15 passengers . Why don't we have "carry 150 passengers 100 ly away" missions ??

 

[GG7]

It's a multiplayer game.

When such high-earning exploits are available it makes any fines/bounties/ship loss meaningless for those willing to use them. <<< this is point enough on it's own

Having wild disparity in earning potential between those who use an exploit and those who don't sets in stone the issue that for some people ship loss is deeply meaningful while for others the game is just a shoot'em'up causing large problems.

These points are blindingly obvious and are why exploits are shut down in MMOs, these things do not really need explaining do they.

You are clearly delusional.

 

[Arthur Shappey]

I'd just love to understand the psychology of why this matters to so many people?

There are no winners in ED, just as there have never been any winners in any guise of Elite. There is little human competitiveness in ED, and what exists is entirely optional and largely consensual. Why is there angst?

I have a lot of empathy with people who either board-switch or take advantage of exploits. ED, as it stands, is a game designed for those who have hours upon hours to spare. Not everyone has that luxury. Not everyone wants to wait months or years worth of grind to personally find out what an absolute cow of a space-craft the Imperial Cutter is. Good luck to them. Each to their own.

It's almost the historical, founding principle of Elite from 1984. The game is whatever you make of it. You can cheat if you want to. Who cares? I mean - really - who cares and why? What are you materially losing?

It seems like a serious case of envy. Envy is a vice. Let go of it. Relax. Enjoy the game. It is - ultimately - just a piece of fun!

 

[frostypaw]

Agreed. People have got to stop complaining and caring what other people do in their own game. It doesn't affect anyone else. And if it wasn't for forums and youtube no one would know what other people are doing anyway.

No, we know it because we can't smash PKers and cheats out of the sky - in many other games they'd be cornered and reduced to zero credits until they quit and went to be antisocial in another game.

Here.... is different.

 

[verminstar]

Its not an exploit so there is no debate, just the salty tears of a saturday afternoon whine session. Players dont get to say what are exploits or not...frontier do and they said its not an exploit...so erm...ye want a tissue maybe?

Im grinding up empire rank atm...and you wanna make the process even more time consuming and painful than it already is...because ye believe its not in the spirit of the game? If its ok with you, Id like to get this finished before spring, not autumn...obviously I wont make a move without your express permission and blessing now ye brought this travesty to light ^

Just play the game and chill...quit fussing over how others play their game...it does ye no favours ^

 

[the source 0179]

No, it is related with server load. They have to retrieve missions in x seconds. As load goes up and down, that causes issues to guarantee that speed. To provide reliable speed at witch you open mission boards, there have to be limits on how much you can fetch from server.

2.3/2.4 saw serious improvements regarding this and I hope these improvements continue.

To be honest i wouldn't care if i had to wait 3-5 min for the mission or passenger board if it ment there was enough missions or passengers to fill up my ship to where i wanted to go. Lol

 

[Dominic Corner]

When 2.4 landed we had a glorious mission board with lots of missions to do and they took it away, why? It was damn near perfect.

Hi there,

Missions are generated on our servers, these are then delivered to the client.

The initial board sizes in 2.4 were too large to produce a satisfactory experience for users.

We tuned the number to still be more than twice as many missions as you were getting on a board prior to 2.4, though.

The reason "mode switching" works is because if you connect to a different server, it has a different board of missions.

Solo mode should always be using a separate set of servers to the multiplayer modes (because we don't try to cluster players by geography, since they can never meet eachother in game), so switching from Open to Solo will always cause a server switch.

It is undesirable and technically an exploit (It allows the players to derive an advantage from game systems unintended by the devlelopers.) but we're not going to take action against people using it at this point.

We've thought of a few ways to fix it and it is on our list of things to fix eventually, but it is a fairly substantial chunk of work for multiple teams and other things get prioritised in front of it.

Thanks,
Dom

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

To be honest i wouldn't care if i had to wait 3-5 min for the mission or passenger board if it ment there was enough missions or passengers to fill up my ship to where i wanted to go. Lol

You wouldn't. Problem is you are not median casual player.

 

[frostypaw]

game system itself that does not provide us with options to make big money

There's no "need" to make big money - why do you think that?

It seems like a serious case of envy. Envy is a vice. Let go of it. Relax. Enjoy the game. It is - ultimately - just a piece of fun!

LOL!!!

Now that's delusional. Envy never ever even got near the list of reasons.

 

[frostypaw]

Hi there,

Missions are generated on our servers, these are then delivered to the client.

The initial board sizes in 2.4 were too large to produce a satisfactory experience for users.

We tuned the number to still be more than twice as many missions as you were getting on a board prior to 2.4, though.

The reason "mode switching" works is because if you connect to a different server, it has a different board of missions. Solo mode should always be using a separate set of servers to the multiplayer modes (because we don't try to cluster players by geography, since they can never meet eachother in game), so switching from Open to Solo will always cause a server switch.

It is undesirable and technically an exploit (It allows the players to derive an advantage from game systems unintended by the devlelopers.) but we're not going to take action against people using it at this point.

We've thought of a few ways to fix it and it is on our list of things to fix eventually, but it is a fairly substantial chink of work for multiple teams and other things get prioritised in front of it.

Thanks,
Dom

Thank you Dom, that's great to know it's still on the list - that's enough. I'm aware it's not going to be an easy fix so no wailing and "FDev pants devs" from me. Just needed to know the direction the game was taking so I didn't lose faith

 

[Weps]

Pardon my ignorance (last time I read anything about mode hopping was more than a year ago), but wasn't at some point a change to the mission system where there was a limit to the number of missions of the same type? 3 or so? I'm just curious, what happened to that?

 

[the source 0179]

You wouldn't. Problem is you are not median casual player.

Oh I'm probably a casual player. But the way i look at it is. Waiting 3-5min for a full mission/passenger board so i can fill my ship is quicker than board hopping for 15-30 min lol. I play my game the way i want. And i dont care how others play their game. No offense lol.

 

[operant]

Hi there,


It is undesirable and technically an exploit (It allows the players to derive an advantage from game systems unintended by the devlelopers.) but we're not going to take action against people using it at this point.
Thanks,
Dom

Time for me to eat humble pie.
Dominic, other than human nature, have to seriously considered why people feel the need to do this? Often I am just looking for something attractive (not necessarily profitable) to do.

 

[CMDR _BigJay_]

Hi there,

Missions are generated on our servers, these are then delivered to the client.

The initial board sizes in 2.4 were too large to produce a satisfactory experience for users.

We tuned the number to still be more than twice as many missions as you were getting on a board prior to 2.4, though.

The reason "mode switching" works is because if you connect to a different server, it has a different board of missions. Solo mode should always be using a separate set of servers to the multiplayer modes (because we don't try to cluster players by geography, since they can never meet eachother in game), so switching from Open to Solo will always cause a server switch.

It is undesirable and technically an exploit (It allows the players to derive an advantage from game systems unintended by the devlelopers.) but we're not going to take action against people using it at this point.

We've thought of a few ways to fix it and it is on our list of things to fix eventually, but it is a fairly substantial chink of work for multiple teams and other things get prioritised in front of it.

Thanks,
Dom

Dom,

I mode switch to get the missions I want. This isn't rocket science.. If I'm the captain of a cruise ship, I pull into port and there's only 3 people who want to go where I'm sailing to, I'm NOT going to load them up and go. Makes no sense. So I look for more people to take.

I dislike mode switching. It is immersion breaking and I really wish I didn't have to do it.

You say you're working on solutions to the problem, and I think that's great. But PLEASE make sure the mission board is able to give us a LOT more missions so that we can find what we're looking for. I understand the board can only had out so many missions, maybe have a "refresh" button that allows certain mission types to change destinations or something like that.

Time was, I did a lot of long distance hauling missions. I do NONE now. I did a lot of Massacre missions. I do NONE now. I did lots of planetary scan missions. I do NONE now. In fact, I pretty much do only data missions for naval rank these days. I hope the "fix" for all of these "problems" isn't to just make people stop using the mission board completely.

 

[Riverside]

Hi there,

Missions are generated on our servers, these are then delivered to the client.

The initial board sizes in 2.4 were too large to produce a satisfactory experience for users.

We tuned the number to still be more than twice as many missions as you were getting on a board prior to 2.4, though.

The reason "mode switching" works is because if you connect to a different server, it has a different board of missions.

Solo mode should always be using a separate set of servers to the multiplayer modes (because we don't try to cluster players by geography, since they can never meet eachother in game), so switching from Open to Solo will always cause a server switch.

It is undesirable and technically an exploit (It allows the players to derive an advantage from game systems unintended by the devlelopers.) but we're not going to take action against people using it at this point.

We've thought of a few ways to fix it and it is on our list of things to fix eventually, but it is a fairly substantial chunk of work for multiple teams and other things get prioritised in front of it.

Thanks,
Dom

That's a helpful (and very quotable) response, thanks again Dom.

 

[Dominic Corner]

Pardon my ignorance (last time I read anything about mode hopping was more than a year ago), but wasn't at some point a change to the mission system where there was a limit to the number of missions of the same type? 3 or so? I'm just curious, what happened to that?

Hi there,

These were applied on a per-template basis and, for the most part, were removed when issues we had with mission stacking were solved.

They were primarily used in the case of massacre missions, where players could stack multiple missions for the same targert and progress each mission from a single kill.

Since you now can only progress one mission per faction from a single kill, this cap has been removed.

Thanks,
Dom

 

[Arthur Shappey]

...
LOL!!!

Now that's delusional. Envy never ever even got near the list of reasons.

Really? It would seem your own points are lacking any logic or rationale.

Why do you care what other players are doing? How are you materially suffering? Many players already on the system have met and exceeded triple-elite months and years ago thanks to exploits - do you want them demoted? How is it actually affecting your gameplay?

 

[yminale]

The difficulty in making credits is a FEATURE. Fdev needs to slow down progression because there is still a lack of end game content. The only people who are "satisfied" are the pew pew players. Asking for more missions won't help since 90% won't be worth your time and effort.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Solo mode should always be using a separate set of servers to the multiplayer modes (because we don't try to cluster players by geography, since they can never meet eachother in game), so switching from Open to Solo will always cause a server switch.

It is undesirable and technically an exploit (It allows the players to derive an advantage from game systems unintended by the devlelopers.) but we're not going to take action against people using it at this point.

Thanks for that, Dom.

Are you in a position to comment on *why* the mission boards are different on different servers? If the same seed was used for the RNG on each server then, presumably (to the layman), the mission boards could be the same between servers - other than the fact that CMDRs would be removing missions from the board by taking them on.

 

[xondk]

Therein lies the problem. Frontier doesn't like to work

Frontier is providing us with their version of the game they want to create....so I doubt it has anything to do with not wanting to work.