On damage farming

[Otsego]

Great news, i hope most exploits are gone until the realease of the game.

[Cossack]

Does this explain the 19 3rd rates that attacked one of our ports last night and almost all of them were undercrewed... Interesting. 

 

I am for punishing people who exploit the system. If it was single player i would not care what people do, but in a PvP open world game i do care if the players i am fighting are richer and more powerful than me simply because they gamed the system. 

[Manta Scorpion]

I guess it is a problem mainly among pirates. I cannot imagine how to arrange a battle with enemies at our horses, they hate us with passion. The border is short and I thing somebody would definitely join etc. What about granting xp for pirate only if it sinks? Also i guess it could be analyzed by moving patterns during combat, I guess offenders will be rather stationary and not trying to outmaneuvre the other for 30 minuter.

Rich guys just buy the game 2 times or somebody (specially long time players have friends in other nations).

[Firth]

Dear Captains, 

 

Just to add a different perspective... 

 

XP farmers aren't necessarily trying to 'ruin' the game for others and to suggest such a thing displays naivety. Everyone that has posted is so quick to want to punish them, yet haven't thought that they may just have their nation's best interests at heart, after all they are trying to get ahead in order to benefit their nation as well as themselves. Others probably just saw how good the top level ships are and naturally wanted to sail as soon as possible, not to get an unfair advantage over the opposition. The whole point of having an XP system is to make people play the game longer, because they have to play in order to receive rewards; its a carrot on a stick. However, some players found a way of getting the carrot sooner and should they be punished for it? I think not.

 

I do agree that now the developers have highlighted it is unacceptable, that players should stop doing it, but I do not think its fair to take the XP away from them because it was the developers not thinking the system through properly that allowed for it to possible in the first place. Therefore the blame cannot be placed solely on the players partaking in such activities. It isn't fair to give someone a goal and not give them any rules about how they are or aren't meant to achieve it, yet when they get there, say 'Oh the way you have done it isn't right because you've done it too fast, and therefore it's not fair on the others who were also trying to achieve it'. I think a lot more people would have been doing it, had they been able to work it out for themselves.

 

I would propose that from this point, players should be punished now it has become apparent that it is such an issue but I wouldn't strip a players XP away for past offences due to the fact they won't have realised they were offending. I would add for those saying that now some nations might be too powerful due to the so called 'exploit' that they will easily crush others, that I would imagine the players who have used such methods to get ahead are pretty much evenly spread around the game with the exception of pirates. It isn't like everyone is sailing round at max rank and in First Rates; the game hasn't been out long enough for people to get that far ahead. I for one haven't seen any obscenely high ranks anywhere. Finally, if you take away the XP of the poor grinders, are you going to compensate them for the hours of their lives they have slaved away in order to better their characters? The XP came with a price...their souls.

 

Regards, 

 

The Diplomat.

[admin]

 It isn't fair to give someone a goal and not give them any rules about how they are or aren't meant to achieve it, yet when they get there, say 'Oh the way you have done it isn't right because you've done it too fast, and therefore it's not fair on the others who were also trying to achieve it'. I think a lot more people would have been doing it, had they been able to work it out for themselves.

 

 

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/2346-forum-and-sea-trials-rules/?p=146607

[Jim Bligh]

Looks like i wont be able to give out quarter in pvp anymore for the chance of being branded a farmer but good news all round, those ones dilibrately sitting in small battles next to each other and farming needed to get what was coming to them

 

Quote from Dev post             " 12000 pvp xp, 9 pvp kills, 0 deaths - damage farmer "

 

On reading the Admins statement of farming, these player are gaining XP with no PvP Death's at all. I would say the Dev's would look at your percentage of kills and Deaths to those of giving quarter. if you have one PvP with out a death and 15 with a death, not farming, if you have 9 PvP battles in a row with no Deaths, that's where the difference lies,

[Firth]

Ah ok, my apologies I had not seen that information, tucked away there. 

[SirLeggit]

glad to see the majority of the community are against farming xp......those that have done it should have their exploit-gained xp taken away from them.

[pepepotamo]

All this is fine, but do not you consider absurd that we should wait until we conquer a port to reconquer and to set the time of defense? As a faction that play on a server that mostly played in a different time zone to exploit this and take all its ports with little defense. This is the largest Actualmene exploit the game, are you going to do something about it or to favor the American market?

[Firth]

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/2346-forum-and-sea-trials-rules/?p=146607

 

How would know if you were getting abnormal XP in certain cases? For example, if I joined a mission and got 10,000 XP then yes, I would know it was an abnormal amount because I have previous experience about rewards from missions. However, if I'm fighting a pvp enemy in a large ship and for sake of argument he isn't moving and I sink him and get 10,000 XP and 50,000 gold, then how would I know that was abnormal? Yes it would seem like a lot, but I would assume that it was normal because it was a result of the game mechanics. If you don't want people to do it, then I would argue that the problem lies with the way you gain XP in the game. 

 

Just to clarify, I know I'm being the devils advocate here, but its only fair to consider both perspectives. 

Edited February 5, 2016 by The Diplomat

[Ronald Biggs]

I dont think its impossible to survive some battles without dying, depends on your tactics. When u have an higher class ship u can get many traders etc down when they are not escaping or youre on the faster ship and u fight them 1 by 1 not all in 1 battle. Just need to pick your targets and dont fight higher class ships. That system would punish captains who know how to sail and fight or the 1 who knows when to fight or not. i dont have to go into an battle where i might wanna loose. Dont get me wrong you have to deal with it but i think thats the wrong way.

 

just my 2 cent

[Brogsitter]

....

 

What you can do is let them know in battle or in chat that they might face consequences.

 

Please bring examples of damage farming here in this topic so we can find the way to close the loopholes to make the game better. We rely on you Captains. Only last week we were able to close 3 critical potential exploits caused by code and all cases were brought to us by you. 

 

What about this loophole: 

 

1. Player1 has arranged fight with Player2,

2. Player1 kills Player2

3. Player2 kills Player1

4. GOTO 1.

 

Repeat this multiple times and you will have a K/D ratio of 1:1 on both of them. Will your automatic system be able to determinate this? Will you punish these players by determinating who attacked who and how often?

 

You cannont implement a XP system wich honors PvP fights and at the end you gonna punish players for just using the system You implemented. At the end every Players is able to use the PvP-XP system to his advantage. So either you are going to take away the whole XP you can obtain from PVP fights, or leave it to the players, if they want to have arranged fights. At the end it is all about communication with your enemy and organisation. Forcing players into a specific play style is not gonna work - specially not in a PvP game like this. According to this my vote is a clear NO!

 

Regarding the money issue:

I am still the opinion that money will not be an issue in this game once there will be a player driven economy, where labor time is used to actually "generate" resources. A player driven eco was suggested since day one and I heard you are working on it. For the time beeing, you might consider to reduce the amount of money you get out of pvp fights to have a temporarily fix.

[Jacob van Heemskerck]

Is it really hard to understand?

Because if you play the game like it should be played, there is almost no way getting accused of anything!?

And if you get accused of something you didn't do, or didn't do on purpose (finding a bug), and you are explaining what happend to developers, i am sure they are fair enough to grant you benifit of the doubt, if it all sounds reasonable?

And if you got the feeling you are doing something wrong, 9 out 10 times you are doing something wrong. And if you read the rules you probably know you are doing something wrong!

it's very simple to understand.

[Eldberg]

Scope.

That is the key word here. Within 2-3 months (If not less!) almost everyone will be at end game content; then damage farming will become irrelevant to the vast majority. The damage has already been done, there are already many players in much larger ships than others such as 3rd Rates (and being able to fully crew them). To make a change now will have an incredibly limited effect, most likely causing more damage than the issue it aims to resolve.

Should this have been done from the beginning of early access? Most probably. Should this be done now? Most likely not.

[Brogsitter]

AI always fights back 

PvE xp is calculated separately. You cannot farm the AI without actually fighting. We are talking about pvp xp where exploiters arrange farming each other in secluded places: pirate vs pirate, or pirate vs nations or nations vs nations

 

It was possible. At some point NPC were not fighting back. Luckily it was fixed.

[admin]

Should this have been done from the beginning of early access? Most probably. Should this be done now? Most likely not.

 

 

Damage farming was always forbidden - what exactly should have been done from the beginning?

We always said that exploits will be reverted. Damage farming is considered an exploit by the community

[Milton]

I would like to know what about practise fights...

I know lots of very good players on different sides from another game (POTBS)

I would not mind meeting them somewhere to have practice fights. I know a decent amount of them would improve my skill.
But according to this i have to kill them and can't do those fights without the kill. It would make me a damagefarmer since i would get xp and money but no kills.

What about arranged pvp fights? In POTBS there were tons of people arranging fights. And because of respect of the opponent you didn't kill him.

Even in general adhoc pvp fights people choose to let enemies sail away when the fight was pretty much won.
 

Don't forget this is a social game also. The diplomatics, respect for your opponents, etc. In my opinion in no way this is the propper solution for damagefarming.

You take away a part of the game that does make this game very fun!. So i would love to see a responce from devs on this.

[Brogsitter]

Damage farming was always forbidden - what exactly should have been done from the beginning?

We always said that exploits will be reverted. Damage farming is considered an exploit by the community

 

What about players with either superior skills or just going for players in trader ships?

 

I think it is no good, to implement an XP system and tell players they are not allowed to use it. Thats kinda odd.

[admin]

 

What about arranged pvp fights? In POTBS there were tons of people arranging fights. And because of respect of the opponent you didn't kill him.

 

 

We are checking the data and of course we are going to use multiple parameters to make the decision (including server averages). 

What it means that only players with ABNORMAL gains be affected. 

 

Another thing is - that even if you damage farm in an arrange battle - you still spend time.

Destroying a friend's 3rd rate still takes time and it does not give instant rewards. Most of those ships are also under crewed and they don't give a lot of points for crew too. Boarding does not give you a kill (it gives you a boarding victory counted separately because you are compensated by crew casualties xp). 

 

In XP gains a a damage farmer - shooting at friendly under crewed 3rd rates does not receive a huge difference in xp per battle if we compare it from a player who attacks NPCs at sea especially if he found a good hunting spot where such NPCs sail non stop. The damage damage exploiters do is more cultural.

[Brogsitter]

Now I am confused.

[Voi_Ta]

1) the problem is that it is profitable. The players don't lose ships and they don't sink ships. They pay only for repair and they get more for the damage. So if you have pvp deaths or kills you are obviously not doin it.

2) another way how to check for this exploit would be to check with whom were the fights. If it is always 1v1 with the same person, without any kills, it is more probably the exploit.

[Lord Roberts]

Scope.

That is the key word here. Within 2-3 months (If not less!) almost everyone will be at end game content; then damage farming will become irrelevant to the vast majority. The damage has already been done, there are already many players in much larger ships than others such as 3rd Rates (and being able to fully crew them). To make a change now will have an incredibly limited effect, most likely causing more damage than the issue it aims to resolve.

Should this have been done from the beginning of early access? Most probably. Should this be done now? Most likely not.

Yes the devs should have made a better system but at the same time pirates who have exploited this deserve to be banned and most pirates have, especially on PVP 2

[Hethwill]

The proto system worked fine during sea trials Voi_Ta. Make no mistakes. Abnormal occurrences will not go through. I remember several testers having their progress reset to null during Trials because of it.

 

A mix between automated system and human eye on details will provide more than enough reason to string them up the gallows.

[Firth]

I can see this system they're going to implement being severely bugged and will probably affect a lot of 'innocent' players as well.

Edited February 5, 2016 by The Diplomat

[Brogsitter]

1) the problem is that it is profitable. The players don't lose ships and they don't sink ships. They pay only for repair and they get more for the damage. So if you have pvp deaths or kills you are obviously not doin it.

2) another way how to check for this exploit would be to check with whom were the fights. If it is always 1v1 with the same person, without any kills, it is more probably the exploit.

 

regarind 2) with this you are blaming player for having arranged fights.

 

@admin:

If I get this right, you are going to force players into a specific behavior, i.e. you have to fight back, you are not allowed to help your real life friend to level up, you have to play the game the way we want you to play. If I am right, I would ask you to reconsidder this, but preferable I would like to proof me wrong.