Zombie Man

I've never seen them take damage that way.

I suppose if a Patron is killed, then you don't get their buff in order to defeat Reichsman.

Positron made me dance for mine. I feel... used.

See my sig for the SuperSidekicking Guide which explains the New Exemplar Rules. Also, my sig for other guides. And if you've been away awhile, check out: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Issues

WRT crab backpacks, it's a known issue for players:

paragonwiki.com/wiki/Known_Issues#Crab_Back_Packs_on_Second_Build

At the time the OP posted, the status paged showed all the servers down, even though they were in fact all up.

Actually, this is where your argument becomes, to use the word of those negatively repping me because they disagree with me... ridiculous.

The Eden trial *was* worth more than 7 Merits, it was worth a Rare Pool C recipe which has a value of 20 Merits for a random roll (or about 200 Merits if you're buying a specific one). It is 7 now *because of the exploits*. Not only from the bugged wall you can get past (and is now fixed), but from all the other 'shortcuts'. So, the Devs massively nerfed the rewards not because the TF is designed to be a 10 minute task (it has a 4 hour timer!), but because the design is broken, and players *take advantage* of the broken design to get a reward that is far beyond what the risk and time investment would normally indicate.

This is not a case where it's simply a "good team that kills faster". The team is leveraging mechanics to avoid the series of tasks in the TF. That is the very definition of 'exploit.'

Yes, the Devs have a mechanism for dealing with *this*, whatever you want to call it -- a something for which you don't have a name. The mechanism is massively nerfing the reward because players found a way to short circuit the design; OR, to redesign the task.

Did I just stumble into Reader's Digest?

I've been on plenty of teams that tried to do the final mission that way and it took way longer because they failed at the quick kill and faceplanted on the rooftop herding 5 spawns at once.

Now, I know what you'll say, "that was a crummy team, a good team can surgically kill Rommy and quickly clear the towers."

And to that I say, "Such a good team can quickly clear the path to Rommy and quickly take him out in the same time, only, by clearing first, they don't run the risk of a mistake."

You still have to kill 300 Cimerorans. Doing it backwards, if it does save any time, is an insignificant saving of time.



But to answer your question about exploits: As I mentioned above, which you neglected to quote, when there is a design flaw which allows players to 'work around' the intended investment of risk and time, then taking advantage of that design flaw is an exploit. I know, I know, exploit is so wed to the notion of a *bug*. But when a TF that is designed to be an hour's worth of work -- even for a good team -- gives the reward for an hour's worth of work; but is done in 20 minutes... then there is a exploit involved... whether through a bug, or players cleverly leveraging the mechanics in a 'legal' way, it's an exploit.



Actually, that design flaw was considered an exploit by the Devs. That's why stealth now suppresses when you click, when before, it didn't. See... design flaw exploited... design changed to stop the exploit.






If the Eden exploits are fixed, then why is its Merit reward still so low? Twenty minute Edens are still possible, thus, the low Merit reward.



Good ol' Katie, the poster-witch of design-flaw-becomes-exploit. When it was made widely known that the first mission could be bypassed through purposely failing, Posi said basically, at the time, "hey, that's how the mechanics work, what could possible go wrong?" Well, a few thousand 15 minute KHTFs later, they realized what could go wrong. The design flaw was recognized as such precisely because it was so thoroughly exploited. And so, the first mission was changed to stop that.... well, if you don't call it an exploit, then what would you call it?

That's a pretty big pipering.

Since there were several theories floated in this thread, I just wanted to confirm that this is correct.

I can't help you unless you speak up.

Cool! It's a crystal maze!

That made it to the 8/21 Known Issues list in Closed Beta:

But it's not on the Live Known Issues List.

That *might* mean it was fixed in a patch which is in the pipeline but hasn't arrived yet.

An exploit? You mean something like...


I, too, get after the Devs for lapses in patch notes. But fixes for exploits (which includes design flaws which have 'legal' workarounds so that it's not working as intended, and a 20 minute Hess is definitely not intended) are not announced on Test and are not announced when they go Live, at least, not at first. When the Patch is deemed stable and won't get reverted, then they announce exploit fixes. Given that this past Issue needed an emergency patch last Thursday, it is reasonable to assume that the delayed announcing of exploit fixes got delayed further or were forgotten in the rush.

Not too mention Paragon Studios is experiencing a flu epidemic right now.

The Devs have always come clean with changes they made. After all, they have publicly made the statement that hiding changes indefinitely is just stupid because we can all plainly see them.

Sometimes the process has lapses and sometimes it's delayed. Whenever we've inquired about it, we've been answered. Just don't expect answers from a flu-ridden studio over the weekend.

The Uncanny Valley has its uses if you're purposely going for unease.