Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: POLL: Ethical or not?
Myonax wrote:
My philosophy is if I am not doing anything special and my non-ch come out with 7k/5k/4k HAMs on the first generation then they are probably as intended.
Well, we know that this is not the case though, and in fact the pet checks that are in place seem mostly to catch first generation pets. Plus we have a pretty blunt statement from TH that he considers these overpowered.
That said, I dunno, to me the bigger issue in the ethical question isn't about customers and your returns policy, it's with the whole "exploiting a known bug" thingy. Technically of course, we are not supposed to make use of bugs to our advantage, and doing so is a bannable offense, and hurts the game as a whole. But of course there are degrees to which bugs benefit you, and degrees to which they hurt the game. On one end are things like the "accidentally" forget to store your vehicle and it magically repairs itself bug (and being a veryadsent-minded Twi'lek scientestI'd often um, "forget" to store my vehicle, lol). And on the other hand you have stuff like duping valuable resources or credits (which I'd never knowingly do). To me, the pets issue kinda falls somewhere between these two.
But I don't necessarily take the high-moral-road here. The whole point of the "mad scientist" crafting system is to try to master it and find ways to make the best pets you can, so I don'treallyresentthose that want to try to make the best CL 10's that the system allows. We certainly don't want to ever get to the point where you say "if your CL X creature is no more useful then a wild one of the same CL then it's overpowered".
But to me, personally,when you add together the moral grey area, and the headaches that are caused by massive pet returns it's just something I honestly don't want to deal with. Thus my policy: I don't stock, or hawk CL 10's, but if somebody is persistent enough I'll grudgingly make one using the pup/dasher formula on a "no returns" basis. But of course I keep a 10k HAM CL 10 in my own data pad to whip out and let people gawk at from time to time, even though I don't really use it as I have no combat skills, lol.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 05-17-2004 11:38 AM
Joyce, save your intelligent response for someone that will appreciate it - It is too obvious that the poster you were replying to is a troll, and looking to provoke a response; nothing more.
What is intensely sad is that the players, especially the BE and CH players that are caught by the worst of this debacle, care more about the state and quality of the game than SOE appears to, given the state of their response to the issue.
We are, when it comes down to it, discussing what is known as a "game-breaker" here - Not unlike the effect of "duping" credits or resources, these pets enable non CH players with limited combat skills to tank Rancors and solo missions much higher than their intended capabilities. This pumps funds into the economy far above the rate expected, and far from the balancing effect of the insurance, decay, travel, maintenanceand other cost mechanisms built into the game's ability to remove them. The inflationary effects are clear, as anyone that looks at the current pricing of items and player made goods can readily see. This is far from the only such problem, but it does contribute to it, and it is, as are several others, being explicitly ignored to death.
The end result will be that the game economy becomes so unbalanced as to prevent new players from being able to start characters on their own, and mature players from having anything that feels like a balanced reward for their efforts. With the lack of continuing progression in the characters, given the ease of mastering any desired elite profession, it becomes a limit that will make for a deterioration in the player base. The jedi path and the one-upmanship of the proposed ranking system will further limit the game, as will the "twitch" nature of the space combat. We all remember the wonderful fun of the AT-ST equipped "load killers" at the starports - entering a combat sector with a ship to be blown away by the "uber" craft in the sector will hold the same delightful rewards as entering a city by way of the cloning center did.
The nature of the MMORPG community, which is what makes or breaks the game, is based on several factors. Socialization and shared effort; balanced and continual achievement both at a personal and group level; and interesting and challenging content. SWG is more than a bit immature in the content area, which is to be expected in the first year of the game, but shows some growth in that direction. Socialization and shared effort is very much lacking; the game is far too easy to play as a solo to engender the tight communities of a guild-based society like EQ or some of the other similar games, where it is only by group effort and group participation that the best rewards become available. Continual character development is severely lacking; there is far too much "been there, done that" in most professions and roles, and the massive overuse of any new content shows that all too clearly. The 100 players crammed into the Genosian cave is not an indication of its stunning play value so much as a commentary of how little else there is of interest to do.
This seems to take the pet-check problem and blow it out of proportion, and I agree, it is not as serious or as dire as the picture I have painted, but it is a symptom of the issues that will result in the scenario I have described if not addressed directly and in a timely manner. It certainly is not one CL10 pet more or less that has 10K health and 60% Kinetic resist that will make such a thing come to pass. It is a lack of response to the player's concerns, and the health of the game environment that will do so, and our view and efforts to address this to the developer community is of inestimable value, though I am afraid it is being wasted by being left to "someday we'll get around to fixing this" status.
SWG was described to me by a good friend this way : EQ was somewhere you went to "do things" - SWG is a place you go to "live". That seemed to capture a good bit of the difference offered by the breadth of possibilities in the SWG environment, in the first few months of the game. I am hoping to see that feeling returned to the game, as it is beginning to be too often somewhere we go to try to "keep up" with the responsibilities, rather than enjoy the wonders.
LLan
Did you check to make sure you didn't put the template in an aggressive skin? That could be a big part of your problem. Always put your lvl10 pets on non-aggros.
Zydeco wrote:
No, i don't think its ethical to sell a pet that could become "invalid" tomorrow or next year without letting the person purchasing the pet know that this could happen. I decided to stop selling Non CH pets when i had a LVL 7 with 1k HAM, 30-40 damage and "poop" for resist go invalid on the person purchasing this pet. When this person was asked to change the lvl or stats, that's when i decided to stop sellin these pets until something is fixed with the system. Just my thoughts -=Zy=-
JayceMilam wrote:
The question is not do we think that BE should be able to make 10k class 10's. I don't know of a single BE who wouldn't want to make these.
/raises hand
I don't Jayce, I really don't need a dev to tell me that this is overpowered, I know this is overpowered, and hurting the balance between what we can make, what DE's can make, what CH can get in the wild, what a CH vs a non-CH can wield, and the rest of the delicately balance combat structure (ok, well scratch that last part, lol, one cannot break what is already broken).
But is a 7k HAM 50 damage overpowered? 3k HAM 100 damage? The line eventually blurs.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 05-17-2004 04:12 PM
RonninOtnemem wrote:
Message Edited by RonninOtnemem on 05-17-2004 03:56 PM
i see your point but these non ch pets are not nerely as powerful as we can make for a BE the only reason you dont see any pets that are higher level is because they ahrdly ever sell at all, i actually made some very nice level 20-60 pets and i ended up selling all of the my uber non ch pets i put on there (12) before i even sold one of the other kinds of pets, the main disadavantage is that these non ch pets are just a tanker they arent designed to do actual damage to the point that they are a useful attacker, they are only for PvE since they have too many vulners to be useful in PvP at all, where as a CH can have a level 35 pet with armor still have the 60%ish kinetic and much higher resists if they are made the same way (with different generation samples) plus dont forget that these pets have very low mind so if you are using it to tank a NS and it they use a special that randomly hits the mind pool they are pretty much done (and yes i know the mind on these pets are still much higher and they are still overpowered but they are nothing compared to what a CH can have as a pet) and you hardly even need these when you are wearing 80% comp and you have buffs and brandy they are just nice if you are trying to level rifleman since you miss a lot up close before you hit sniping 4
and yes i do realize that these pets have much higher stats than was origanly intended but the fact is that we can still make pets with way higher stats just nobody makes them since they dont sell very well
think of it this way, in episode II there was clone troopers yes? and werent they genetically engineered to follow commands by anyone that they were told to follow them from and very powerful fighters in combat? the short answer is YES! so why is it unethnical and worthy of a swing of the ol' nerf bat to make pets that are also easy to handle (hence the level 10) and very powerful in combat? the way i see it if someone has the patience to and time and experience to make them then let us make them for christ's sake and they DO NOT NEED TO BE NERFED! we should be able to make wonderful pets that everyone can enjoy.
Drocyc wrote:
lol oh come one guys all of you who are saying its unethnical and to "Play With Honor" you all should be slapped across the face, we are supposed to be able to make rediculouly powerful pets and we can. doesnt it make sense that we could geneticly engineer something very powerful but is also easily controlable by all?
Message Edited by RonninOtnemem on 05-17-2004 03:56 PM