Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: TH '19 answers', again showing he doesn't know what he's talking about
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:Tal-N,I think this really is a case of "be careful what you wish for". Let's suppose TH finally "gives in" and just goes to the function that is responsible for calculating CL and just cuts and pastes it into a post for all to see in this forum. How would this change our play experience as BE's? I think this is a valid question.The first thing to consider is the formula is bogus. We know that it is responsible for determining that a 1K HAM 100 damage creature is CL 11 and a 10k HAM 150 damage creature is CL 10, and a 1k HAM 50 damage creature is somehow illegally overpowered at CL 6. It seems to me that the only thing such a post would accomplish is to encourage more BE's to take advantage of it's faults in a very calculated way.
Actually.. you'd probably have about 50 posts with suggestions on how to code it properly so that it couldn't be exploited.
Even if they gave us the CL meter it wouldn't matter, as the formula for determining that CL is borked.. hence the pet validation checks. I'd prefer if they'd just do the validation check on final combine and put the adjusted CL on the deed in the 1st place. No more having to worry about customer complaints and refunds.
Agissar
Man, I'm angry now. I bought TH's glowing bunny off his vendor, and tamed it, I got a message telling me it was glowing to bright and would have to be adjusted. Those candles are brighter than my bunny now. I really wanted a glowing bunny so I bought his freak bunny that only glows 5 out of the 7 days. It tamed ok, It didnt need adjusting, even though its got more ham and higher damage, But, alas, it still doesn't glow 7 days a week.
Ya, thats just wrong. I've had some decent pets that I got lucky while making them, have them come out with a lower CL than usual. Its real frustrating to hear later that when someone did buy and use it, it needed adjusting.
The whole problem is the low level pets that are too strong, yes they need to be adressed, but the pet fix they have in place also affects the higher level pets. No other profession has to deal with that.
I'm kinda in the middle on this one. I'm not denying that cloning is an exact science, as Arm points out, but I'm leaning with Arthur that making it exact for us wouldn't be a tremendous benefit. After all, it is a game and there should be some level of randomness affecting the mix.
On the other side, I don't see that CL should be complete voodoo either. To me it clearly seems it should be one of the items visible in the template experimentation. If I'm making a custom bantha for somebody, it would be nice to go to my inventory, find the template for the CL I need it to be, and craft the bantha. You'd think CL should be the main factor in a template.
If this is "as good as it gets" I am fine with that. So long as they take out the Class check and allow me to sell pets that will validly match what the deed says. I don't go buy a deed for a harvester that says 12BER and then go to use it and have to decide whether tochange it so I can't use the harvestor at allor change it so that it is only a 5BER harvestor.
You don't want to put any more work into making us a valid class, fine! But don't gimp our sales because YOU are lazy or understaffed. Don't hinderour gameplay because YOU can't figure out how your own system works. Don't trashour names because YOU change the stats on pets AFTER the deed has been sold.
If you want us to experiment and gamble with your random, voodoo BE design, we will. And we will try to make the best pets we can, of course! But don't let the system tell us we made a killer Class 10, just to turn around and change it after our customer has bought and tamed it. You don't do it with pre-nerf guns that are out of whack with this supposed balance combat we keep hearing (and hearing and ONLY hearing) about. You didn't do it to the freaked out Fusion harvestors that pull down 20+ BER. Granted, you did do it to my old-school probot, but it was made before the code change. If you released the Droid invasion and allowed the NEW deeds to read like the customer was buying a 40% Medium armor droid, then when tamed it became one of these 20% no armor jokes, people would be screaming much louder than we are here.
There are two reasons I decided a couple weeks ago to quit bio-engineer and they can both be found in this thread.
#1 - The CL system is horrendously broken, not bugged, broken, an has been since the "new" (now quite old) system was implimented back in december. When I can make a 6k/4k/3k HAM 20% kinetic resist pet and hit cl 10 just about every time on the first combine something is wrong. You may have noticed that that is twice as powerful as the best wild cl 15 pet, in both health (most hit pool) and kinetic resist (most used damage type in PvE). And yet, if I try to be "safe" for my customers and make a 3k HAM 10% kinetic resist pet, it comes out cl 11 EVERY SINGLE TIME!!! You can see the same thing in larger pets, non-ch is just what has been frustrating me the most. Also, the fact that I can make, WITHOUT exploiting, WITHOUT improperly using the system, on the FIRST ATTEMPT (i.e. no generation sampling) a pet that is invalid and must have its stats shifted, then something is seriously broken. That should NEVER happen.
#2 - The fact that the devs completely ignore these glaring issues and pretend we are working wonderfully. It is a slap in the face, and I won't stand for it any more. Since they won't change, I will. Did anybody read the advanced guide? Did you noticed that was ripped almost word for word from a website that has had that posted for a month or two now? The description of the way resists work WAS ripped word for word. I was stunned and, frankly, quite insulted.
Thats when I knew they didn't care about us, the players. Yay, we got our tissues, we can be rich now, woohoo. I didn't become a BE to make tissues, I wanted, and for a long time loved, making pets. Now I dread going out to sample any kind of decent DNA because I know one of three things will happen 90% of the time. It will either crit fail and I will lose 4+ hours worth of collecting work, it will assemble fine but I will crit fail an experiment, making it hardly even useable for resampling, or it will come out one or two CL too high.
I stopped making pets because I can't stand it, and if I am not making pets there is no reason for me to play a bio-engineer.
I'm gonna be a dancer, look out world!!
Ok TH really needs to go back to school. I know high school students that are cloning at the cellular level very reliablely. But they way i am looking at this is that over time you can breed agression out of an animal and make it just as powerful as if it were aggressive. Take the domestic cat for example. Granted it took many generation to create such a domestic animal, but they are still as powerful as their wildcat ancestors (and about the same size). So my point is this, since SOE wants to shoot for reality, we should as well. In reality pets are breed for perfectionthrough many generations, using both inbreeding and cross breeding techniques. Therefore a high powered low level pet should be considered realistic and valid.
Basically i am using TH comments as a guide to give up waiting on SOE and strive for excellence despite their wrongheaded scientific notions.
As far as possible customer problems: Any customer that are having problems should complain to SOE, not me. I did not make the code, I did not nerf the pet, I made a valid deed, any resulting invalid pets are SOE responibility since their software told me that the deed was lvl X. (my motto for bad pets, I may loses some customers but SOE will hear their yelling.. Many voices are louder than one. Beside few people are even buying now with the invalidations)
My hypothesis: SOE wants reality.
My Method: Strive to create the best regardless of nerfs. (Science does not Settle)
meroc wrote:
I'm starting to think they used our FAQ cause they actually don't have a clue how their own system works, and the only person that mayknow (Keldarin) is too busy doing Jedi stuff.
That would also explain the problems they have fixing the "Invalid Pet" issue and why area effect specials are broken (It's arguable either way that they are either broken or it's "by design". With no official word on it, and their past record,I'll go with broken).
Your post doesn't need the "starting to think" hedge. The "Advanced Guide" clearly states that they don't know.
Now, I realize that they were using text from the FAQ when they said "we don't know", but when SOE published those words, they included themselves in them.
This isn't really as far fetched as it may seem, it is actually fairly easy to write software where you can't know what the output will be for any particular case without testing. Even works for software without specific random number generators, and with really simple rules. Wolfram wrote a book about it: "A new kind of science" IIRC.
I only hope they have quit fiddling with the invalid pet code to try to limit it. I just replaced the non-ch that went invalid in Pub 7 with a new one with 3X the HAM and similar resists and damage that calls fine. Seems to me that prices are down because of the fear factor, I thought it a bargain.
BryGuy42 wrote:Has no one seen Episode II? Cloning didn't look like such a random process there.
I fear you underestimate the power of this argument. In episode 2 (not that this game is based on Star Wars or anything...) not only were they able to turn out unlimited coppies from one DNA sample (without killing the host I might add!), but they were even able to directly manipulate the level of will (or difficulty to control, if you will) for that individual. Hmm...the very thing you guys just want to see as you work on something...
However, you don't need to post on how full of BS TH is...you can just check dev tracker and see the thousand other instances of it. At least here he took more than one line to BS you. With WS/Rifleman he just out and out lied and said that the tusken rifle was never kinetic damage... Oh, and it takes weeks of programming to change the damage type of a weapon (though they can change the T21 damage type twice in one week).
I fear it is becoming obvious that the only responses players will receive are lies and attempts to cover someone's arse, and that very rarely a correspondent will receive a cryptic answer as they try not to lie to them in attempting to completely skirt the question. I also fear that it is becoming more obvious that we are seen as pests by the very people who are paid by our subscription fees for wanting them to do their jobs...very disappointing.
I only wish I hadn't made friends in this game or that I didn't occasionally have fun doing something with said friends so I could stop paying them to talk down to me and say that I should submit a bug report for the issue in this ticket...even though I've already submitted 3 over the course of 4 months...hence the ticket... This is SOE for "Shut up and give me another $15."
TH did not come anywhere close to answering the question we posed to him. He is working on "Blowing Smoke Up Their Arses" and must be on the last box of "Empty Words" and I bet he will make master very, very soon. The more experience he gets at avoiding any real content in his messages, the better he gets at it. Just like the real corporate world.
I think that the developers probably truly no longer understand the code as it relates to the BE cloning system, but they DO understand the code that relates to pet checks, and the CAN nullify that code. Any ethical developer would not penalize the user who uses his software simply because the software does not perform as intended! So I use Excel spreadsheets that allow me to build complicated macros, but the macros are more powerful that the developer intended, so he randomly programs in errors in my calculations which makes some of them incorrect. AH! But I don't know WHERE the errors will pop up or WHO else it will effect because the errors don't manifest themselves until I mail the spreadsheet to others.Only later, when I get that phone call (and I WILL get it - rest assured) from someone screaming that they relied on my spreadsheets for their forecasts, and that my spreadsheets are now full of errors, will I know the full extent of the problem. And I can't fix it because the developer won't fix the source of the problem. I just have to develop another spreadsheet and HOPE that it does not get the random error check. Absolutely insane.
I would say that these developers evaluations and bonuses are based on goals & timetables. Like Patch 8 will upgrade xyz issues and will be available on the servers by xyz date. Do that and there is a feather in their cap - looks good at evaluation time. There is nowhere in that equation time to factor in corrective maintenance - no glory or reward to fixproblems created with their new content. So that's where the experience in Empty Words comes in - talk all around the issue, and treat it as though it isn't an issue - and Voila! They can effectively ingore the problem while working on their next goal that will influence their evaluations/bonuses.
We will not get these on-going issues resolved with these developers. When the ship begins to sink, play the music. They are playing the music - big Fan Fest coming up and filling the boards with the upcoming Space Exapnsion upgrade. Just music to hide the waves lapping across the deck - the BE deck anyway.....
Ebacca
Master BE, Master CH
etopia wrote:
TH did not come anywhere close to answering the question we posed to him. He is working on "Blowing Smoke Up Their Arses" and must be on the last box of "Empty Words" and I bet he will make master very, very soon. The more experience he gets at avoiding any real content in his messages, the better he gets at it. Just like the real corporate world.
