Bio Engineer Archive

I was just speaking to someone today about these exploit created clones and it's dawned on me that we have something of a problem. We all know that it's possible to get surprizingly high resistances onto CL10 and lower pets because they are not scaled down when you inbreed them. However one thing which has become even more apparent when talking to someone today is that the HAM also isn't being lowered by as much as it should when inbreeding.

This player i spent a long time talking to managed to make a CL10 pet with 10k of HAM. Now naturally we butted heads as he claimed he wasn't exploiting while I was under the view that he'd must have used one of these bugged dna samples that exist but we haven't discovered yet. After much indepth discussion I know me and him are not going to agree that these pets are overpowered (he sees it as the system working as intended despite these clones breaking the rules of the CL ratings) but one thing that did become clear is that the reason why not everyone is seeing such results is due to where people are starting when they make a CL10 critter.

Now most of us are taking a mix of dna from the high and low ends in order to get something around the middle, others are taking raw copies from the middle and generationalizing them down once or twice. However this person has been taking this to the extreme with 5th and even 6th generation clones all the way from around CL40 and upwards leading to these kinds of results. So what you have here is two ways in which to get the same overpowered results. But while one is an exploit the other is very much a flaw in the system due to poor playtesting (well what do you expect when it didn't work for 3 weeks and then got fixed at least minute)

The bug seems to lie mainly with the CL being determined by the DSP and chance to hit. If I didn't know any better I'd almost say that Keldarin, being the fool that he is, has applied the OLD system for calculation the CL to the new cloning system since we know they used to make those kinds of estimates based mainly one the HAM and the damage. Well it's clear that the HAM isn't being considered now but the damage certainly is. Now this would explain why generations of clones are getting these bizzare results. Cause the mental, physch and aggresion slots are all effecting the DPS. However if all of them contain the same stats of the last generation. We then experiment on the HAM again mainly resulting in the DPS for each generation drop lower and lower. Sure we're losing a fixed amountto the HAM for each generation but we correct much of that with experimentation, this clearly isn't a percentage being lost or it'd be consistant at all CL ratings

And because the HAM and resistances aren't considered in the CL calculations we're seeing the CL drop like a brick. Naturally the higher you start up with the donars the less you lose to the HAM with each generation since it's apparently a point value being removed not a percentage one. Since physch is clearly effecting the attack speed and aggression is effecting the damage you can bypass the usual CL calculations almost completely, the only thing holding it higher is the mental slot which is keeping the 'chance to hit' higher. If you allow that to totally dwindle you start seeing the CL dropping even faster.

So what you have here in the end is similar end results with two seperate paths. One is clearly an exploit but not totally because of the result however since we know the DPS should be responsible for the CL then a 490-500 CL10 critter is clearly breaking the rules. The other is simply a shortcoming of the system it would seem, technically we cannot avoid what is happening since anything you put into the mental, physch and aggression slots is effecting the CL while the physic and prowess is not being considered it appears. So what do we do, stop making clones since we cannot avoid exploits? Stop generationalizing clones which is causing this flaw in the system to get worse with each generation?

Personally i don't see a way out here, every clone we're making is breaking the rules here so no matter what course of action the devs take every and all clones will need to be corrected. This explains why we're seeing as much as a difference of 10 CL ratings when we make direct copies. The CL calculations for the clones are not complete like themobs seen in the wild. Personally I'm going to avoid dna which is giving me bizzare results for the first generation, but as for resampling I'm going to continue since it's how the system has been designed to work and even without resampling the same problem will happen anyway. In for a penny, in for a pound basically.

I'd be hypocritical to say I won't exploit a flaw in the system when there's utterly no way to avoid it anyway.

A logical approach would have been to calculate the CL based on the stats of the template, then modify it based on the skill and luck and materials used by BE for the final craft. Say, a max of a 15% - 20% reduction in CL would be possible.

To my surprise, I've found it exceptionally easy to make level 23 creatures with armor, 10K health and 30%+ resists for energy and kinetic. Plus 50%+ resists in a host of other areas. Just using normal, high level DNA, through 2 generations. I'm about to knock it down to level <16 if my calculations are right, and I strongly suspect that I can get to CL 10, 10K Health, 3K others, light armor, 25%+ resists for energy and kinetic, if I can make a cross breed creature with enough vulns. Not using Kahmurra DNA.

In short, I am not convinced this is any bugged DNA - I think it is an overall poorly thought out system. Surprise.

Unfortuntely, the junior achievers we have for devs borked it. Never send a programmer to do a game designers job....

Unless there is official word (has there been?) we are not exploiting anything. This is how it was designed for us to use and who are we to decide what is correct. We are end users, not developers.

I have not been selling obviously bugged pets but I am going to. There is no reason to not use BE the way it has been given to me.

I am getting tired of hearing "exploit" in the BE forum. It is not an exploit at all. It is working as designed and saying exploit makes us soud like cheaters when we are, in fact, doing no such thing. If this is not as intended, they should fix it or make the creatures temporarily extinct. They have not, and they must know about it, so this tells me it is not a priority to keep these pets out of circulation. Therefore, why should we not do what is fun? Making really cool pets is fun. It is available to me and I play this game for fun. If it turns out that this is intended, we will be foolish for holding out whiles others fill the market for us.

Maybe certain dna is supposed to be extra good like finding loot. Who knows? Not me. Its not my job.

BTW - I have found other ways as well to make good non ch pets. I am not going to NOT MAKE PETS anymore because the leaders of this forum think it is bugged. I'll let the devs make that decision.

The primary problem, i think, is that the devs dont actually have an established process for figuring out the CL of an animal. The old system was based on a standard cl for each type of pet. all "a rancor" are cl50, all "a kaadu" are cl10. The new CL ratings appear different, but we have no guarantee that there is an automated process in place. How do I know that all female malkloc plainswalkers are cl81? What if i find one that is cl80, that maybe doesnt have as much HAM? I know I wont find one, because the new system is really the old system when it comes to the wild pets.

Our CL rating system probably wasnt tested enough, and I point the finger at Talth, cause he was telling us that the system worked. Nothing ever gets tested on TC, the whole server is full of people who just want a sneak preview of things to come.

It's not Talth's job to identify every single bug on test center. He's not getting paid enough for that kind of testing. The problem is that there aren't enough people on test center in general. But even so, how many times have we seen reported TC bugs go live? Add the holidays into the mix and we see why these bugs made it into live and also why we've had no comment on them yet. Once the holidays are over you can bet that comment will be delayed until they get their official story straight. As Tal-N pointed out, it might not be an easy fix.

Still, generally when members of a class start to shuffle their feet and get uncomfortable about a possible exploit, it's because the exploit does exist. We wanted better than wild, yes, but not the kind of pet that takes us back to the days before cl was an issue.

yes or no, did talth tell us the system worked?

yes or no, would talth have had to use the system to tell us that?

yes or no, was vehicles blowing up when they're called a reported bug on TC?

the answer to all these questions is yes. The new system has been live for less time than it was on test. In that time, I have personally identified several bugs with it. this being one of them. I havent narrowed it down as much as Tal-N has, because I dont do inbreeding very much except in the case of trying to invent NonCH pets.

With all due respect guys (and gals), none of you can speak with any authority on what is or isn't bugged. There is no documentation for you to base anything on, so it is only your opinion until someone actually in authority (and documentation) actually tells us what is and isn't "working as intended".

Sure, some stuff looks like it may (possibly) be out of whack, but until the guy that designed the system lets somebodyelse (hopefully us :/) know how the system is actually supposed to work you're ALL sprouting opinion as fact.

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meroc wrote:

With all due respect guys (and gals), none of you can speak with any authority on what is or isn't bugged. There is no documentation for you to base anything on, so it is only your opinion until someone actually in authority (and documentation) actually tells us what is and isn't "working as intended".

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I don't need a dev to tell me that CL2 5k 40%resist 300dmg pets are a bug.

I /chuckle that anyone needs to be told these are busted.

Also there was a good point which I dont think anyone has raised and i havent mentioned before except in response to a PM someone sent me today. Their point was simply that weapons like the FWG5 allowed for2 power handlers for a very long time even though it was an exploit in the system. He asked why thegenerationlizing bug or the nocious kahmurrith dna bug was unfair or even worth calling an exploit.Here was my reply:

"The answer is simple.

You didn't have 'wild' versions of the FWG5 which were as good as the normal ones but weaker than the exploited ones. Also it was impossible to use one without a cert, however with clones your getting the benefits of a CL30 pet or higher with a CL10 rating. Thats being unfair to the CHs who have worked to complete enough skill boxes to use CL30 animals.

Sure they have the same chance to use such animals but whats to prevent someone from simply not bothering with the CH profession when they won't actually see any benefits until they exceed the ability to use CL30+ animals that have superior stats to the exploit created non-ch pets.

The bugged clones are not only overpowered in a balanced sense but they utterly destroy the need for the CH profession in the process."

So the point here in my opinion is clear. Why bother being a CH and wasting skill points to have powerful pets when a non-ch is able to control something with the almost all of the stats of a critter which is CL40? sure they don't have the damage but the fact someone can own a pet with 50%+ resistances and 10k of HAM removes the need for the CH profession completely except for training purposes.

It's still only conjecture based on your opinion Sumo (and Tal, et al).

Unless you can point out some documentation or Dev response I'm unaware of?

I'm not saying your right or wrong, I'm just sayong everyone is arguing overopinion until there is evidence one way or the other.

The only real bearing CL has on anything now is whether apetis <=10, <=23, <=35 or <=70. Whether it's CL 1, 3, 5or10 is almost irrelevant. The real checks are the limits on non-ch, +1 and +2 pets.

I also feel that5k 40% resist 300dmg pets aren't really all that fantastic (but then, I'm picky with the pets I use).

Even a post nerf, aGraul has an effective kin HAM of 17k, a CL 25 Boar Wolf18k and a Gaping Spider Hunter 30k. I also don't buy the "you can't get this in the wild" arguement as I believe wild creatures were nerfed to make BE pets viable (as most CH's will happily tell you)

As an MCH I can use petsmuch better than that, but you don't need to be MCH to have one better, I have a friend that is still working up the CH tree (closer to novice than M) and I gave him a Kaadubetter than that the other day and I have an even betterGurreck I made recently.

What exactly are you asking to be nerfed/fixed?

That sub CL 10 creatures can't have 40% resists?

That sub CL 10 pets can't have 5k HAM's?

(Note: with 5k HAM and 40% resist this gives them an effective 7k HAM, whichisclose to the 2200 HAMAR1 25% Kin of the oldRock Beetle).

That they can't do 300 damage?

Or that you can't do all that on the one sub CL 10 pet?

You really think people would buy the equivalent of a Womp Ratto take on Rancors, Kryats and Dark Troopers (heck, even just stormies)?

Maybe Kel looked at it and though something like that himself (I hope so, selling Worrt and Womp Rat equivalentsjust won't cut it).

Tal snuck in before I hit Submit, my responce above was to Sumo's 5k example.

I think everyone can agree that Tal's http://www.villagephotos.com/viewpubimage.asp?id_=7311243freak pet needs looking at.

Fast is though that the CL ratings need to have a purpose, they altered the system to this one because its more accurate. In the wild you can see that resistances, ham and such are very nicely weighted but your not seeing that with the clones. Since the wild mobs are created by the devs they are the baseline for what the new CL rating system is supposed to do, yet you simply will never find a 5k+ HAM critter with 50%+ resists in the wild for CL10.

The fact a 1300 HAM pet is indeed meaningless is the whole point, pets for a non-ch aren't supposed to be anything more than a minor diversion or protection from lower end mobs.