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Thread: Why not to reset to 0 prestiege - some reasonable arguments

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  1. #1

    Default Why not to reset to 0 prestiege - some reasonable arguments

    Ok. There are lots of people crying over their lost prestige. Some of them used the exploit deliberately, some accidentally. Regardless, I think prestige should be reset to the pre-exploit level, rather than to 0. Here's why:

    1) In every game ever made, the best players are the ones who figure out the fastest way to advance. Some people figured out that horseback riding could actually hurt you in some attacks. Does that mean everyone with HBR level 7 should have their research reset? Some people figured out that they could attack NPCs over and over again to get lots of medals. Should they have their medals reset? Some figured out that they can have 21 barracks per city. Should they have their troops reset? And plenty of people have found ways to gain prestige faster. This was not the only way.

    2) This will seriously unbalance the game. Some of the strongest players suddenly look like the weakest players. This means that they will be attacked, and that the attackers will lose a lot of resources. A lot of those attackers will be low-prestige players who think they've finally found a reasonable person to attack. So this change hurts the weak players most.

    3) The exploit had a cost. Players spent a lot of resources on those hundreds of thousands of warrior suicide squads.

    4) Not everyone saw it as an exploit. People like to advance in games. If they find a way to do it faster, they'll do it. They're not trying to break the game or make things less fun for other players. They just want to play the game as they think it's meant to be played.

    Now I do think prestige should be brought back to reasonable levels. No one should have two million prestige without earning it. But resetting it to zero will just make a mess of the game, and get some of the most powerful players (who are often the ones who pay the most) to quit.

    If you're able to identify players who rose too quickly, that means you can identify how much prestige they gained. Just use that as an adjustment and you'll do a lot less harm to this game.
    Last edited by zioth; 06-22-2009 at 01:41 PM.

  2. #2

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    Well said.

  3. #3
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    I like that it was declared an exploit and punished after the fact, rather than just fixing it.
    ~Success without the possibility of failure is meaningless.~

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  4. #4

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    It was fixed, which I'm happy for. I just think that this punishment for the "crime" of annoying the developers is a little extreme.

  5. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by zioth View Post

    2) This will seriously unbalance the game. Some of the strongest players suddenly look like the weakest players. This means that they will be attacked, and that the attackers will lose a lot of resources. A lot of those attackers will be low-prestige players who think they've finally found a reasonable person to attack. So this change hurts the weak players most.
    I agree with this one only. I think that this will cause weak players to attack these newly 0 prestige players. Perhaps you can somehow put an identifier on them.

  6. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by Abaddon View Post
    I agree with this one only. I think that this will cause weak players to attack these newly 0 prestige players. Perhaps you can somehow put an identifier on them.
    Do people really march their troops in attacks based on another players "prestige" number instead of scouting first? wow. That's cool to know.

  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kefa View Post
    Do people really march their troops in attacks based on another players "prestige" number instead of scouting first? wow. That's cool to know.
    Inexperienced players do, which are the people I'm concerned about. This game is hard enough for new players without giving them ways to lose those 2000 archers that took them a week to train.

  8. #8

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    @above
    Lol that will make us some kind of VIP or something
    to have 0 prestige with an identifier...cool..
    Last edited by RyomaEchizen; 06-22-2009 at 01:44 PM.

  9. #9
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    I'd go one step further, and say that there is no reason to even reset prestige at all. If you can do something within the rules of the game (which for a computer games, means by manually using the intended client) then it is by definition not cheating.

    Insinuating that people who optimized their prestige growth are "cheaters" is both offensive and inane. The goal of this game is to optimize. You optimize resource production, army production, hero strengths, reach, alliance size, etc. Why should optimizing prestige be any different?

    The fault of the fact that some people discovered a quick way to get prestige is actually the fault of the developers. They built a game with a flaw. Calling it an "exploit" or "cheating" is simply a weak way of obviating their own responsibility for building a flawed system.

    I had well over 1M prestige before I learned of the 2k-warrior-on-level-10-NPC technique, and when I discovered it I tested it a bunch of times, then calculated that I could get about 5.7M prestige per day. Since there was nothing left for me to do in the game I though that taking down the long time prestige hunters on my server was a worthy goal. Instead they changed the rules.

    That's ok. They did the same thing to everyone. The guys on my server who got to 2M prestige by hunting got there fair and square, because they learned more about the game, and did it faster than I did. Good for them.

    That's exactly what you're supposed to do in an optimization game, optimize.

    Taking away their prestige, and that of those of us who tried to compete with them, is simply poor sportsmanship.

    Congress wanted to do the same thing to the CEOs and other executives of the TARP banks who took huge bonuses after receiving government money. The House of Representatives even passed a bill trying to tax those bonuses away. Then the Senate (and many Congressmen in hindsight) realized that despite the fact that it felt like people were "taking advantage" or "being unfair" or "exploiting the system" the realized that the contracts they had set up with these companies did not prohibit their bonuses. And despite the fact that they didn't like it, they realized that the executives were playing within the rules. They rescinded their witch-hunt, and just changed the rules going forward.

    They realized that changing the rules of a game retroactively, that calling something "cheating" after the fact, is wrong. Its unfair. Its un-American. Its unjust.



    You want to punish people for finding the problems in your system? Fine. Nerf the prestige. BUT HOW DARE YOU CALL US CHEATERS? You have no right.


    Capriciously changing the rules and specifically targeting behaviors which had been within legitimate boundaries of the game, well, now that...that is cheating. Shame on you.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by WisdomSeeker View Post
    I'd go one step further, and say that there is no reason to even reset prestige at all. If you can do something within the rules of the game (which for a computer games, means by manually using the intended client) then it is by definition not cheating.
    An exploit is not a cheat. Cheat is used by third party software in most cases. An exploit is an abuse of the game mechanics. And yes, most exploits are because it is a mistake created by the developers. For example: in WOW there was an exploit to kill on the bosses in the Naxxramas dungeon by having everyone stand in a spot in the corner to avoid the floor flaming upwards, where the developers intended everyone to do a dance across the floor. This is an exploit. It is up to the player to use common sense and avoid this.

    Insinuating that people who optimized their prestige growth are "cheaters" is both offensive and inane. The goal of this game is to optimize. You optimize resource production, army production, hero strengths, reach, alliance size, etc. Why should optimizing prestige be any different?
    Prestige is supposed to work as a number that qualifies how developed a player is. It is a flaw for the developer to have allowed a warrior army to suicide and give prestige gains. It is up to the player to know that, and not drive it to astronomical numbers, ruining it for other players.

    The fault of the fact that some people discovered a quick way to get prestige is actually the fault of the developers. They built a game with a flaw. Calling it an "exploit" or "cheating" is simply a weak way of obviating their own responsibility for building a flawed system.
    Yep its a developer flaw. That is where an exploit comes from. Now players use that flaw over-and-over to gain astronomical amounts of prestige. That is abusing the flaw. Hence that = exploit.

    I had well over 1M prestige before I learned of the 2k-warrior-on-level-10-NPC technique, and when I discovered it I tested it a bunch of times, then calculated that I could get about 5.7M prestige per day. Since there was nothing left for me to do in the game I though that taking down the long time prestige hunters on my server was a worthy goal. Instead they changed the rules.

    That's ok. They did the same thing to everyone. The guys on my server who got to 2M prestige by hunting got there fair and square, because they learned more about the game, and did it faster than I did. Good for them.

    That's exactly what you're supposed to do in an optimization game, optimize.

    Taking away their prestige, and that of those of us who tried to compete with them, is simply poor sportsmanship.
    Poor sportsmanship is the ones who used a system to pump up that number by exploiting. While those punished got a one time reset to 0, those that have struggled to stay on top with prestige without exploiting have sufferred in gameplay for months.

    Congress wanted to do the same thing to the CEOs and other executives of the TARP banks who took huge bonuses after receiving government money. The House of Representatives even passed a bill trying to tax those bonuses away. Then the Senate (and many Congressmen in hindsight) realized that despite the fact that it felt like people were "taking advantage" or "being unfair" or "exploiting the system" the realized that the contracts they had set up with these companies did not prohibit their bonuses. And despite the fact that they didn't like it, they realized that the executives were playing within the rules. They rescinded their witch-hunt, and just changed the rules going forward.

    They realized that changing the rules of a game retroactively, that calling something "cheating" after the fact, is wrong. Its unfair. Its un-American. Its unjust.
    This is moot. Anytime you take a RL circumstance and try to plug it into a browser game's rules, I simply ignore all of it. Apples and Oranges.


    You want to punish people for finding the problems in your system? Fine. Nerf the prestige. BUT HOW DARE YOU CALL US CHEATERS? You have no right.
    Read the terms of service. You are playing their game. They set the rules and you follow them.

    Capriciously changing the rules and specifically targeting behaviors which had been within legitimate boundaries of the game, well, now that...that is cheating. Shame on you.
    I hope that you don't bring up the 2 step threat:
    1) I'm a paying customer and I won't pay anymore.
    2) I quit.

    because

    1) You'll get replaced by 2 paying customers.
    2) You'll be replaced by 5 new players.

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