End of the “Meow” Mix

I’m not quote sure why Rikti Comm Officer AE Farm missions were dubbed “Meow” missions (I was hoping for Cat Girls, to be honest, go fig), but Positron has decided it’s time to put his foot down on Meows and other extreme farming. Hope you already PLed your toons to 20 …

When we created Mission Architect, the goal was to have an outlet for players to craft cool stories, using our assets, that other players could play and participate in. Other players could rate those stories and the best-of-the best would rise to the top.

While we have accomplished some of those goals with the initial launch of Mission Architect, some have found ways to abuse the system we put in place.

Not surprising in the least, of course.

We are not blind to this happening, nor did we not expect it. However, it is time to take action regarding it, so please be aware that we are about to implement a zero-tolerance stance on the extreme abuse we are seeing in the system.

It would have been nice to have heard a bit of this righteous anger before now.

One thing was made clear to me when I interacted with the players on our Anniversary. It was that you guys really don’t like the powerlevelling that is going on with MA. The constant spam of MA PL teams forming, requests for “Meow” missions, 5 star badge cartels, and the inability to find quality content in the Mission Architect listing are all things I heard complaints about over and over while I was logged in on Tuesday.

And that’s a good point. The crowds of farmers make it difficult to find any mishes to play (except for Dev Choice ones), difficult to find folks to play them with — and, at times, difficult to hang out at AE without mapserving. Comments follow.

So here is a list of things that are going to happen:

  • Players that have abused the reward system egregiously may lose benefits they have gained – leading up to and perhaps including losing access to the characters power-leveled in this fashion. Hmmmm. Harsh to punish actions after the fact. “That which is not forbidden is permitted.” Set the rules and limit things going forward, fine. Data mine to figure out who’s abused this? Not so much. (And I don’t say this as someone who has much to lose).
  • Currently, some badges are being modified, and some may be removed from the game entirely. The list of changes being made to the MA badge system is not final yet, but you will be made aware when we have a concrete plan. Expect the ticket badges to require a lot more tickets to win.
  • Players who knowingly use an exploit when creating an arc, run the risk of having access to MA suspended, or worse- depending on the severity of the action, their account banned. That’s fine — if the list of known exploits is given, or at least described in sufficient detail to make it clear what to not do.
  • Players who have a story arc banned for any reason, will have it continue to use up one of their publishing slots. Players will NOT be able to unpublish this slot without Customer Service’s help. This sets up a “three strikes and you’re out” policy. If an individual gets three story arcs banned, they will no longer be able to publish since their slots will all be used up with banned arcs.This lock will not take place on the first level of “complaint banning”, where an arc has received a larger number of complaints. Players will still have a chance to fix the arc. A good punishment here, and easy to implement. And now I know, I guess, that the Report button isn’t just for dirty words or something.
    • If Customer Service looks at an arc and determines it was banned in error, they will mark it as “unbannable”. At that point the arc can not be banned for any reason. The unbannable flag will reset if the player makes any changes to the arc at that point, and the arc can be banned again. Thus avoiding “griefing.”
    • Remember, publishing slots are account wide, so players will not be able to log in another character on their account and use their slots instead.
    • Players are urged to avoid using common farming terms in their story title and/or descriptions. Even if it’s a joke, DO NOT run the risk of having an arc banned and requiring Customer Support to grant you your publishing slot back. But if I want to make a Cat Girl arc, can I include “Meow”? in the title?

So, overall, a decent approach to punishment … but I remain concerned about ex post facto punishment.

Some of you have taken the stance of “how does powerlevelling hurt the game?” and “shouldn’t I be able to play the game the way that I want?” What we want to make clear is in order to keep the game fair, balanced, and challenging, we have to maintain a risk:reward ratio. This is a ratio we’ve spent years attempting to achieve. Mission Architect is not immune to this, and we are taking swift action to see that the problems players are seeing and are being exposed to are remedied.

Fair enough. It should be indicative (reviewing some of the boards on the subject) of what some folks are looking for from the game, but PLing does have impacts both on team availability, team quality, and PvP competition. It also rankles enough non-PLers to make the game overall less attractive. So I don’t mind seeing this come in. I just wish it had been swifter and more vocal earlier since I14’s release.

13 thoughts on “End of the “Meow” Mix”

  1. Yeah, there’s a certain feeling of, “NOW you’re taking ‘swift’ action about this?” What it looks more like, and this may just be perception but that’s a large part of how people are going to react, is that Posi was in-game and people bitched to him and that’s how he came to realize what’s going on.
    Never mind the slew of board threads on the subject, no, the Anniversary event is when someone realized that Oh My God There Is A Problem.
    Other than that, I can’t add anything to the excellent commentary you’ve given above except to say that tying badges, never mind how very very many, to MA/AE activities was one of the dumbest moves they could’ve made. This is especially true in the case of getting star ratings. Talk about adding to the incentives to make purpose-built farming missions, never mind the griefing opportunities. If they made almost all of those badges go away, I wouldn’t shed one single tear.

  2. I’m not a badge collector, so I don’t understand all the obsessive behavior over them. I do enjoy coming up with badges that make suitable subtitles for my toons, but that’s usually not difficult to do.
    I note in the patch notes for today ( http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthreaded.php?Number=13428394 ), among the various other fixes:

    o All melee power sets have an additional ranged power added. Any ranged attack normally in a melee set will now be available at all levels, difficulties and ranks.

    I.e., no more custom mobs without ranged attacks that are sitting ducks for flying attackers.

    * The rewards for defeating Rikti Communications Officers in Mission Architect has been decreased to match other minion level critters. Missions using earlier versions of the Rikti Communications Officer will be invalidated, and will need to be republished.

    Bye-bye Meow. We hardly knew ye.

  3. Ah, yes, the melee-only custom critters. I knew I was forgetting something that desperately begged to be “nerfed.”

  4. Here’s the funny (and a sign of how my own brain runs). I was playing on a custom mission with an AE farm group with my Lvl 42 Blaster (just curious, y’know?). We ended up with a custom group (“Amazons”). It was only about 85% of the way through the mish (and after a near TPK) that I realized that they didn’t actually have any ranged attacks, and I could just hover over and plonk them to my heart’s content.
    I think I quit the team after that. “Ducks in a barrel” comes to mind. (See also, broadcasts for “AE Farm Flyer Team LFM PST” …)

  5. I actually designed some melee only mobs for one of my custom groups, but they’re paired with baddies that have anti-fly powers, AND I run them in tunnels, soooo. . . .

  6. As far as I’m concerned, ex post facto is for the real world. In a game, devs can (and probably should) be dictators who rule with an iron fist (even if that fist is in a velvet glove).

  7. I would argue that if it is not Forbidden (technically or statutorily blocked) it is Permitted. It may be sleazy or anti-social or even harmful — but until it’s noted by the authorities as a crime, it’s legal (whether or not it’s moral or ethical).
    I have no problem with the Devs putting the hammer down. I have a problem with their putting it down retroactively.

  8. I could only see putting the hammer down retroactively if the actions that were being banned actively harmed other users. And farming doesn’t ‘harm’ other users, it’s simply exploitive and annoying.

  9. Hah! I called this part, at least: “I know a lot of you want to know an exact definition to see if you were actually abusing the system, or just playing the game, but I don’t want to be set up in a situation where our definition of abuse is abused. For example, if we say that the definition is “you gained 4 levels in under 30 minutes”, then someone will make sure that they gain 4 levels in 31 minutes, so they can claim they were within the allowed limits and not abusing.”
    From a Posi post to the currently-down forums, reposted to the LJ comm.

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