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My Arc suddenly dropped from level 52 to 28???

  • Thread starter DeletedUser27184
  • Start date

DeletedUser

Patience and dedication?!? That is incredibly ironic. I haven't heard this much bitching and moaning in my entire life. You all should write and hand deliver a personal apology to every Inno employee after your shameful display here in the Forum. Absolutely disgusting.
 

DeletedUser13838

Let's see how you react when your GBs levels are cut in half (or worse) and the response you get from Inno is an accusation of exploiting.
 

DeletedUser23307

Haha, well when 1 level was just a few FP away that didnt mean much but sort of helped with the additional 1.

I can imagine folks are still out on snipes that came back at reduced rate.

Its a screwup now that will not meet the criteria for mass quitting by many, at the beginning of all of this that was where I was heading myself and none of my GBs were actually affected.

A promise to test things and accept feedback from beta would be nice to see.
 

DeletedUser23307

Patience and dedication?!? That is incredibly ironic. I haven't heard this much bitching and moaning in my entire life. You all should write and hand deliver a personal apology to every Inno employee after your shameful display here in the Forum. Absolutely disgusting.

Hahahaha
 

qaccy

Well-Known Member
Well done Inno for getting this resolved. Went above and beyond my expectations of what they'd do, and I was one of the more optimistic people here! 2 free levels on affected GBs is a huge cherry on top of getting everything restored, and an even bigger cherry for those folks who managed to take a GB up not only 20, but 50+ levels in the past month.
 

Opozicija

New Member
It's never 'too late' to address an imbalance in gameplay. A lot of times, imbalances don't even make themselves known until far along down the road - for example, Rail Guns were an extremely powerful unit for over a year and it took until over halfway through Arctic Future to fully realize just how powerful they were for them to be toned down a bit. On that note, Hover Tanks are now somewhat in that position and could perhaps use some tweaking to take them out of prominence as well. From a design perspective, it doesn't really make sense when military units stay relevant and effective for 2 whole ages after they've been researched. You could say that it's because Inno didn't make new units strong enough, but it's also a lot easier to tweak one extreme example than it is to tweak everything else around it to compensate.

Anyway, that got off-topic. Regardless of what the Arc is theoretically nerfed down to (and let's be honest, it's probably not going to happen), by having one you're still getting larger GB rewards. Doesn't matter if it's 90%, 50% or even 10%. That's an extra % boost you don't have without it. Just seems to be like it's pretty excessive compared to other GBs. Military GBs scale much slower per level, the Orangery and Seed Vault also have very low increases, and the Kraken is one other that reaches a high percentage but can only work x number of times per day. Imagine if Zeus (and the two others), Orangery, or the Seed Vault had a 90% effect at level 80 like the Arc does. Think that might be a little more game-changing or even unbalanced? These things would be to our benefit, but regarding balance I think those are bad moves just like I do with the Arc's current design. Some of the attitudes expressed here are another problem that's pretty closely tied to the Arc: Greed. The Arc enables so much walking all over players who don't have one or are in FP swap groups that it's not even funny, and these players revel in essentially robbing players with very little FP/FP generation of rewards in order to add even the smallest amounts to their ever-growing FP wallets.

This is where I start soapboxing, but a large part of me is advocating for an Arc nerf just to remove that potential from the game. Sniping has always been a thing even long before the Arc, but it's gotten so much worse since its introduction and this sort of thing has caused so much drama even among guildmates that something should be done about it just because of the social impact alone. It's on par with plundering to sweep the rug out from under someone else using your huge Arc bonus, in my opinion. And then to add in 'well they should have locked in their spot then' as an attempt to justify your actions really speaks to how selfish a lot of people really are.

@Lady Egwene
It's not so much that the rewards are too high, though that was also addressed by adjusting the cost to level the GB. The main problem is that people were tearing the GB down and rebuilding it multiple times in order to continually reap those higher rewards. That behavior falls pretty square within 'exploit' territory to me.

@ITown
If anything, your write-up indicates that when something's unbalanced for long enough, it inevitably gets nerfed. Also, the Arc (or more accurately, Future Era) was in the game for about 3 months before the change to GB/ranking points so it definitely wasn't introduced to make up for lost ranking points. But as I outlined in one of my replies above, sometimes it's not immediately apparent that something is ultimately too powerful and needs to be toned down. I think the Arc is another example of that and I personally hope that it's only a matter of time before it receives the rebalancing it deserves, like so many other unbalanced things before it.

I have to agree with this. Personally I am one of snipers and I am earning a lot of points. Basically if u r not active arc makes different. I would reduce his impact for 40-50%.
 

Salsuero

Well-Known Member
@Salsuerowho's going to pick the Chateau first?

I know one person who did EXACTLY that. Who? lemur is who.

Who's going to pick any GB before the Arc to take to levels well beyond 10?

Stupid question, honestly because I am friends with many people who don't even have an Arc and are doing just that. Perhaps that's out of ignorance or defiance. Who's to say. But it happens. Your strategy... my strategy... not the only two strategies in the game! Shocker, I know.

When you can look at the top GB rankings on any established server and see that well over half of all GBs at level 80+ are Arcs...that's a big red flag to me that something's wrong.

Funny. That's a big red flag to me that something's RIGHT and I need to get into that group ASAP!!! ;)

What's 'wrong' is that the Arc ends up generating so much FP (and FP is king to a large majority of late-game/advanced players), that the only correct solution is always to level it first as an enabler to level up any and all other GBs.

Again... NOT the only "correct" solution, according to all of the players who haven't/aren't doing that.

When something is that significant in a system that's supposed to provide choices, the terms 'broken' and starts to come into play.

No one took away your choice. You choose Arc parity. That's not the only choice. Stop pretending it is.

Regarding the Oracle, its original design may have had disastrous consequences, but the ironic thing is that even that was only possible because of the Arc. Starting to see the pattern here?

No pattern since this is the first time this sort of thing has been an issue.

You're trying to defend keeping it as is because it's 'your goal', but so what?

And who do you think you are to say such a thing? I'm here for me and my goals. You have no right to diminish them.

At the end of the day, you're still going to have your Arc, and if it does get nerfed it's going to affect everybody, not just you. If it's no longer worth levelling to you after this hypothetical nerf, you simply do what you would have done anyway when it got around level 80 and focus on levelling another GB instead.

No. That's your opinion. I can see you are in the minority, at least in this particular post. I would suggest you stop complaining about what you don't have and start working to make yourself a beast within a "broken" system. It's always easy to complain when you're on the bottom looking up. I'm not that kind of player. I'm the kind that looks up and says... damn I gotta get up there ASAP!
 
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Salsuero

Well-Known Member
Haha, well when 1 level was just a few FP away that didnt mean much but sort of helped with the additional 1.

I can imagine folks are still out on snipes that came back at reduced rate.

Its a screwup now that will not meet the criteria for mass quitting by many, at the beginning of all of this that was where I was heading myself and none of my GBs were actually affected.

A promise to test things and accept feedback from beta would be nice to see.

I can imagine there were folks who made out like beasts again... unfairly... because maybe they had 1 FP on it to "watch" it and nothing else... and then it got leveled with that 1 FP becoming 1st place. I'm not complaining... just wish I would've known to put 1 FP on the two GBs in my worlds that were affected by this! :p

Screen shot 2017-11-10 at 3.34.27 PM.png
 

*Arturis*

Well-Known Member
qaccy said:
What's 'wrong' is that the Arc ends up generating so much FP (and FP is king to a large majority of late-game/advanced players), that the only correct solution is always to level it first as an enabler to level up any and all other GBs.

Agree, Arc should be your first GB to get to 80, the rest is just a snowball affect:
http://prntscr.com/h8yo9c
 
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Darkbox

Active Member
@Salsuero
The thing is, I've obtained and 'worked' to level an Arc myself.... When you can look at the top GB rankings on any established server and see that well over half of all GBs at level 80+ are Arcs...

I beg to differ. If you use Forge-db as a reference, go look at the top 30 GBs for the US.
 

Salsuero

Well-Known Member
I beg to differ. If you use Forge-db as a reference, go look at the top 30 GBs for the US.

LOL -- kinda proved my point about the Château Frontenac for me. Man, what a decisive haymaker! That was awesome. I didn't realize you could look at a server overall there.
 

DeletedUser27889

I think this is one of the few if not only times they have acknowledged their mistake and actually fixed it and compensated people well for their losses. I commend their actions here. Most players affected should find themselves a touch ahead of what they lost as it should be when the company is issuing apologies. An extra level isn't a landslide but at the same time shows they know they made a mistake and it cost players.
 

DeletedUser27184

I agree with Manda. Inno fixed their major bug in 24 hours + fixed the major collateral damage they inflicted in 36 hours. I think they did great this round to fix the problems.
Note: bugs happens. If the company immediately fix it fast enough, they are fine by my standards. It would have been nice if they tried to test their software a bit more on beta, but I can live with that problem.
 

DeletedUser25920

I think this is one of the few if not only times they have acknowledged their mistake and actually fixed it and compensated people well for their losses. I commend their actions here. Most players affected should find themselves a touch ahead of what they lost as it should be when the company is issuing apologies. An extra level isn't a landslide but at the same time shows they know they made a mistake and it cost players.

But they have not acknowledged their mistake. They tried to fix it as a priority obviously, and they gave people an extra level on affected GBs. (or 2 depending how close to leveling the GB was), which is good and welcome of course ,as people should be compensated for what happened. But where in any of the announcements did you see inno acknowledging it was their mistake?

Initially it was: we were made aware the Oracle is exploitable and we fixed the problem. ('Problem'? and who created it? No acknowledgement). And in the more expanded announcement they even had the gall to say they will not suspend players for this.

Then when they realized that their 'fix' was anything but, they said that they are aware there were Great Building-related problems. (also mentioned as Great Building-related issues). Nothing about what/who caused them or whose mistake it was. And they also said thank you for your patience while we are working on this and we apologise for the inconvenience.

So yes we might be happy that they fixed the problem relatively soon and compensated people in some form. But why say that they acknowledged their mistake when they have not? Look at all the announcements. They never do. It is as if the problems appeared magically, or it is something outside their control (like the weather), and theywere just trying to solve it.
 

Salsuero

Well-Known Member
Initially it was: we were made aware the Oracle is exploitable and we fixed the problem. ('Problem'? and who created it? No acknowledgement). And in the more expanded announcement they even had the gall to say they will not suspend players for this.

Except in my opinion, the original problem that started the whole thing wasn't fixed... it was ruined. They penalized all Oracle owners instead of only the levels that were susceptible to "exploitation". I invested forge points and time to get the prints for it, plus diamonds to get the last print, and then I invested more forge points and time on my way to level 10, when they suddenly hiked up all the level prices, making it worthless to me halfway through the process. I determined its value based on a predetermined set of statistics and then they made it completely overpriced to achieve that end. When I contacted them, the best response they could give me was "sorry, you get nothing back... make a proposal in the forums... the devs look in there from time to time." So it may seem like an insignificant complaint to most players, particularly ones more advanced in eras, but this was a major issue to me. I made a proposal... it looks like no one disagrees with it... but I know nothing will come from it. Was anyone happy about the way they "fixed" their mistaken (lack of) calculation? No. But punish everyone for their mistake first, ask questions later (not like they have a beta server to test with or anything).
 

Algona

Well-Known Member
Random musings and opinions.

INNO completely blew it. But as noted, they patched things surprisingly quickly including a little compensation. Surprisingly well done. Hopefully they can redress the folk who lost out on their invested FPs. If they do so then I think this goes from being a disaster to a warning to INNO. I wonder if they will heed the warning?

Folk who put effort into leveling their Oracle and are unhappy with the fix, too stinking bad. It's a gift so that folk can have a GB at the outset. Look at it as a lesson that INNO has the habit of screwing things up then patching them in undesired ways. I'm not convinced yet that Oracle is good for the game. I think there are fast start ramifications that have not been fully developed. But I am working on abusing that. Heh.

Atc is stupidly broken. qaccy has the big picture right, misses in some details. I don't see how it can be fixed although the notion of fixing it in new worlds (someone posted that some place, not my idea) is interesting but prolly not feasible. The main reason more folk don't power level Atcs is because of not understanding Arc is THE enabler of stupid things. The main reason so many other GBs are over 80 is because Arc enabled them. DISCLAIMER. I've been durdling with Arc for over 18 months. It's stupid, it warps the game in ways that INNO never understood or as demonstrated by the current fooforaw still does not understand. Not being holier-then-thou, I'm gonna power level everything in sight.

I guess my one big hope from this week's stupidity is that INNO works on more rigorous design and testing processes.

But that hope is silly on my part. They've shown no inclination to do so despite years of easily preventable design and deployment mistakes.

But one can hope.
 

Salsuero

Well-Known Member
Folk who put effort into leveling their Oracle and are unhappy with the fix, too stinking bad. It's a gift so that folk can have a GB at the outset. Look at it as a lesson that INNO has the habit of screwing things up then patching them in undesired ways. I'm not convinced yet that Oracle is good for the game. I think there are fast start ramifications that have not been fully developed. But I am working on abusing that. Heh.

I think that's a little unfair of you. The output is minuscule and I worked hard for mine... it wasn't given to me because I'm not a new player. I felt it was worth something to me when it was released and now it's not. It would be one thing if this were just a gift during an event or something on the tech tree. It was not. It took a concerted effort to get. You may not like it, and that's totally fine... but why should I be happy to throw my hands up and say "oh well" -- no one did that when they got nerfed for something they didn't do. Not "exactly" the same thing... but no one just threw their hands up and looked at it as a lesson by Inno, now did they? I'm just saying fair is fair. You guys all worked for your high levels that got taken away. I always worked toward something that was taken away. No, not the same... but still valid.
 

Algona

Well-Known Member
I think that's a little unfair of you.

No, it's a complely and totally unfair of me. I'm trying to say that the only thing you will get out of this is the lesson that INNO's fixes to their dumb ass mistakes leave folks dissatisfied. Brutal, but if you don't learn this lesson now, INNO will ram the lesson down your throat again in a few weeks or months.

Although if you do get more then that I will be quite happy for you.

Oh, and it's not a matter of whether or not I like the Oracle. My opinion of it's worth ain't what guides me. My opinion of whether it's good for the game is what guides me, and I haven't figured out if there is something hiding under it that might be bad for the game. I loves me my Arc even though I think it's the worst mistake INNO has made in this game. Colonobuildem and Notre Lame are steaming piles of poop. But they don't hurt the game, only the players that build them. Grok?
 
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