This is the primary issue- the ability to fucking use furies without consequences. And it wasn't just reported today. Being able to get them to attack via bump or that they may or may not be over powered is secondary.

So shove your little attitude Inc. I don't give enough of a fuck about this game to care.

Issue:3149 Use of bots to kill without reprecussions 2015-09-11 12:41:52
I am extremely pissed that this is still allowed. I am not going to say what I want to say except that is bull shit that this is still possible without repercussions to the owner.

[09/09/15 20:47:18] You are entering Dau O-6
[SKV]Bojan: Out of range.
Bojan Is potentially Hostile and on the TGFT watch list because of their guild:SKV
*[SKV]Bojan: IDF Valkyrie Vigilant - 100% health 951m away :: I:Admire S:Kill on Sight U:Respect L:Respect
[09/09/15 20:47:27] <Captain Fluffy> o/
[09/09/15 20:47:28] (guild) [Verasi L-15] <LiquidLucidity88> we can work on it for a little if your ok with that fluff! i do appriciate it!
[09/09/15 20:47:34] (guild) [Dau O-6] <Captain Fluffy> bojan here
[09/09/15 20:47:39] (guild) [Verasi L-15] <LiquidLucidity88> just wanna be able to defend myself
[09/09/15 20:47:43] <Captain Fluffy> lol
[09/09/15 20:47:44] You were attacked by Bojan. You are now free to defend yourself without factional repercussions for 15 minutes from the most recent hit of either party or until your attacker dies.
[09/09/15 20:47:46] *Valent A-3 Assault DR-0565w destroyed Captain Fluffy
[SKV]Bojan: Left the sector.
[09/09/15 20:47:49] You are entering Dau L-10

raybondo 2015-09-10 15:56:48
Hi Death Fluffy.

We are aware of this issue and are working on a solution.
Sorry for the delay in getting a solution out.

- Raybondo
Death Fluffy 2015-09-10 16:39:03
Thanks Ray. I was responding to a new player in my guild who was complaining about being harassed at Dau L10. I don't mind the death, that was my own fault for not being fully aware of everything in the sector. I am deeply concerned about this strategy being used against new players.

Also, on a side note, but related, months back, my trident was attacked in the same manner at Verasi C4. When I defended my trident, I was given temp KOS and attacked by the strike force. I'm not sure if this would still be the case with the changes that have been made since or if it is just the price of being in the nfz. Just thought I'd mention it as something to consider in your solution.
raybondo 2015-09-10 17:13:06
Ah, that's the price of being in the NFZ.

- Raybondo
Death Fluffy 2015-09-11 12:41:35
That's what I figured. The rules should applie to the pet bots and their owner as well though imo.
raybondo 2015-09-11 12:43:38
Yeah, it should. That's what we're working on.

I already posted a link to this old thread today where you can see I agreed and supported your suggestion to make the owner of the furies responsible for their actions. This was in April 2015.

Stygian Furie implementation is flawed

P.S.
From the example you provided in your ticket it is clear that I shot you first and my furie scored a kill when you shot back.
I would have been perfectly fine with losing my UIT standing for attacking you in Dau.

DF: I searched the tickets for "Furie" and "Fury" and none of those came up. I don't recollect this ticket. Apparently Ray dropped it, and I am sorry for that. Something probably exploded right after that, we were still moving the server/billing systems. So, I can't say as I'm super surprised.

Your ticket itself is a little.. opaque. But apparently Ray figured it out with the log data.

It should have been also posted to Bugs, which was my main point. General problems can be commented on by others and bumped in Bugs. Tickets are assigned once, and only the original submitter can do anything.

It's unfortunate that you're so angry about this, but this was never (and is not) a "trivial fix". My immediate reaction would have been just removing furies entirely, which I am now considering. Ray was accurate in saying we're working on something, it's the same reason why Tridents have no remote "attack" command, because of the lack of factional ramification. But the mechanics of this aren't necessarily simple to change.

Bojan, I referenced your thread in my post, although I didn't link to it. Ie: "There were some notes about aggro concerns buried in some older Suggestions threads, but nothing to really imply "hey! this is a big deal!". For instance, while some of the issues are mentioned on there, it's not really what the thread was even about.

You should definitely remove furies since it's quite apparent that some people in this game aim to continue exploiting the faction penalty avoidance they provide.

We have on record that it is not intended to work that way (from Ray), and that it is a concern (from Incarnate). We have on record repeated proliferation of this exploit. If you aren't going to "weed through logs" to determine who did what, you should just remove them until you can figure out a fix.

My 2 cents.

We'll see what we can do to pull them immediately.

Again, fwiw, I did not know this was an issue that was actually creating a problem for users (in practice) until a few hours ago.

thanks Incarnate. The "Hire A Squadron" orion mission can be used in similar ways. However I think I recall getting a faction penalty for the bots kills in an NFZ. If anyone else can confirm this great, otherwise I can do some research. Just wanted to put it on your radar.

Ray has now pulled furie-launching missions from LAR project, and "Hire a Squadron" missions, etc.

If there's some additional furie-acquisition vector we've overlooked, please let us know.

Thanks incarnate. With the ongoing drama at the time and following something you had said regarding another issue that was being exploited for rp, I followed your direction that that specific issue should have been reported through the support system. I did this because I felt that this was a similar type of exploit problem.

I appreciate that you de-escalated this thread. The last thing I want to do is cause you guys grief. It was not the issue of the Furies that I was angry about. It was the handling of Boa's thread as 'low enough to lock it' and the assertion that the issue had not been raised before today.

While I appreciate that you have removed the furie and squadron bots, that has never been my goal and I hope that when you guys have time to sort out the issue that they will be returned to the game.

I would suggest making NPCs the target of strike force repercussions is the better fix, as it would address a lot of use cases where a player is attacked by NPCs but cannot defend themselves and there is no strike force response to the aggression.

Just my 2 cents.

Of course if TGFT had been using this unethical exploit someome would be getting their stats reset and muted. But since the exploit is just being used by the ethically pure SKV it is just going to be fixed without repercussions.

Really Inc, it takes a lot to get me seriously pissed off. I have spent years trying to be balanced and supportive, but the whole game has taken a serious nose dive in the last year. I do appreciate that your interest is in creating a game, but having created it you cannot ignore what is happening within it.

Historically I know that you have left the game to self police and concentrated on development and just keeping the whole thing running. That was fine with a small playerbase, but if the game is going to expand then full time admin of what is actually happening in the game will become essential. You give people a sandbox and a set of coding tools, then look surprised when they actually use them to their own advantage? You even look more surprised when you discover that is what folk are doing in ways you never imagined.

So, why are they doing it?

Simple, there is sod all else to do. The vets have subbed for years, most are at an utter endgame. We have more cash and resources than we can ever use. Our levels have become meaningless numbers, our stats are the same. So, the only things left to do are pushing the game envelope with whatever tools you choose to give us.

I know some will say there is always PVP. True but as those vets age they reach an impasse; we get to the point where we can identify an alt by the way they move, we know who we can out twitch and who will just be faster than us. In short , even PVP has become stale, and that is really the only thing VO has going for it in comparison to other games available.

The result of this boredom is that people become aggressive, after all the game is called vendetta. With nothing else to do they start fights and animosities which escalate dragging in the devs, who quite clearly wish they didn't have to get involved. All of which takes time away from development and exacerbates the whole situation.

I know the usual suspects will instantly flame what I have said, years in here have made me used to that. But I do play regularly and observe trends. The situation will only get worse unless serious long term objectives are introduced to the game. The situation at present is a self destructive downward spiral, I hope it can be reversed.

Well said davejohn.

@davejohn

This begs the question: why don't you just go away on a haitus? If VO is boring you to death, why be stuck in this state? There are other good options now if you like a space mmo type of game. I've been enjoying elite dangerous, for one.

Inc has already explained multiple times recently where the development is at and what's coming soon in 1.9. News flash: he doesn't give a flying fuck about you and he isn't changing his plans for one whiny long-time vet.

I wouldn't say that Inc doesn't care, but I will agree that he's pretty well covered all of this with his last few posts. He's been very responsive and as demonstrated considerable patience in the face of repeated emotional and hyperbolic posts.

Now that Inc has listened, responded, acted, and explained, can we let him get back to work for us?

1) I am overwhelmed with the issue I'm already trying to administratively backtrack and address, and I need to stop doing that soon and get back to my regular job, or it's going to be a much bigger problem than all of this. I just can't add more administrative stuff right now.

2) I am and have been enforcing the issue equally across all players, since I'm just looking at historical log data and not basing anything on support tickets. I really, really, do not care about guild affiliation (seriously?). But it still takes awhile to crank through huge logs, and people who did stuff more recently.. get handled more quickly. Hooray for them. We couldn't handle this all-at-once, it just would not have worked for a variety of reasons.

3) I know people get bored with existing content, and start doing whatever. And yes, I'm obviously trying to build newer, longer-term content, even if it's obviously getting delayed. Like whistler says, already answered.

4) Yes, this is cyclical. As in probably 8-10 times or so, over the years, with people getting grumpy, me getting grumpy, and our eventually weathering the situation and moving forward. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather people were NOT unhappy, by far, hence #3 above; but I'm not concerned about a self-destructive downward spiral. At all.

But it is also noteworthy that every time this happens, there is someone to play the doomsayer, claiming that this time the End is Surely Nigh.

5) I actually do care what people think, quite a bit (vets in particular). But, to be clear, we are committed to our current path, with well over a year invested in the current trajectory. I think it'll be pretty great, as things start to come to fruition a bit more, and it sucks how the server thing was basically a case of "surprise! there goes 4 months of your schedule!". I would have scheduled differently had I known about that in advance. But, we are committed to the current path. So, the important thing is just.. moving forward and hopefully players finding some small sense of optimism.

Otherwise, if people need to move on, or take a break, or whatever, I totally understand. But we're moving ahead, and I'm actually really excited about it, even if I get grumpy when we're having a situational off-week.

6) Let's bring this back around to something more useful, hey? Like, I dunno, any further feedback on the furie issue?

I don't want to turn this thread into a flame war or usual RP bickering but this warrants correction:

Of course if TGFT had been using this unethical exploit someome would be getting their stats reset and muted. But since the exploit is just being used by the ethically pure SKV it is just going to be fixed without repercussions.

Furies are part of a regular VO sanctioned mission tree listed under missions in your PDA. LAR project is a regular mission available to any player who completes the mission tree.
A great number of players have completed that mission tree, built furies and have been using them on a regular basis. Some are using them just to show off, some are using them for killing queens, hive bots, npc, some are using them for protection and some are using them for attacks on players.
I have seen some TGFT players using furies for all of the above too.

LAR project missions are still regular VO missions and cannot be considered unethical exploit.

The right course of action would have been to point at this mission problems and request a fix.
It's something that has been attempted in this thread: Stygian Furie implementation is flawed

Because of the drama created now, Incarnate has removed those missions from VO.
Players who invested time and effort in doing the mission tree and building furies won't be happy about it but in the short term this solves the problem.

As for further feedback on furies mission - I will repeat what has been said in that old suggestion thread:

1. Make the player responsible for all furies action (NFZ penalty, faction standing repercussions, the works)

2. Restructure the furies commands so players can actually designate target and order them to attack

3. Make furies able to defend themselves against hive bots, npcs and players who attack them

4. Solve the problem of furies not turboing and getting lost in storms

How come yodaofborg gets denied when trying to reply to this thread? I didn't use any furies ever...

Damn. Furies was actually a cool manufacturing mission that gave you something usefuln that didn't take months to make. Even new players could make these to help them. Was this really being abused so badly that you had to remove good content in a game that is lacking much content

Bojan: stop.

Greenwall: you stop.

I agree with most of what Ecka has said but I don't see the point in making more end game content for a few tired vets. The game needs more players. We're tired of each other mostly, so look for ways to burn up some time. (Like blowing up our own tridents in Artana Aquilis!lol) To me the path of success for VO should be focused on new player retention not us few die-hards.

Thanks for all that you do Inc and Ray.