To all legit players

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Zakaluka wrote:

It's fine, there's a lot of nerves wrapped up in this topic. The reason the quant thing doesn't particularly apply in this context: we're talking about fairness in races here.

I don't particularly care if people boost or load in hardcore/default. But when shop prizes are on the line for these races, though, XP is the winning ticket. Take away the XP benefit, and I doubt you'd see boosters in short leagues.

Having participated in this week's race, I strongly disagree that, minus the exp benefit, people wouldn't "boost" in races.

I played my ice witch into the mid-40s solo, and my progress was heavily stunted by incredibly poor loot. Most rare mobs I killed dropped no rare items, and plenty dropped no magic items, either. I was looting and selling un-ID'd magic items most of the way through my 30s due to a poor supply of wisdom scrolls, and often skipped portals to town, pushing forward to the next WP just to save the scant few of those I had as well. Even stopping at points like Ledge and Fellshrine to farm didn't alleviate the problem. It wasn't until a particularly generous fellow witch gave me some nice MF items that things started to turn around, and I was finally capable of making some general gear improvements, which lead to finding even better drops eventually. Partnering up in my late 40s also alleviated the problem to a decent degree as well.

I had seen this OP last night with no replies, then later while playing saw people discussing the issue in global. Getting killed last night at level 56 after getting trapped at a doorway in the church by my aforementioned partner (honestly, a relief), I decided to see what the fuss was about. I re-rolled with a new alt, and burned my spare key to make a dummy account/char to set up in each instance as I went. Night and day difference in the start of the new character. Nevermind the faster leveling speed; I'm dropping rares and magic items off random white mobs, forget about the loot pinatas that are rare mobs. My gear is already decent, and promises to improve at a far, far greater rate as most of it currently has MF and in this game, MF gear begets more good gear.

The point is, even if there were no EXP benefit, you'd have to be a fool not to at least take advantage of using alts as "boosters" when you need to stop and farm to improve gear, or grind to a safer level before tackling a major quest. As long as that is the case, the races will definitely see this exploited to a still-significant benefit (maybe not so much in the 3hr races, but definitely the week-long ones). Had I been using such a thing on my run this week, I'm sure my progress would've been far faster, and my gear much more impressive than it ended up being which might just have meant that I'd have lived rather than died.

Oh, and long-term impact of what is now going to be a widely known exploit is that the economy is going to head straight down the toilet, especially in default league. All the folks who've been using this to their advantage can expect a steep and unappealing up-hill climb to push new players away once initiated, and their massive currency advantage disappear as their formerly dominated market gets flooded. No wonder people have been so easily able to afford throwing piles of GCP at select items when they appear.

Ah. Gotcha.

What do you mean "not count the same"? zeto

Also agree with TehHammer, there's no reason or purpose for a low lvl player (be personal alt, or a friend) to be in maps other than boosting.


I still would like to see a /player x system be put in place though.

To the post above mine, who posted right before I did. I have been wondering where all these people get massive amount of loot from. There are several non loading options available, but besides races, I never was able to see how someone could say 100+ GCPs for items.

I play A LOT, and never had anywhere near that amount. Even if I saved night and day.

Further, I also will admit to finally testing this out. Did it today. Took about 3 hours (with breaks) to get toon into map territory (in default league). The difference is quite honestly night and day as described above. The amount of extra rares is SUBSTANTIAL Couldn't fathom the difference in drops by having 2-3+.

@Koaxx, I feel some of your frustration directed here, at me. That's disappointing but not really unforseen. You have a point, but I still believe the time lost with no XP benefit would be too substantial to pull a ranked finish.

I may be wrong. Either way, a mod asked us to steer away from quant for now. Maybe he'll change his mind but for now let's try to keep things civil and follow the new rules.

I'm sure there are people out there who would be very happy to see this thread locked. Understand what public exposure does to a problem like this, in a community where the game developers actually take fairly swift action. I don't need to be popular here.

It's difficult to say this next bit with some empathy, because I don't understand any notion of lasting value in the current game economy. The amount of time it'll make a difference is pretty tiny - until december? If the economy is devaluing, would you like the reason to be kept a secret, or would you want to understand why?

Why couldnt both the xp and quantity bonus be applied for in range during races at least?

EDIT: I do think the in range suggestion is best btw, however one could just kite all enemies within range of a tanked alt couldn't they? On the topic of pubic notice about this thread, this is why I sent Rory an email over 3 months ago about it. I didn't want it brought up in public threads.

Edit 2: although I would still prefer a /player x, this way everyone could figure out risk/ reward for themselves.

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Zakaluka wrote:

@Koaxx, I feel some of your frustration directed here, at me. That's disappointing but not really unforseen. You have a point, but I still believe the time lost with no XP benefit would be too substantial to pull a ranked finish.

Honestly, no frustration was intended to be directed towards you. I'd intended to make a post in this thread either way, but the bit I quoted in my prior reply was the catalyst for it.

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I may be wrong. Either way, a mod asked us to steer away from quant for now. Maybe he'll change his mind but for now let's try to keep things civil and follow the new rules.

Having skimmed some of the earlier replies, maybe I missed that a mod had asked the quant bit be left un-discussed. Also, I didn't feel I was being anything but civil. I worded my post in a serious way, but I suppose that in print it could seem angry to someone. It wasn't my intention.

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I'm sure there are people out there who would be very happy to see this thread locked. Understand what public exposure does to a problem like this, in a community where the game developers actually take fairly swift action. I don't need to be popular here.

I do understand what it does to a problem like this. I'm actually hoping for a swift resolution, in fact. My initial reaction last night was, honestly, "WTF. Why don't they bar any leaders found using this exploit from potential race rewards??" Also, if anything, I respect your bringing this forward.

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It's difficult to say this next bit with some empathy, because I don't understand any notion of lasting value in the current game economy. The amount of time it'll make a difference is pretty tiny - until december? If the economy is devaluing, would you like the reason to be kept a secret, or would you want to understand why?

The notion of "lasting value in the current game economy" comes from the knowledge that plenty people already playing and pouring many hours into this game probably realize; this IS when they're playing, and they may well be done or burnt out before this thing hits a wipe/open beta/release. That gives the current econ just as much value as one that will persist indefinitely to those who are currently playing. That doesn't mean those very same players may not return after breaks (many folks I've known would still play D2 off and on through the years), but for now, it still counts to many I'm sure. And yes, I'm happier to know of what I already had suspicions.

All that said, my earlier reply was merely an anecdote to frame a portion of my feelings about this situation given that I felt the EXP side was already being addressed with the other part being put to the back-burner as if to be a non-issue.

alright, great! Thanks for the clarification.

I also notice people starting to throw around 100s of gcps like they are raindrops. GCP is inflation happening now, I feel it's value as a currency is dropping quickly. The next most valuable currency will be 6L items.

The longer it is from a wipe, the less value a GCP will have. You only have so many skills to put GCP on and unless you're constantly re-rolling, you're going to find quality skills to replace your non-quality skills and eventually GCP don't help you.

I personally almost never use GCP, they're almost exclusively used as currency. I've never gotten close to 100 gcp, my peak was in the 40s, but I turned most of them into divine's for an item with godly mods but meh rolls on those mods.

That said, so much of the currency is hit or miss, a chaos *might* improve an item, but it might not. An Exalted might give you a helpful mod, it might not, etc. A GCP, when used, *always* improves the gem (and yes, some gems don't see an improvement on every gcp used, but in the end it is closer to a noticeable improvement).

After some thought, I think I like a mix of kolton's and zeto's suggestions best. To restate the two:

From Kolton:
-Keep the XP sharing range how it is now. Players within about the radius of the minimap share XP with each other.
-Alter the XP and quant bonuses so that they don't apply to the whole instance anymore, but go on a sliding scale for each kill.
-When a kill happens, it only gains the XP and quant bonuses for players in range, who XP and drops will share with anyway.
-Map splitting also goes away with this fix, a plus.

From Zeto:
-Both the XP and quant bonuses from any given player scale down proportional to lower player level divided by highest player level. This way a level 1 character contributes almost nothing to the bonuses. Leave a generous range at 100% bonus, like 15 levels. I think it'd be fair for a level 78 to actually be helping a level 63, don't you? Don't want to interfere with that kind of thing.

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Under this system, you'd eventually still see people boosting but they'd be forced to use an actual cheat to do so, and the only benefit would be quant. To pull it off in this set of rules you'd need a multi-loader with at least a follower bot.

Basically, people doing this would be bannable. And it'd be extremely prohibitive to pull off, at least until your main became godly. Also not impossible for the server to profile (detect).

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Other solutions all have worse problems.

- Players n has two huge drawbacks: 2-player partying, and eco inflation. There's simply no reason to ever run a group with more than 2 players. PoE becomes a 2-player or solo game. Some of you may already do this almost exclusively, but I like my 4-man groups. As to inflation, you will spend fewer orbs rolling maps and acquire more of them. Can't nerf recipes to account for boxing, because normal soloing at a low players= setting still has to actually work.

- Making XP share instance wide invites some other undesirable behaviors.

- Level gating, by my own admission, is a bad solution. It's at best a minor deterrent. People will just level around the restrictions and do what they want to anyway.