Bone Chip Madness In Recent Days

[Maevenniia]

You did the right thing, time to re-evaluate those "friendships" I think.

[Abazagaroth]

There is nothing special about that kaladim thing other than ease of procuring bone chips.

Devs have been made aware of the issue as of the day after TSS went live.

There is ZERO way to stop it without a major revamp of how experience splits, and apparently the devs are unwilling to just bring down the servers until they can patch it.

Its too late for rollbacks, don't expect that to happen. I expect they'll either get off their buts and fix it, or they will start despawning NPCs left and right as people move on to other things, until they get off their buts and fix it.

If they would have taken concerns seriously that were generated in beta about the splitting of experience rather than just poo-pooing the concerns that were clearly expressed (as well as showing that they don't even understand how experience splits in the first darn place, as the devs actually thought that if you grouped a 70 and a, say 46, if a mob was green to the 70 the 46 received no experience /boggle) this would have never happened.

[Strokker]

There is nothing special about that kaladim thing other than ease of procuring bone chips.

Devs have been made aware of the issue as of the day after TSS went live.

There is ZERO way to stop it without a major revamp of how experience splits, and apparently the devs are unwilling to just bring down the servers until they can patch it.

Its too late for rollbacks, don't expect that to happen. I expect they'll either get off their buts and fix it, or they will start despawning NPCs left and right as people move on to other things, until they get off their buts and fix it.

If they would have taken concerns seriously that were generated in beta about the splitting of experience rather than just poo-pooing the concerns that were clearly expressed (as well as showing that they don't even understand how experience splits in the first darn place, as the devs actually thought that if you grouped a 70 and a, say 46, if a mob was green to the 70 the 46 received no experience /boggle) this would have never happened.

Not so sure about this experience split is a bit complicated but Rashere explains it in this link http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/...300928#M300928
and I quote:




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Prex_Atlane wrote:




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Rashere wrote:




Normal XP hasn't changed one whit. It still works exactly like it has for years now. The only changes were to AA XP and the current disparity between how AA XP is split up in a group situation and how normal XP is split up in a group will be fixed with tonight's patch.
Rashere



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Quick question.

A level 68 and a 75 are duoing, both on 100% aa xp. They kill a level 69 mob. (For sake of argument assume that the 68 gets 35% of the xp and 75 gets 65% of the xp due to level difference. I don't know the real ratios).

Does this mean

a) The 68 gets 35% of a "Level + 1" mob, and the 75 gets 65% of a "Level - 6" (ie each person gets xp based on mob lvl vs their own)

b) The 68 gets 35% of a "Level - 6" mob, and the 75 gets 65% of a "Level - 6" mob (ie each person gets xp based on mob lvl vs highest in group)

c) The 68 gets 50% of a "Level - 6" mob, and the 75 gets 50% of a "Level - 6" mob (ie each person gets xp based on mob lvl vs highest in group, But the xp is split evenly)



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This gets a bit complicated. The XP split is the key to the whole thing so its important to know the exact split here and it's not 35/65. The NPC is within the 5 level range of the level 68 giving him a bonus to experience, but its not within that range of the level 75.

The easiest way to look at this if from the standpoint of the NPC's base experience. Every NPC is worth a certain, set amount of base experience based on the NPCs level. In this particular case, when the NPC dies, the level 75 gets 71% of that experience. Due to the bonuses the level 68 gets for the NPC being one level higher than him, though, the level 68 gets 177% of the NPCs base experience. We now use this information to determine how to split up AA XP.

The base amount of AA XP that each person gets is based on the con of the creature to the highest level in the group and then is split up based on how the normal experience was split. It works very similar to how normal experience does. The level 75 gets 71% of the base AA experience for the kill and the level 68 gets 177% of the base AA experience for the kill.

Rashere
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This made my eyes water a bit but it does seem to work I took my 50 mage out tonight with my 68 Shammy and was getting experience like mad. So if there is an exploit here I dont think it would involve the Xp split. I would not have the slightest idea what it is nor would I want to know.

I do note that this example does denote AA experience and a duo of 75 and 68 level toons but from my experience It filters down< Yes I do at times work on leveling my mage...ding 51 tonight.../grin>.

[Rawckett]

This the reason for the "Emergency Patch"

[Zacatac]

I believe this was fixed in the emergency patch, so the run on bone chips is over for now.

I'm sure they will go find people who suddenly got 100s of AAs in the last few weeks and have a talk with them.

[Diani]

aah well...selling bonechips for 25pp each couldnt last I guess...back to selling normal stuff

/run away with the money

[GrimwoodCT]

The Rollback Seems To Be Imminent

Its too late for rollbacks, don't expect that to happen.

From EQ Forums:

http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/...sage.id=314249

[Shadrok]

Heroes: Grimwood and tnexus

You guys are heroes.

Those that exploited this knew they were cheating. They deserve more than a simple loss of the cheated AAs. They ruin the game for the rest of us.

Thank you.

[Ddemons Ddemise]

Now that its been removed, is it safe to ask..
Why bone chips? :P

I know it was an AA exploit, but.. How exactly do bonechips go AA exploit? lol

[Diani]

There was a big mistake in the calculation of AA xp when people of different lvl were grouped. If a lvl 1 did a quest hand in that would yield some xp as well then this would result for a lvl 70-75 in huge amounts of AA xp (reports vary from 40% AAxp when handing in bonechips to 73 AAs when completing Jboots). Bone chips were used in several of such quests and easily available hence the rush on bone chips.

[Ddemons Ddemise]

i see.. guild was saying sometin about newbie tasks and saying i was an idiot when i was doing newbie tasks when i first got TSS

I was confused as hell when they were saying crap about AA xp..

i got 1% AA xp from most of the tasks in Blightfire :P

[Artemisia]

I posted this on the Sony forums and was roundly called a liar, scammer, rumor-monger and worse (the thread is now locked and discontinued).

I petitioned it and got a fast Gm response from Live CS.

After I mentioned to two friends that I had "snitched" I got a ton of hate tells about being a narc.

Can't win for freakin' losing these days.

I think you did well in reporting this, and I would say forget about those who shouted abuse at you.

There have been so many of these in the last few months, remember some sort of scam that was going on in HHK with the MM, not sure about details but I heard about it later that there was a way to beat the lockout clock. Or the one where people would group with traders in bazaar and although they were in a different zone they got the exp, meaning there is a whole stack of lvl 30++ traders who all got the freebie exp.
Or the fact that in some way people got their research to 250 with little or no effort (darn wish that had happened to me and still wonder how that was done) [lol sorry but research such a pain].

People know not to cheat or use these bugs to advance, so for me report and hopefully Sony will get strict and punish severly

so *brownie points to Grimwood*