Ryzom

Is Change Mode an Exploit?

I've been told to only Forage in Mode 1. Or Mode 0 if My melee (e.g. Health far excedes my Forage levels)

I won't Spell out exactly what Ingame Macro you need to make effective use of CHange Mode. But what I want to know is Change mode an Exploit? or is the trading of Source time considered an equal trade off for the safer modes of harvesting?

hegonbad wrote:Is Change Mode an Exploit?

I've been told to only Forage in Mode 1. Or Mode 0 if My melee (e.g. Health far excedes my Forage levels)

I won't Spell out exactly what Ingame Macro you need to make effective use of CHange Mode. But what I want to know is Change mode an Exploit? or is the trading of Source time considered an equal trade off for the safer modes of harvesting?

I am not exactly sure what macro you are talking about .. but mode change takes place under many cases. If what you are talking about is what I think it is, then I guess it could be an exploit ... The problem is that the system figures the source mode at the start of a prospecting action and any time that another action is manually selected. This is by design. If changing the source mode is to be called an exploit, then I would say 90% of the harvesters out there are exploiters since something as innocent as using a careplan on a source will change it's mode. Note that the system does handle this by lowering the quality of what you have gathered to that point. Most of the time this does not matter since the future actions tend to raise you back to your cap (at least at lower levels). In my opinion this was poor design and leaves room for "cheesy" game play and possible exploits. I think they need to change it so that the mode is established when the source is prospected. This would make something other than aggressive plans worth the extra focus since with just mode 1, there is no reason to use anything but agressive (at least till higher levels?).

If what you think you are doing is an exploit .. chances are it is. If you dont want to be an exploiter then contact a GM and ask what they think.

and since I am not sure if any MODs are around, please do not go into detail about this here.

Since the mode statement is there and appears immediately upon starting a forage action, it is easy to reclick the forage until you get the mode you want, before the status lines even give you a clue about the characteristics of the node. Since the statement is there, you can hardly fault players for taking advantage of it and IMO would not be an exploit.

I expect the mode statements are artifacts of testing that haven't been removed. I think so because of the OOC wording of the statements and the lack of 'official' documentation of what they mean.

In my opinion, those statements should be replaced by something in character like "this source is moderately dangerous" or "you get a whiff of gas" or "it looks like there isn't much material here".

Or, remove them altogether and let us rely on the status lines like I think was intended. While they are at it, they might adjust the two-step gas radius, too.

It's not an exploit per se., they do allow you to see the source mode. I don't think you should be able to change it without changing the skills you are using though, that dont make much sense. Since they are allowing the mode to be visible, and it's obviously random because you can change it without changing tactics... hard to call it an exploit... Though your exploiting a bad decision in implementation, it appears it's working as intended short of not having to change skills to change mode.

DoubleTap

I believe the test server currently has 'fixes' for pretty much everything mentioned here. Enjoy being able to avoid gas plumes and changing modes for now

It is really easy to change the source by hitting extract and if you do not get a 1 then hit the macro to cancel action and hit extract. By repeating this you can force a node change to 1 quickly. As fast as you can hit the keys the source will change. Since the cancel action is part of the game I would guess it wasnt though out well when they released it. If they are fixing it then it was a nice advantage to all the harvestors that should be over 200 by now. Will be alot harder for lower levels now.

Why would it be an exploit? With Extraction as broken as it is, who cares? If it is an exploit, they better fix extraction first before removing it, its the only thing thats made extracting/harvesting worthwhile.

As for other exploits -- I've played alot and primarly I do harvesting and extracting. I just hit Level 100 -- there are peeps that play less that are already 150+. There *are* real exploits out there -- fix them first. If with the resource mode change, the sit down technique, the step back technique, the hot swap extraction stanza techniques -- leveling prospecting and harvesting is a grind. To make it even more of a grind would be silly.

If they go out there and do a big nerf all at once, it will once again prove the mmorp addage -- "Exploit early, Exploit often", and this game will go the way of AC2.

A little history of AC2 for those that don't remember -- the so-called exploits where rampant in the first month of play. People had maxed out their main characters and were starting on their second toons. Then Turbine came in and simply nerfed it all -- after 3 weeks, 1/2 the population had maxed out characters. Then newcomers came in and said WTF and moved on to other game.

bah..... just go with Gentle Rate, Gentle Speed, Gentle Quality, Desert Spec (or whatever region your in), and Mat Spec and you won't even have to worry about what source mode you've gotten unless you're working with the longer resource life timers (i.e. 45s or higher).

Heck, prelevel 60 I found that by using Gentle Rate, Gentle Speed, Gentle Quality, I could pull from Q50 sources all day long without ever running out of focus, AND i didn't have to worry about the source blowing up/dieing before i could get anything. With using Gentle on all the stanza slots for your extractoin plan you will have plenty of warning before your source dies and it's just a matter of sitting/cancelling your current action before that happens.

I'm currently making the push to reach lvl 100 on my character, and using the first line up i listed I can make to consecutive pulls before having to 'rest' for a short time. I pull 3 mats all the time every time i do this and i don't have to worry about ungodly explosions that will kill me (i have low HPs well under 1000). Probably the only time i release gas or get hit with explosions is when i get a source mode 1 and then i only get hit for 100'ish damage. There's one other mode i have to keep an eye on too (it's mode 4 IIRC), but that's because it drops the heart line fairly quickly (with gentle it's slowed enough that i can still get 3 mats, but with harmful it's dead faster than i have time to react).

Alternatively, if using the Gentle stanzas is too "pricey" for you or you rather go with the Harmful/aggressive stanzas for that extra 1 mat per pull, then bring someone along to use care plans on your resource nodes.

The point is why even bother using gentle with the current set up. To get the max amout of materials per pull for crafting you use the longest timer with all agressive settings. Once you start to extract and you see a number that isnt a 1 you quickly hit the hot key for cancel action and then hit the extraction hot key again. If you have the hotkeys together you can make a node shift 1 time per second. Once you get it to a 1 you just stand back from the node to avoid explosions and get max pulls per node. This was the only practical way to pull enough mats to support yourself harvesting. If they now nerf this (its a nerf since you are using the game mechanics they provided and not an exploit) all players who arent over 200 will have a hard time because they will be forced pulling 0 to 6 mats per node over 100 instead of 5 to 6 per node. Its nice for the players who used this as they can afford the higher cost of gentle stanzas to pull lower lvl mats to use for crafting.

It was hard enough to keep up getting materials for yourself before, this will make it 2 to 3 times longer. Yet another forced slowdown to keep the average player down. This will have little impact on the power harvestors.

I keep checking in hoping aspect of this game will improve and will renew my account then. So far I the forced slowdown has really put me off. It seems that since the players are leveling faster than they have content for they are putting up as many roadblocks as possible.

And you though armor was hard to get now lol.

I think that perhaps changing the mode could be considered an exploit as far as using a macro to speedily do it. But honestly for me I hardly change the node becasue it drops my quality and I lose vital foraging time.

As for being able to cancel an action (or sit to cancel an action as some people do), I think that is hardly a game flaw. If you could not cancel actions you would be unable to stop prospecting and would blow-up/kill sources left and right and never get enough mats out of a soucre to do much of anything.