Paradise Public Service Announcement: DLC 5 - Griefing & the Low Ego Arkhunter

On Tuesday April 15 a new “DLC” or rather “Patch” will drop for the red-headed stepchild that is Defiance.

When this happens, there will be griefers that will be able to ratchet up the level of the enemies you are facing and then they will leave – leaving you at the mercy of “scaled” enemies.

These folks are going to be able to do this because of Trion’s infinite wisdom of adding a vertical progression to weapons and enemies without fully thinking it through (a very common theme for Defiance as you’ll see if you stick around).

The idea was that an EGO 5000 player, and EGO 2000 player, and an EGO 100 player could still play together because – though the enemies would scale up to the highest player’s EGO the lower EGO players would scale up to the average of the players around. (So in the case of the situation above – the EGO 100 & 2000 players would scale up to about 2367 EGO) Now, what if the EGO 5000 player leaves?

Well apparently you will lose your EGO Scaling and drop down to previous pitiful damage levels – but, get this – the enemies will stay scaled to that EGO 5000 player until they are defeated!

So good luck killing those beasts…

But it gets better –

Here’s a story for you:

Once upon a time there was an EGO 500 player at Mine 98 plugging away at 99ers when an EGO 5000 player drives by. Bolstered by the possibility of high EGO help the EGO 500 player dives into the fray as the threat level elevates, the enemies get harder, and they scale to roughly half of the high EGO player.

The EGO 500 player’s enthusiasm soon turns to dread though as the high EGO player continues driving past. The EGO 500 player goes down for the first time; his EGO scaling drops back to EGO 500 as does the threat level but the enemies stay at EGO 5000 until they are defeated. So he revives, in hopes he can put up some sort of defense, but that hope is immediately dashed as he goes back down again…then he extracts.

The End.

This will be the ultimate grief-fest on Tuesday, April 15 for ALL low EGO players out there…

I wish you all luck, for I know there are those players out there that will be intentionally griefing and then add to that all of us just driving around.

Here's a thread that is sticky worthy, if I've ever seen one.

The one thing this game didn't really have that most other mmo type games have is griefing, and that's what I liked about it. Now I will be unintentionally doing to others? Awesome, way to make me feel bad about myself while playing this game. I stopped playing GTA V MP because of the griefers, so maybe its time for Defiance too. My guess is that it will take a month or 2 and then they will remove the scaling due to a lack of player base and to try to generate new players around the time of season 2.....because if someone new starts playing because they see the show, id give them about 20 minutes before they snap that $6 disc in half and take a few shots of vodka.

Thanks Overt.

Yeah I was just sitting here and thinking, and If a non-griefing helpful person can think of this, no telling what people being real tools will come up with.
All of you fresh level players beware as well when first entering the Mount Tam area from the tutorial section. You will have some griefers sitting there just to elevate the threat level and spawn uber enemies. They will sit an watch the slaughter or teleport away. You have been warned.

Well no more tapping a contract area and letting someone else finish it. You don't know that they can now.

....But it's not JUST griefing...
I'm sorry but I am not going to go out of my way to NOT drive around the map so that I don't accidentally scale up the enemies for someone. If I fast travel somewhere and then drive by a place close enough to scale it up, I'm not being a jerk. I'm just traveling through the world. I'm not going to stop at everything to help because Trion broke the world and gave me the magical power to make enemies harder.

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Originally Posted by Lucent

....But it's not JUST griefing...
I'm sorry but I am no going to go out of my way to NOT drive around the map so that I don't accidentally scale up the enemies for someone. If I fast travel somewhere and then drive by a place close enough to scale it up, I'm not being a jerk. I'm just traveling through the world. I'm not going to stop at everything to help because Trion broke the world and gave me the magical power to make enemies harder.

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We know this and are not saying it is, but there will be some tools that will do it for fun, just for their kicks.

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Originally Posted by Ironhide

... but there will be some tools that will do it for fun, just for their kicks.

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Indeed... griefing defined.

Boy, if they didn't think about this scenario, it really could doom the game. I guess when I imagined enemy scaling, it would go both ways to avoid this. It wouldn't just calculate average EGO level ONCE during the course of a mission, but do so in a certain interval (say every 5 to 15 seconds). Even if a Volge Superior spawned, it's health and power could diminish the same way the players "buff" would go away.

Hopefully the player isn't the only object that would be receiving and losing this buff based on average EGO present...

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Originally Posted by Lucent

....But it's not JUST griefing...
I'm sorry but I am not going to go out of my way to NOT drive around the map so that I don't accidentally scale up the enemies for someone. If I fast travel somewhere and then drive by a place close enough to scale it up, I'm not being a jerk. I'm just traveling through the world. I'm not going to stop at everything to help because Trion broke the world and gave me the magical power to make enemies harder.

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I completely agree Lucent - I will NOT be one of the intentional griefers but I travel the map like Marco Polo - there will be collateral damage to my globe trotting. I am NOT going to go out of my way to avoid causing it.

As such I will count myself as one of the unintentional griefers that will, with the help of the numerous intentional tools out there, slowly make this game unplayable for new players.

And the reason for all this...

...because grenades.

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Originally Posted by wartitan

...Hopefully the player isn't the only object that would be receiving and losing this buff based on average EGO present...

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You see the problem with this becomes a scaled enemy - say he's scaled up to max EGO and gets 20,000 HP as a result - so the high EGO and low EGO proceed to start whooping on him - then the High EGO disconnects - if the scaled enemy was now to reverse scale - he'd likely go into negative HP and insta-die.

Also, how about a High EGO player engaging an instance and then getting far enough away to reverse the scale and then closing the distance and re-engaging to smoke everything?

This is premature. It may very well end up like this but they may make adjustments to open world scaling mechanics before the update goes live. They've made changes to DLC updates within days of release before. I know I filed several feedback reports on the test server about this problem with open world scaling mechanics over the past week and I'm sure others have as well.

I would have hoped no one would have posted what's basically a "how to grief" players thread about this mechanic notwithstanding that griefers would have caught on by themselves eventually. Some of the players I spoke with on test server agreed that it wouldn't be productive to do so and we simply pointed it out in our feedback reports but oh well.

The way the mechanics work now it's highly probable that if it goes live there won't actually be many opportunities to grief other players in this way anyway because even with the low population on test servers that consisted of players that don't do things like that, the natural mechanics of open world scaling was causing Tier 2 to Tier 4 mutants to spawn all over Mt. Tam with no high EGO rating players in sight when they spawned. There is clearly something off about the mechanics if the fact that a high EGO rating player drove through the area before an actual spawn causes scaling. Hopefully they will fix this. Otherwise April 15th will henceforth be known by the populace of the Bay Area as Mt. Tam Massacre Day.

Well they finally figured out a way to "un-intentionally" get rid of players so that they could shut down the servers and call it quits so that they could get back to their other game.

I think the insta-die thing wouldn't be so bad...especially if you look at a case like the Volge. If you look at the afflicted or hellbugs, you probably didn't damage the entire mob enough for ALL of them to insta-die on high EGO disconnect.

I think the second scenario you mentioned would be resolved IF they do the interval scaling at a low enough interval (5 seconds or less). By the time the high EGO would reverse the scale and try to get back they would scale up again.

But I have NO faith that Trion thought of any of this...

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Originally Posted by Deunan

This is premature...

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I personally don't feel 4 days prior to release AND after submission to the console stores can be considered premature.

If Trion were to wish to combat this then one would assume they would communicate that sort of thing by updating the patch notes and certainly doing so prior to announcing a release date less than 1 week away.

OP you make an extremely valid point about the scaling and the possible problems it will cause. The grief is will cause either intentionally or unintentionally.
You have however forgotten the server conspiracy theory. Servers are only capable of supporting X amount of players at a time.
This is the fact that TRION is relying upon to weed out the lesser to average player and keep the Loyalist.
People like me will become so frustrated that I will stop clogging up the servers and move on to another game.
Or actually move back to World of Tanks and World of Warplanes for a more satisfying and fulfilling chase.

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Originally Posted by Overtkill21

I personally don't feel 4 days prior to release AND after submission to the console stores can be considered premature.

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They've done it after submission before. It seems there are some things they can do and some things they can't under the protocols.

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Originally Posted by Overtkill21

If Trion were to wish to combat this then one would assume they would communicate that sort of thing by updating the patch notes and certainly doing so prior to announcing a release date less than 1 week away.

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HAHAHAHAHAHA

I think if they were to dynamically scale the enemies in a way to where say the scaling instantaneously change given certain factors such as distance, it would cause much more stress on the servers. The only plausible solution to me would be to have set spawn table's for certain zones that weren't dynamic. Say Mt. Tam it'd be fixed to a lower level ego spawn tables where as in San Fran it'd be higher. It makes much more logical sense if they saved the dynamic scaling for special events such as arkfalls. Also why the hell don't they just unlock all perk slots for lower levels. I'd think this might make things more evened out for the lower levels just starting out.

Another thing I don't understand is, whats the point in having weapon skill after this patch. It bugs me they make no mention of scaling weapon's with skill level.

I pointed this out when the blog post was announced and I was told it would not be a big deal since lower level players would get a buff to hold their own. I knew this would happen.

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Originally Posted by Nefarious

I have no idea how this is truly going to work. Even after reading it.

The biggest thing Ive experienced with Level Scaling in Defiance was a Major Arkfall event was going on in very close proximity of a very big Shadow War. The odd thing though was that there was only a hand full of players taking part of the outside portion of the Major Arkfall and I guess the game took all those other players very near by in the Shadow War into consideration and there was nothing but Elite Dark Matter and Elite Bulwarks. And lots of them. And when it came down to it was just us few players Vs these mass amount of Elite enemies.

Now with the new update whats stopping groups of Max Level players going into beginner zones or events with Low Level players and not participate but in turn up the difficulty on them?

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Originally Posted by Nefarious

Well how do you think I thought of such a thing. :cool:

But the big picture is that what if the whole scenario of what I described with the Shadow War happens again near any Event or Emergency or whatever takes the Ego Scaling into account? Or a legion of players drive through someone's mission as they head to the next Arkfall site and that just so happens to spring up way higher level enemies for that single person?

I myself don't have a problem with harder enemies showing up and taking everyone out. Its cool to be apart of hard fights. I guess the Frontier is truly going to be a deadly place now.

So be it.

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Nefarious see's the future yet again!

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Originally Posted by Deunan

HAHAHAHAHAHA

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Figured that line would make you laugh. LOL

So not only am I getting punished by the new scaling system for having max/high EGO (thanks to all the QQers who wanted the game to be harder), but now I will also get to punish all of those people around me I am playing with?

Wow, this might be the first time ever my enthusiasm for logging into and playing a game I have thoroughly enjoyed since Day One, every day, has suddenly waned. I just don't know what to say. If the scaling and thus resultant challenge was optional, that would be one thing. But to be forced into having an increased challenge I do not want, well, this would be the first time I would ever stop playing an active game willingly.

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Originally Posted by BJWyler

So not only am I getting punished by the new scaling system for having max/high EGO (thanks to all the QQers who wanted the game to be harder), but now I will also get to punish all of those people around me I am playing with?

...

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This my friend is called : Sado-Masochism

Before this "dlc" Defiance players in a good majority were only masochists, but now TRION is leveling up the game to another stage of pain.

I finally found a use for my Craptor, thank you Trion, I will ride with some high Ego friends, in this 4 seats vehicle of doom*, making spawn hard mobs everywhere :)


* In fact Sledgehammer was not lying, and in fact Trion had already planned that we could do that to grief noobs, that's why they called it the vehicle of doom, mwahahahahhaaaa...

Edit : the "truck of doom" not vehicle (sorry...)

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Originally Posted by Blondin

I finally found a use for my Craptor, thank you Trion, I will ride with some high Ego friends, in this 4 seats vehicle of doom*, making spawn hard mobs everywhere :)


* In fact Sledgehammer was not lying, and in fact Trion had already planned that we could do that to grief noobs, that's why they called it the vehicle of doom, mwahahahahhaaaa...

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So stealing your idea....the grief truck

Like an ice cream truck, but not as tasty.

{How I picture my craptor now!)

http://carhumor.net/wp-content/uploa...w-russia-1.jpg

I fast travel to my friends all the time searching for incursions and arkfalls on other servers. Just want to apologize to all of you. If it looks real bad I'll probably stick around and help. Don't delete me, please. Mwahahaha.

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Originally Posted by jay ellis

I fast travel to my friends all the time searching for incursions and arkfalls on other servers. Just want to apologize to all of you. If it looks real bad I'll probably stick around and help. Don't delete me, please. Mwahahaha.

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OMG I hadn't even thought about this. :(

When everyone talks about scaled enemies, I keep envisioning fighting snake people. Not that I would mind fighting snake people, anything would break up the redundancy of the same factions/enemies we've had since day one. But at least now when you're higher level or fighting with someone higher level, they'll look more awesome!!!

Maybe trion didn't either

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Originally Posted by jay ellis

Maybe trion didn't either

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Or maybe they did. Remember, Trick doesn't like players jumping shards.

Hi guys, I just wanted to drop you guys a line after reading this thread and talking with Trick himself about how the boosting works.

Encounters and events scale up their threat rating based on the number of players that show up to take them on: it's the increased threat rating itself that boosts up low-level players and enemies alike.

If a high level player leaves the encounter, it doesn't actually reduce the threat rating, and so the amount of boost that a low-level player has isn't reduced either.

Scaled up characters dont lose their boosted levels - even if they die or leave and come back. Thats how I've seen it work so far.

Its actually quite beneficial for a low level character to get boosted. It is only a little more challenging but you get more experience and you level weapons quicker since you are doing more damage but the requirements for weapon mastery and skill levels are not changed.

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Originally Posted by Overtkill21

On Tuesday April 15 a new “DLC” or rather “Patch” will drop for the red-headed stepchild that is Defiance.

When this happens, there will be griefers that will be able to ratchet up the level of the enemies you are facing and then they will leave – leaving you at the mercy of “scaled” enemies.

These folks are going to be able to do this because of Trion’s infinite wisdom of adding a vertical progression to weapons and enemies without fully thinking it through (a very common theme for Defiance as you’ll see if you stick around).

The idea was that an EGO 5000 player, and EGO 2000 player, and an EGO 100 player could still play together because – though the enemies would scale up to the highest player’s EGO the lower EGO players would scale up to the average of the players around. (So in the case of the situation above – the EGO 100 & 2000 players would scale up to about 2367 EGO) Now, what if the EGO 5000 player leaves?

Well apparently you will lose your EGO Scaling and drop down to previous pitiful damage levels – but, get this – the enemies will stay scaled to that EGO 5000 player until they are defeated!

So good luck killing those beasts…

But it gets better –

Here’s a story for you:

Once upon a time there was an EGO 500 player at Mine 98 plugging away at 99ers when an EGO 5000 player drives by. Bolstered by the possibility of high EGO help the EGO 500 player dives into the fray as the threat level elevates, the enemies get harder, and they scale to roughly half of the high EGO player.

The EGO 500 player’s enthusiasm soon turns to dread though as the high EGO player continues driving past. The EGO 500 player goes down for the first time; his EGO scaling drops back to EGO 500 as does the threat level but the enemies stay at EGO 5000 until they are defeated. So he revives, in hopes he can put up some sort of defense, but that hope is immediately dashed as he goes back down again…then he extracts.

The End.

This will be the ultimate grief-fest on Tuesday, April 15 for ALL low EGO players out there…

I wish you all luck, for I know there are those players out there that will be intentionally griefing and then add to that all of us just driving around.

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Then the Ego 500 player realized that the 5000 player just coast him a crap ton of scrip because he died and had to revive and pay the death tax.

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Originally Posted by Morgana

Hi guys, I just wanted to drop you guys a line after reading this thread and talking with Trick himself about how the boosting works.

Encounters and events scale up their threat rating based on the number of players that show up to take them on: it's the increased threat rating itself that boosts up low-level players and enemies alike.

If a high level player leaves the encounter, it doesn't actually reduce the threat rating, and so the amount of boost that a low-level player has isn't reduced either.

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Well that is all well & good - however - since the scaling of the lower EGO player is average and not to the actual EGO of the higher player - a single EGO 5000 player showing up on the scene for a single EGO 500 player and leaving will have the EXACT effect I described.

So it would seem griefing, that is still absolutely going to happen, is more of a solitary activity.

I guess the morale of the story here is....if you're new to the game, make friends quickly and never play alone...

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Originally Posted by Morgana

Hi guys, I just wanted to drop you guys a line after reading this thread and talking with Trick himself about how the boosting works.

Encounters and events scale up their threat rating based on the number of players that show up to take them on: it's the increased threat rating itself that boosts up low-level players and enemies alike.

If a high level player leaves the encounter, it doesn't actually reduce the threat rating, and so the amount of boost that a low-level player has isn't reduced either.

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That doesn't really resolve the issue. Mobs scale up when players with higher EGO rating show up but they don't scale down when those players leave and new arrivals don't get the Threat Level buff to EGO rating and weapon and shield power rating afterwards. This is why players with low EGO rating on the test server are not getting EGO rating and power boosts and are getting slaughtered by Veteran, Hardened and Formidable Mutants at conflict sites and by random patrols with no players with high EGO rating in sight.

Further, it's not clear what constitutes "showing up" and the game obviously can't read the players minds to know if they've "shown up" to fight the mobs or are just there to grab a data recorder or just passing by in general. It also doesn't explain why when high tier mobs despawn, the ones that spawn in their place are sometimes still higher tier mobs when my EGO rating <500 character is the only one around within radar distance.

I sent a PM days ago to Trick and Scapes asking for specifics about how the mechanics of open world scaling work and haven't heard back from either of them. What you've posted doesn't shed any light on very specific questions I asked about open world scaling mechancs in my PM. We can't help you fix it if we don't even know if it's broken. Nevertheless I've filed feedback as to what is so obviously bad about open world scaling mechancis as they exist on the test server.

Mt. Tam is basically the beginner area of the map. If this is how the game greets new players it will suffer much higher attrition rates for new players once DLC 5 goes live. There is nothing in the training session that explains open world scaling to them and other MMO games generally don't put high end mobs into newb territory so they'll simply think the game is stupidly hard and leave the game after barely starting it.

wait a second i thought the game only scaled to YOUR ego (so if im with some one lower it doesnt matter since it scales to them not me). so you are telling me if a 5000 ego person goes back to the stating area they make the mobs 2500 in ego strength? that seems odd and broken.

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Originally Posted by Noble_One

wait a second i thought the game only scaled to YOUR ego (so if im with some one lower it doesnt matter since it scales to them not me). so you are telling me if a 5000 ego person goes back to the stating area they make the mobs 2500 in ego strength? that seems odd and broken.

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Nobody knows for sure how it works. We just know that If you are a low to medium ego player, You will be slaughtered in Mt Tam or other open world places by top tier mobs due to how the creative team has engineered the new scaling mechanics.
Quite possibly "working as intended" sad to say.

Yet, you can purchase enough Ark Forge in the Store to instantly level your character to EGO 5000.
This is the main point you are missing.
1000 Ark Forge for 40$ U.S.
What is the rate of climb ? 100 ego for 1000 ark forge ? ( just a guess )
Or am I wrong here. Can you only raise your weapons ego rating ?
Why raise your weapon EGO when all you need to do is find another one or purchase from a Vendor ?
What does this have to do with scaling ?
People that do not spend money will eventually quit due to the LONGER chase.
The fun will be non existent for the average or below average player.

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Originally Posted by Overwatch

Yet, you can purchase enough Ark Forge in the Store to instantly level your character to EGO 5000.
This is the main point you are missing.
1000 Ark Forge for 40$ U.S.
What is the rate of climb ? 100 ego for 1000 ark forge ? ( just a guess )
Or am I wrong here. Can you only raise your weapons ego rating ?
Why raise your weapon EGO when all you need to do is find another one or purchase from a Vendor ?
What does this have to do with scaling ?
People that do not spend money will eventually quit due to the LONGER chase.
The fun will be non existent for the average or below average player.

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well its 50 arkforge to gain 100 ego rating on a single item. You can't level you character with arkforge, only weapons and shields.

I didn't read the last 2 pages, so if this comment was mentioned already . . Opps

contracts in Mount Tam ,will be a large problem with starting Ego's and Higher EGO's, and possibly other zones too.
Road side emergencies possibly not so much , since the higher EGO will most likely be pulling all the Aggro anyways.
where now the problem lies with the Low ego never getting a kill, but only assist, this making it tougher for there Achievements completions , so one is pretty much needs to take that moment to send a group invite

Not sure what the range of "Nearby" would be, sending a invite to someone, that is actually not engaged may be a issue too .
I don't think every-time someone goes near someone, they want to hit 'ctrl' just to see what that players ego is. Maybe some do that anyways , I dunno

I would guess, to avoid any unintentional griefing, you just need to group up