The Matrix shoots itself in the foot

[Jait]

Some of you MMO vets may find this interesting, I've been following it for a while with utter fascination.

As some of you know MxO has a very small community, it's based around fans of the Matrix series and Sci-Fi, not hard-core MMO gaming. It just can't compete with the big boys like Blizzard and SOE in terms of gameplay and content and the players were fine with that. They released a live event schedule through the summer as well as new content. Fans were thrilled. They also did an excellent job in proving itself a worthy alternative to Anarchy Online. Like AO, there are 2 ways to get XP. Kill random Mobs/gangs, or do Missions. Like AO at release, Missions are the easiest method. You use your cellphone to call your contact and then run the mission. 5-20 minutes later, you'll gain 5% to 10% (lvl1-20) or 1% to 5% xp (from 20-50) of your lvl xp depending on it. The timesink is running to the buildings, nothing else. But this timesink adds up to far more time than the actual fighting inside the mission.

Like all MMORPGs, MxO released early.

Week 1

However on release there was a building that allowed players to do their missions in a single building, never having to run. This allowed quite a few people to level up to 50 in under a week by playing 20 hours a day.


MxO response?


Nerf the building, leave the 50s alone.


However anyone caught using it after the first week was banned/suspended without hesitation rather than remove the missions from that building. And it is VERY possible to pull missions in that building and have no idea it's exploiting.


Week 2

Spies realize they can use Invisibility to simply run through a mission to grab objectives and gain 5 levels a day. For some reason sneak actually means sneak!


MxO nerfs Spies so their only contribution is picking locks.

Meanwhile the playerbase is jumping up and down mad over a few dozen level 50s that cheated their way there and are reaping the rewards while unfortunately the rest of the playerbase are starting to chant the Mantra: "Exploit Now, Exploit Often, because they will nerf it".

Now here's the question kiddies: If you're Warner Bros. Do you go ahead and ban those level 50s? Do you hurry up and fix the Spy Branch? Do you add more rewards and skills from level 30-49 thus penalizing those cheaters? Nah...



Week 2.5

MxO cuts all XP and rewards for missions in half. At the high-end as much as 60-75% meaning xp is slightly slower than EQ was at release. MxO is now a ghost-town.



What is it with Newbie gaming companies? Could they have possibly made any worse decisions? And yes the rumors are true, MxO has an emote called the "Rang Rang Dance" No joke.


http://mxoboards.warnerbros.com/foru...=4827&tstart=0

In order to cancel the game you must call them personally. Again no joke.

http://mxoboards.warnerbros.com/foru...=4827&tstart=0

[Glaive]

After reading those boards a bit, I'm amazed that there are actually people who are surprised that that game sucked.

I'm no Negrodamus but I sure as hell could've predicted that.

[Dynalisia]

Negrodamus...?

[Keltan]

Originally posted by Dynalisia
Negrodamus...?

Horrible misspelling of Nostradamus?

[Zinke]

Originally posted by Jait
MxO has an emote called the "Rang Rang Dance" No joke.

wait.. the emote is /emote rang rang dance or the playerbase just calls it that?

If the actual command is rang rang dance, holy jesus. We need this for WoW.

Yeta, the rang olympics is a distinct possibility at this point.

[Brash]

Originally posted by Dynalisia
Negrodamus...?

Negrodamus knows all.

[Dynalisia]

rofl

[Lord Thanos]

Originally posted by Jait
In order to cancel the game you must call them personally. Again no joke.

Heh, brings back flash backs of Earth and Beyond

took me a while to convice EA to cancel my subscription

[Jait]

The requirement to: "Call and cancel" seems almost criminal to me, considering you'll have to wait on hold, then sit through someone trying to convince you NOT to quit.

AOL does this now as well.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Originally posted by Jait
AOL does this now as well.

AOL has been doing this for years. I think there should be legislation on it -- anything you can sign up for and start paying for anonymously online with your credit card and no real proof of identity other than some easily-attainable facts should not require a fucking phone call to cancel. It's the biggest horseshit there is. I'm glad they've started to hammer mail-in rebates, this needs to be next.

[Edit] In fact, I believe when Frau cancelled her AOL account around '01 it required something signed to be mailed or faxed. Wow.

[Itzena]

Originally posted by Zinke
wait.. the emote is /emote rang rang dance or the playerbase just calls it that?

If the actual command is rang rang dance, holy jesus. We need this for WoW.

The question is: Does is make peoples head's explode?

[Metranon]

good riddance

stupid idea for a game anyway

[Thorbadin]

Hmm not sure what I would do with the 50's. I would hope though that I'm not such a retard to the point that huge bugs like this make it throught beta.

But let's say the building exist. First thing to do once a dev know about this is to stop the leak. By removing the building, the missions to it or something like that.

Then you make a statement saying it was a mistake blah blah, we are sorry but we are removing that way of making easy xp. You then fix it for real in a real patch.

Since this seem to be more of a case of broken mechanics and not really an exploit, I don't think banning them would be a good idea. Depend on the style I guess.

Things like the massive nerfing of xp like it was done really suck for retail too. This kind of stuff NEED to be done in beta really.

Thorbadin
www.starsonata.com

[Itzena]

Roll 'em back to L1, and claim that it was a glitch in the Matrix.

[Whyme]

I'm amazed that there are actually people who are surprised that that game sucked

Quoted for truth.