No more Discoveries

[Zarathustra]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.h...ageNo=1&sid=1#0

We have been working on the resolution of a serious exploit in game which has led to certain consequences that we wanted everyone to be aware of. A hot fix has been recently applied to the alchemy profession, with regards to discoveries. For the time being, we have disabled all chance of a discovery, until we can implement the proper fix through a patch , as we can not resolve this matter solely with hot fixes. We apologize for the necessary but temporary removal of discoveries, and are working to have them re-implemented with an upcoming content patch.

From what I gather, people were creating pots with full inventories. The bar would "finish" and would have a chance of a Discovery, but no mats would be used since there was no room for a product. Apparently some people cashed in and got every Discovery this way.

[Concillian]

From what I gather, people were creating pots with full inventories. The bar would "finish" and would have a chance of a Discovery, but no mats would be used since there was no room for a product. Apparently some people cashed in and got every Discovery this way.

I assume Blizzard will continue their precedent of rewarding those who exploit early and often and they won't be doing anything about those who exploited this tactic?

[Quark]

I assume Blizzard will continue their precedent of rewarding those who exploit early and often and they won't be doing anything about those who exploited this tactic?

You never heard about the massive gold duping Mannoroth event, have you? Many people who simply listed an AH item higher than usual got all their gold stripped.

[oldmandennis]

Maybe next they will hotfix the terrible discovery system out of the game alltogeather.

[Zarathustra]

OMD, I'm not sure I understand the animosity towards the Discovery system. Granted, I don't have a high level alchemist... so that could very well explain it.

Here's my question: what does it hurt? People are all up in arms about how Blizzard put this system in place and how rare a Discovery is. Do they really prefer there is no chance at all to get these recipes? My girlfriend "discovered" the Transmute: Shadow to Water the other day. Handy transmute? You bet! But why is that rare chance of finding something like that a detriment to the game?

[Artega]

I assume Blizzard will continue their precedent of rewarding those who exploit early and often and they won't be doing anything about those who exploited this tactic?

How would you propose they administer punishment to those that used the exploit? How would they determine who made discoveries legitly versus those who didn't?

[Concillian]

How would you propose they administer punishment to those that used the exploit? How would they determine who made discoveries legitly versus those who didn't?

You don't have to find that many. Just a couple. Remove all discoveries and 3 day suspension.

Find a couple guilds who fought "MalCHEEZER" instead of Malchezaar like yours did. 3 day suspension and destroy all prince gear in the guild.

Word will get around.

I mean do you honestly think that people who did either of these thought it was right? It's not like these things require more brain function than an average 5th grader to figure out they're exploits. Give people a reason to think twice about exploiting. Are you smarter than a 5th grader? no? Banstick!

As it is now it's like a twisted game of hide and go seek... but more like find the exploit and use it as much as you can before they patch it out. Total BS.

In this case the exploiters gain a rather lasting improvement out of the discoveries. Not only will they keep them, but because Blizzard put a stop to it, they now have less competition and can charge a much higher rate for making these special flasks / elixirs than if the exploit had remained in the game and everyone was on a level playing field. They are doubly rewarded for their exploitation.

[Frag]

Two caveats, firstly I'm a little out of it and I do apologize if I ramble, second my alchemist is still lvl 300.

Those two particulars aside, here is the issue with the discovery system from the perspective of my wife & myself: There was no other mechanic ingame that would 'punish' so-called completionists from the simple opportunity to gather every recipe. Perhaps the Dev team felt it would be more rewarding to have a small chance to learn the recipe than to hide it deep in an endgame dungeon some would never see, however what it felt like to us is it went from something to works towards, to something you'll likely never see. Secondly, *edit* Wimpy made our first two discoveries, and (the rest of this sentence doesn't make any sense anymore).:(

Seriously, it felt like a little D2:LoD inside WoW, and that doesn't sugar everyone's tea.

Cheers,
~Frag B)

[Xanthix]

You don't have to find that many. Just a couple. Remove all discoveries and 3 day suspension.

Find a couple guilds who fought "MalCHEEZER" instead of Malchezaar like yours did. 3 day suspension and destroy all prince gear in the guild.

Word will get around.

To play devil's advocate here, does it matter if word gets around, since discoveries have been removed until the glitch is fixed? To ban people in such a way, Blizzard would be very harshly punishing a few people (some of whom might have done it accidentally or just gotten really lucky with 2-3 discovery procs in a week), and letting the majority walk free (as they are now).

If Blizzard used a heavier punishment but unevenly applied it, I don't think it would change the game of "find the exploit before it's patched and hope you don't get noticed" very much. And it would cause a lot of drama over who they chose to punish, and over the fact that they are being so heavy-handed.

If an unbiased and fair way exists to "undo" an exploit or dupe or hack, then by all means apply it. But if not, I think that maybe there can be more damage to the community from "corrective" actions than from letting a few ill-gotten loots roam free.

[Xanthix]

OMD, I'm not sure I understand the animosity towards the Discovery system. Granted, I don't have a high level alchemist... so that could very well explain it.

Well, in principle having the recipes on the discovery system is not really different than making them rare world or dungeon drops. But it is just frustrating that for a person or a guild, there is nothing you can really do to get a specific recipe. It's like if talent points were given our randomly every 5-50 bubbles of exp, and when you got one it was randomly picked from the talents available.

[Kevin]

Well, in principle having the recipes on the discovery system is not really different than making them rare world or dungeon drops. But it is just frustrating that for a person or a guild, there is nothing you can really do to get a specific recipe. It's like if talent points were given our randomly every 5-50 bubbles of exp, and when you got one it was randomly picked from the talents available.

Discoveries would be cool if they worked like I thought they did at first. If all discoveries were also rare drops (either world or in some dungeon) I think they would be really neat. It would mean that the alchemist who would never get into heroic Arcatraz or who doesn't have 300 hours to camp the 8 mobs in the entire world that can drop the pattern might still be able to get it. But that a guild or a person with a lot of time would have more control getting it to their alchemist.

Random isn't bad, but removing the feeling of any control at all is. The most frustrating thing for people in PvP is generally when they have no control. This is why many players hate really good rogues so much (the ones that can stun lock you for like 30 seconds) and pallies too since you can't do anything about that bubble. It doesn't matter what your skill is or what you do you have no control on it. But if you have a controlled way to do something + a random way, the random way suddenly becomes a gift not an annoyance.

It's the lack of control that makes people not like the discovery system. Even if they have as much control over it as any other method. You can't control if the mob will drop the recipe. Ask Treesh and all her kills of Warp Splinter or the mobs that dropped the bracer enchant she wanted. You can't control if making a potion will get you a discovery. The time to farm Warp Splinter or a world mob and the time to farm mats to make pots to get a discovery may be set to be on average equal. But it sure feels like you have less control trying to get a discovery. And for most it's a lot less fun to farm herbs than it is to farm a mob for a drop. Even though grinding mobs isn't fun for most people either.

But I think that is what the issues with the discovery system boil down to. It may be the same time investment but it doesn't feel as fun or controlled.

[Tuftears]

Eh, I think if they made discoveries much more frequent, it would even out - there would be less of a feeling that only some people would be blessed with the discoveries, and more that you'll get yours eventually.

Or make discoveries work like an experience bar, you can see how many potions you have to create until you discover something at random.

[oldmandennis]

I think the "word would get around" comment would be that if you made examples of people doing obvious exploits, they would tell their friends and everybody would be too scared to take advantage of the next obvious exploit.

As far as discoveries go, the Shadow -> Water is not the problem. While it's a nice transmute that I would love to have... it only really saves me 3-4g per day and it's not going to kill me if I never get it. If trivial stuff like that were the only thing in the discovery system, I'd be OK with it.

The game breaker here is the flasks. They are -necessary- for a lot of encounters. Spastically creating huge amounts of potions is no way to handle such an important part of the game. Especially since the way the game works, it could easily take somebody 10,000 pots to discover a flask, and then he gets shadow fortification.

If there was an alternative (but still very difficult) way to force the flasks, I'd be OK with it. Off the top of my head, I'd say exulted with scryer/aldor, and then 100 high level marks and 10 shoulder tokens per recepie sounds about right. Random casuals could get lucky every now and again, but a guild that NEEDED that flask to progress could make a concerted drive for it.

[Sinomin]

I think the "word would get around" comment would be that if you made examples of people doing obvious exploits, they would tell their friends and everybody would be too scared to take advantage of the next obvious exploit.

Just like criminals are afraid to go to jail? Generally, the people who exploit dont care. I say ban them if it is an obvious case.

[Taelas]

I think the "word would get around" comment would be that if you made examples of people doing obvious exploits, they would tell their friends and everybody would be too scared to take advantage of the next obvious exploit.

Yeah, right.

Ever heard of speeding tickets?

[Artega]

EDIT: Letting dead horses remain dead horses before another thread gets locked over it.

[TheDragoon]

Looks nice on paper, but it's completely impractical. Blizzard would lose a huge number of customers (remember, we're not really people to them; we're walking, talking dollar bills), especially since I don't think it would be realistic for them to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the people they decided to punish were actually responsible for exploiting. Again, how would they determine this? And how would they deal with the community backlash? Sure, they may lose a few morally pristine customers over things like this, but they'd lose a great deal more if they attempted to punish the unscrupulous.

First, I'm pretty sure they aren't under any sort of burden to prove "beyond any reasonable doubt" since they own everything about the server-side stored character information. Second, I seriously doubt there'd be much backlash for punishing exploiters. Every time they have punished people for that sort of thing the vast majority of players responded positively to the action and told them to keep up the good work. I highly doubt that they'd lose many people beyond perhaps the people who did the deeds and they might very well retain quite a few. :)

[Mavfin]

I'm going to ignore your little jab

It wasn't a *jab*, it was a *fact* that you and your friends were exploiting on Malchezzar, turning him into MalCHEEZer. Don't try to wriggle out of it. You even tried to defend your action in the other thread after being told it was an exploit. Bolty said it was an exploit, I said it was an exploit, and Blizzard obviously thought so, since they made it not possible to do. End of story.

We don't particularly care for exploiters here. Keep that in mind when posting, please.

[Jester]

Secondly, Jester made our first two discoveries, and you can't even imagine how that made Tori feel.

Speaking of discoveries, that's news to me.

You must be thinking of someone else. Jesana has exactly zero discoveries.

-Jester

[Treesh]

Speaking of discoveries, that's news to me.

You must be thinking of someone else. Jesana has exactly zero discoveries.

-Jester

Wimpy's made a bunch.