Gender swapping the character is built into the game - that is not the exploit. In its normal functionality it exists solely for the purpose of swapping gender if you were to changed gender IRL or wish to alter your in-game character at a later date.
Using the gender swap to choose a specific team in a competition however would fall under Bug/Exploit abuse, as you are rigging the competition. You are exploiting an aspect of the game, in this case the gender swap, to intentionally fill a specific team with high levelled members of the same faction.
"If you find an abuseable exploit, do not share it with others."
Doing what has been done in such an obvious way does appear to make it seem much more likely that it was intentional and as such members actively using the built in aspect for the purpose of exploiting it - and actively sharing the idea with other members.
Regardless of my thoughts, it will be up to Ched to decide, though by the definition it's pretty much a 'open and shut case'
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Also worth noting that the only one's trolling this thread appear to be Pink Power, which does not help things from their side and just makes them seem more guilty - especially after three separate teams have called them out.
Collateral Damage; Pink Power has a player group of 1000, out of which only 204 actively abused the mechanics and the remaining 796 were either unaware or only benefited from those players. Rather than actually taking out the people who have been acknowledged as abusing the mechanics or preventing them from getting the merits/awards/benefits of getting a higher place in the competition - instead they are just getting hospitalised.
Too little too late; Duke was unleashed upon Pink Power a few days after Elimination had started despite reports on Pink Power from the very start of elimination, meaning several players lost out completely and other teams had straight-up quit. Four teams were out the competition already with over 3000 players affected and the recent elimination of Original Gangsters adds an extra 1000 to that. With 4000 players basically out the competition before Pink Power even started to get punished, it makes the punishment feel meaningless.
It's actually helping Pink Power; Pink Power benefited from a simple tactic earlier in the competition, the weaker members remained constantly in hospital while the stronger members either intentionally hospitalised themselves or were too high level to reach. Duke as such is actually doing them a favour as shown by how they have slowly increased from 0 to 583 - the high levelled players are getting out and causing enough damage to support the entire team thanks to the massive amount of Xanax and refills they have.
The damage to Torn as a whole; Many users in Pink Power and other teams have stated they do not plan to donate or support torn financially in the future, the forums are littered with people pointing out how terrible this elimination competition has been and the bad word of mouth is going to drive away more potential players. The fact that the punishment is actually helping the team is insane and I'm not sure how it was overlooked that it was the worst idea possible to hospitalise them.
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To summarise, Duke is doing very little to actually punish Pink Power - at the rate they are going Pink Power may actually survive until the 5th Elimination round at the rate they are going or possibly still win the competition due to how broken the Elimination actually is.
After leaving a previous Job that paid $250k per day due to being offered a better wage from a company that never came through... I deciding to move to the city where I found myself searching for work. The job market being a tough mistress I spent several days searching, looking for somewhere I could apply. Hoping to cover my fairly high rent of $200k per day I decided to look around and messaged a local company known as Holes With Poles. The director [1510489] seemed nice at first, offering me a fairly reasonable salary of $650k. For a while everything seemed fine, with me slowly growing out of the debt I had accumulated... until it happened.
The director decided he wanted to pay less money to his workers in order to cut costs by $3M, by essentially reducing the pay of everyone by $300k. The incentive that made all his workers work harder was being removed. While the director used the reasoning that we could all buy thongs, I saw a flaw. I didn't want to be paid a much lower amount that barely covered my salary and live without the job security that the director wouldn't lay me off before I got a Thong.
Naturally I was disappointed, however I tried to explain that cutting the prices would mean that I would barely be able to afford the rent. I had been promised a salary and been living off that salary for a while and despite the director originally seeming alright to talk about it. Eventually I forgot all about the pay cuts and began gambling trying to earn more money, safe on the belief that I'd be able to cover the slowly growing loan via the income I was receiving.
Yet then I receive a message in the mailbox, a one day warning about pay changes. The director had decided to go through with it despite my comments to him. Desperately I left instantly, hoping I could find a new job quickly to cover my loan before the pay cut arrived the next day though after several applications, nothing turned out.
As the debt increased I knew my remaining savings wouldn't be enough to sustain me for long... then the phone rings. Its the director again. He is naturally annoyed that I wouldn't continue working for him for less money, raging at me for quitting. After apologising and explaining to him that I needed the money, he insults me then threatens me, calling me petty for worrying about affording the rent and threatening that he will message any future employers a message in order to prevent me getting hired, hanging up the phone.
I look back at the newspaper, realising I have been replaced instantly, likely by another young member foolish enough to trust someone who values their company over their employees. With a disgruntled sigh I flick through the jobs looking for a possible opening before the tax man comes...
So once again - a new announcement from Chedburn. Yet once again thanks to the poorly handled announcements section their is no input from any fans or players. So I'vedecided to change that. Feel free to voice your thoughts on the newest announcement.
Timeline;
Day 1; RESPO
Week 3; Bugs & Issues forum planned to be implimented
Week 5-7; Small update planned
Weeks 7+; Torn speed should be improved back to before RESPO
Weeks 8+; More updates planned gradually getting bigger in size to fix RESPO
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As for my own thoughts;
"We've been using our internal bug reporting systems and taking in only the most serious issues"
- Opening a Bugs & Issues forum is pointless, general chat is already filled with those and giving us another forum to tell you about the bugs and issues wont do anything unless you plan on fixing them all, which according to your statement you don't plan on doing until all the serious issues you've found are fixed. Not to mention it will have taken you almost 4 weeks since the Respo to actually implement a Bugs & Issues forum...
"Active daily players has dropped by about 10%. This is expected, as such a huge change was bound to knock out a few who were on the verge of quitting anyway (mainly those who did not want to hang around to get used to it)"
- If you knew such a huge chancewas going to cause you to lose players, why even do it? As a player who has drastically reduced playing time since the update, I find this statement to be a bit of a dick move. You acknowledge that the Respo Update has made you lose players then claim the ones who left were going to leave anyway and didn't try coping with the bug filled update. While granted a few people were bound to leave, when you lose 10% of your player base its because you've done something wrong. Simple as that. Don't blame the players for something that you implemented.
"I expect in 2 - 4 weeks they’ll start rolling out one by one. We’ll start with some smaller updates first, working our way up"
- So around 5 -7weeks after theupdate before we even get a smallupdate to fix theissues... and its going to take even longer after that?That seems way too long considering by that time you'll have probably lost a lot more of your fan base than 10%... if you'd told everyone that Respo was going to be this buggy and take over a month to fix then I'm sure that player drop would have been more along the lines of 50%. Making the game almost unplayable for people for a month... hope you compensate the donators...
"This should reduce the amount of clicks to complete routine tasks, and give you the option for always showing vital information on screen."
- Oh my god... its going to do what it should have been able to do in the first place ¬_¬ Seriously though, when this is one of the big announcement it just angers me as a Torn fan. The tasks on Torn were simply 'one click' before and then you made it overly complicated. Now you've realised that issue however you are only fixing it for mobile users? That is dumb.
"These issues are a priority for us, but there’s so many different devices out there it’ll take some time before we can eliminate all of the problems. When the Bugs & Issues forum is open"
- If these issues are a priority for you, then why did you design the update without testing it on other devices in the first place? Its like Respo had no testing whatsoever. As for the comment about the Bug & Issues forum, refer to my above point about that.
"Over the coming weeks you should notice Torn get a little faster"
- This could easily be fixed by trimming 99% of the RESPO additions such as pointless flash animated images, countdown timers, the forced factor of having to click the same thing multiple times to get where you're going. Basically undo the RESPO, because the prior version was streamlined and faster.
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Lets face it, the RESPO has made 10% of your players leave, increased bugs and issues and made the game missing vital aspects. Nobody isenjoying the RESPO - if anything they are struggling to play due to the Bugs & Issues. Yet according to this announcement its going to be almost a month before they even have implemented any changes to fix these issues...
Seeing as apparently Torn Staff believe that the update bugs are fixed, felt another bug thread was needed due to the insane amount of issues with the new update that don't appear to be getting fixed. Had the same error since the update and it occurs generally whenever I go to do crimes. You click a crime and then instead of doing the crime it pops up with 'I 0'
Its not lack of nerve and its not double clicking- this is another error that hasn't been fixed. Anyone else getting it? I know about 10 others... but wondering just how much of the Torn user base is affected.
The blame is not on Pirates. Here is what to consider;
- 'Murica had a minimal amount of players and the only active ones quit within the first few days of the competition, the score they had never surpassed 300. - Pink Power allied or terrified every other team and pitted them all against Pirates. - Pirates had no allies and were therefore left in a rivalry with the fairly inactive 'Murica
We soon realised that we couldn't hospitalise anyone in 'Murica because other teams had hospitalised them, so we focused on attack/leave.
If 'Murica had been slightly more active during the final hour they would have survived the first round, however it's been clear from the start that a lot was stacked against them and I think most the team had given up as they had no way to prevent being knocked out the next elimination if they survived this one.
In the end 'Murica killed itself via lack of moral, though it was a battle they could never hope to win due to being doomed by team selections. It's unfortunate, but that's how it went.
Feel sorry for 'Murica, they had less players and were automatically at a disadvantage so a majority of the team simply did not compete during the competition - if you picked that team you were basically doomed from the start.
Issue; When flying if you open the forums the scroll bar on the side occasionaly wont let you scroll to the bottom post to reply or comment. I have provided an example of a donator topic where i was scrolling down to reply only for it to prevent me from scrolling down completely.
When the strongest team abuses your mechanics and basically gives them an advantage over the other teams, it also gives them the ability to manipulate the other teams.
Why team up with the weaker players when you can team up with the mechanic abusing team? Your suggestion makes no sense to any of the groups which is why they decided to ally with the team abusing the ability and why many are now stating they will not donate or subscribe to torn in future.
The sad part here is that this is not even a new suggestion, people already tried the 'all against PP' approach and PP maintained 5000 score regardless of almost every team (ignoring 'Murica who were not active) attacking them over and over. The low levelled players stay in hospital while the high levelled players get out and manage to do a ton of hits before being taken down by groups. Your suggested solution does not work.
If you take the approach of blaming the players for not banding together to fight against over-powered abusers of your mechanics then you are just going to lose fans, subscribers, donations, etc... It also has encouraged those who are not turned away to cheat next year's competition, so will be interesting to see if the mechanics or plans of mitigating the advantage they have will be enough to prevent it occurring again - and if any of the plans/mechanic changes will occur before this competition ends - as at the moment PP decides which team goes out and when.
Gender swapping the character is built into the game - that is not the exploit. In its normal functionality it exists solely for the purpose of swapping gender if you were to changed gender IRL or wish to alter your in-game character at a later date.
Using the gender swap to choose a specific team in a competition however would fall under Bug/Exploit abuse, as you are rigging the competition. You are exploiting an aspect of the game, in this case the gender swap, to intentionally fill a specific team with high levelled members of the same faction.
"If you find an abuseable exploit, do not share it with others."
Doing what has been done in such an obvious way does appear to make it seem much more likely that it was intentional and as such members actively using the built in aspect for the purpose of exploiting it - and actively sharing the idea with other members.
Regardless of my thoughts, it will be up to Ched to decide, though by the definition it's pretty much a 'open and shut case'
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Also worth noting that the only one's trolling this thread appear to be Pink Power, which does not help things from their side and just makes them seem more guilty - especially after three separate teams have called them out.
I am confused how about a lot of people were able to find so many eggs. Personally for me they spawned only twice during the competition and never appeared again. Seemed to favour people randomly with no actual method to determine how to gain eggs other than sheer luck.
Worse still is that despite having enough eggs to get 9 points after getting them, I had to basically sit and watch as the amount of tokens decrease over the remainder of the competition with no way of getting more because they just wouldn't appear no matter how long I spent, what I did or how many times I refreshed.
350k per day - 200k rent. Even without factoring in the loan that means I earn only 150k. 350k is also lower than other lower level jobs in that business. Being paid is different to how much you actually gain from a job.
Its a shame that users on here are so rude, despite your continuing rudeness I have not been rude back. I seem to be one of the few people trying to be sensible in this conversation, bringing awareness to a manipulative director who p.m.'s and threatened me. Instead you call me an idiot and generally insult me and give me bounties for reporting your abusiveness.
In which case you helped further my point. But anyway, if you're not going to contribute anything to this conversation then I'm not sure why you keep responding. I've agreed with some points you brought up but most the conversation you've just been rude under the excuse of playing the director. I suppose if you wanted to play the role of a rude director then congratulations on that, but I had hoped this would actually have been helpful to people, instead its just ended up being a waste of time for everyone involved.
Flaunting bounties for example and generally trolling over the course of 2 pages, pretty sure that constitutes as abuse.
Though anyway, this has gotten far from the topic I thought it was going to be. Just convinces me that most people here do not care about actually trying to be nice and just want to troll or be rude.
I made this post to advise people to be careful. After staying with the company for over 100 days then being treated badly when he levels up to rank 5 I feel obligated to warn overs. I see threads about scammers and people who have been hacked by hacking emails, this is a similar situation.
I never joined the company for the specials, so I cannot comment on that. Though I think its a bit rude of a director to ask for input then purposefully ignore it and then threaten people who leave. If I hadn't made this thread then the user in question would likely continue without issue. Print screens can be provided if you want to help prove that this is justified completely. I didn't want to go to apply to another director and experience the same harshness and abuse.
As for reporting your posts, when you insult virtually everyone I'm fairly sure that is abuse. You went on a large rant about every employee and generally swearing at everyone and everything. Now you think your rudeness from before and after is somehow justified because I reported you? If the report was not valid then I would be punished, but surely ranting at me now is validating it as abuse?
As for the ignoring members, maybe he didn't and listened to others. As for his 'extremely high pay scale' as I mentioned, he dropped it for everyone to around $50-350k. So I doubt that a new employee would be paid highly, specifically immediately after he announced cuts.
I suppose it can be viewed that way, though my intention was for it to help advise people to be careful in future. Though if you view it that way, then ok.
Not sure who you are responding to, however please read the conversation. I have not insulted him in anyway, I reported the comment because it was rude, simple as that.
In which case, my mistake. I was told by the director he earned it daily.
Yet, that still means he knowingly hired me and others with a wage where he was losing money. Why pay someone tons of money if you are making a loss, doesn't make sense to me. Then proceeded to ask for opinions and ignore them and generally be rude and threaten me for leaving the company in which I wasn't happy earning a low wage. I am not an unreasonable employee, I just don't want to be threatened by someone for simply leaving a company where I was being treated terribly.
Idea of this topic was to warn people of situations like this and also to hopefully see if anyone had a job that I could apply to. Instead you got pissed because you did not read the statement at the start and believed I was asking for cash, then you got annoyed when your comments got flagged because of your rudeness.
Isn't that precisely what you did also? Plus you were generally rude to me and virtually everyone who agreed in this topic evident from your posts.
The director was rude and acted immature, yet I get punished for asking for people to be nice and down voting someone like yourself who is swearing at people, calling people butt hurt and thinking they can treat others badly? Then you bounty me for disliking you, as if disliking a rude comment is some great offense? :L