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.
====
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
---
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.
---
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.
Not sure why you got that idea from... I used to earn $650k per day in the company. The company earned $7.5 per day and chose to pay its members varying amounts from $350-950k. I was in the middle of that. Everyone had a drop by $300k meaning their were some unlucky lower members who are likely stuck being paid $50k.
I question why I couldn't simply share this without people thinking I am begging for cash or Beerstein going fully insane over the fact that people who work would like to be paid. Maybe I just valued the community as being better than this.
Edit; Nothing emphasises that you are childish more than when you come to a topic only to complain about said topic and then spam me with bounties, Beerstein. Thanks for proving that point.
A company wouldn't hire employee's unless they need them, they should also set a pay and stick to it, not ask for peoples opinions and then lower it anyway despite the employees disliking it. I am not asking, wanting or desiring people to send me cash. I think doing that is just ruining the fun of the game. I just hope to find a better job where if director asks for an employee's opinion, they actually listen and not threaten me.
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...
Yeah, definitely seems to be a throttle on the number of eggs being received sadly :/ Haven't seen anyone getting a set, plus you need 96 tokens to get all the awards, so most people wont ever get a chance to get those :/
Issue has been fixed now, though graph will still remain derped. Not sure how to close this topic...
In addition, U-GOT-SMOKED [1850906], down voting my posts in retaliation for getting a down vote on a rude comment the staff removed comes across as childish. I only wanted help with a broken part on the website
(Was meant to be an edit. Clicked edit, but for some odd reason it posted twice, guess that's another bug)
Ok, this should help out. As far as I am aware the eggs do not appear on the items page, judging this based on it being the only place where the 'Easter Eggs' thing is not highlighted
So I became a donator via donator packs a while back, however it appears their has been a glitch occurring a few times now where the number of donator days did not increase on the graph despite me being a donator and one occasion where my number of donator days went down.
Its difficult to really explain the issue, but while my number of donator days on the packs have been decreasing daily, I'm pretty sure the number of days I have been a donator do not match the number of days I've been a donator.
Even if that is not the case the graph appears to be messing up every now and again for no reason, to the extent is subtracted days I had been a donator :s
So I became a donator via donator packs a while back, however it appears their has been a glitch occurring a few times now where the number of donator days did not increase on the graph despite me being a donator. Yet, my donator days on the packs have been decreasing daily.
I know the feeling, I have some complete nitwit trying to mug me constantly. Granted they got lucky when I was away, but each time he's been mugging me recently he's got less than $40K so not sure why they bother. I just find it really stupid of people to try constantly mugging the same person over and over despite them obviously not having much on them :L
There is a bounty on you, just wait for it to run out that's the best you can do. In honesty the game kind of sucks when it comes to being attacked. No matter what rank you are people will still attack you and chain-attack you, not helped by what I believe may be a glitch where a single attack repeats itself over and over.
AeonFlux [1864224]Was 380m up today and am -50m right now lol.
Quite while you're up. Suddenly it goes all messy and you won't realize you lose a lot in a row..Ace beats your king and 2 beats your three.
Pretty sure this is programmed into the game now - whenever you start earning more money that passes the daily increase amount that Ched allows - then the game alters its difficulty and gives you situations like that.
Not to mention the game re-shuffles the deck randomly, sometimes without notifying the player, which can result in an unfair and unpredictable game.
Makav3li [1855260]What determines the modifier , ive given it a shot with 100k stakes and for f**k sakes @ 15% modifier its enough that your making no f**king money . They rig the thing so bad that on 80% of occasions when on J i will go lower and a higher card comes.
Apart from nice graphics the game is shit and the same goes for this RESPO update , apart from a graphic update nothing else seems to be done .
This - a billion times. Used to enjoy Hi-Low as the only game I played, now its sucks due to the RESPO - its now badly coded and it alters based on how to best win your money.
- Using chat to record, catalogue and assign bugs to developers is very difficult. Also, the bugs & issues forum is already released.
Was not on about using chat to record, catalogue or assign bugs. I was simply pointing out that players created their own threads in general the second RESPO was available to talk about Bugs & Issues.The announcement stated 'This week' so maybe it has been released, however their are already multiple other bugs & issues thread that has collated a lot of issues found by players. It would have been easier to just search them than get every player who found an issue to repost their same comment in a new forum. For example; http://www.torn.com/forums.php#!p=treads&f=2&t=15908136&b=0&a=0
- The alternative is the 'don't fix what aint broken' approach, which would see users slowly dwindling and eventually the game's death. We were running on a seriously out of date engine which needed drastic changes fast to stay with the times. In my opinion it's far better to make a change which causes a small loss of players who were pretty much inactive anyway, a change which should keep the players who get used to it for the long term and certainly improve retention rates of new players via advertising. I think the saying 'To make omelettes you've got to break a few eggs' fits nicely here. It's an investment for a far longer life. The players who left were mainly non-donators and who only logged in once every few days, but accumulatively accounted for 10% of daily players, we've proven this in generated reports to confirm.
The main enjoyment a lot of people have with Torn was that it was simplistic and a basic system that was easy to use on all devices and platforms. Their were ways to update without a complete overhaul of the old system - even ifa lot of aspects were kept to the text-based method on the new system for example. Another idea would have been a text-based version on a new system which would have paved the change to RESPO a lot more effectively. RESPO has been worked on for a long while - yet its overall introduction seems rushed out. I understand that a bug-test or something along those lines would not be able to find all the issues - however in its current state their are a plethora of issues. While you may view the loss of 10% of non-donators as not a big deal - you should hopefully realise that means a 10% lossof potential donators/new players. Regardless, the phrasing used in the announcement came off as 'harsh' and unsympathetic towards those who have chosen not to play due to RESPO.
- The time-scales are as accurate as we can provide. If they come sooner, good, if they come later, then fair enough because they are only estimates. Setting solid dates is almost impossible. To address your other question - RESPO isn't that buggy for the majority of people. I suppose because we've had such a good history it may seem like the smallest problems are huge, but in comparison to what RESPO was like in alpha testing, it is almost bug free. 'I have to click twice instead of once' for instance isn't a huge problem in our eyes, but one that will be resolved in time. 'I just duplicated 6,000 dirtybombs' would be a big problem.
Surely the 'big problems' would have been Beta tested by someone. Most of the new updates seem intentionally designed to lengthen the time spent on the website or simply unnecessary such as the 'map' idea for travelling. I know those are not as big an issue as your example of duplicating items - however a lot of aspects of RESPO seem more intent on changing the old system regardless of whether its an overall improvement. The main bugs really should have been found - especially if your example is actually an issue currently.
- No, it was never intended to be that way in the first place. You knew this system was coming in exactly this fashion due to screenshots provided almost a year in advance, but no one mentioned anything. We're going with the flow of user feedback and changing based on what people think. They weren't simply 'one click' for the majority of people on mobile phones, they had to zoom in to the correct area, and try and tap the text links which were totally not optimised for mobile use. It was a mess of zooming in and out constantly. Our response was a system where you bring down a dropdown, and then click the area you want to go to, which in my opinion is far better than the previous system. Now we're changing it so most of the vital buttons are always visible, with the downside of perhaps not immediately knowing which buttons do what and mistakenly tapping the wrong buttons occasionally.
Over a year ago the RESPO was in Alpha version - several issues many players believed would be fixed. I for one found out about RESPO only a month or so prior to the update. Many new players for example would have no idea what RESPO would be like as their was barely anything about RESPO in the forums - the Facebook page being the only source of screenshots I could find. As for the situation you described - its the exact same issue that people have been mentioning prior when 'flying' - that the laptop has a similar situation. Regardless, once again, it something that seems oddly specific to a different version via focusing on the mobile and tablet versions.
- Because there are thousands of different devices out there. It's far easier to take individual user responses who happen to be on a device which doesn't work so well, and go from there. We did test on many devices beforehand, including all of the most popular ones. But it's difficult to physically get hold of the next hundred or so devices and individually test Torn on each one. We did use emulators, but these apparently do not completely effectively emulate the different devices as the site was working well on them.
Their were ways around this - a private Beta for example to certain users depending on their device. I understand not all of them could have been checked via this method - however at the current layout it seems like the 'one style fits all' approach which doesn't really work.
- Animated images and countdown timers are not the cause of the speed decrease, at all. It's mainly about static requests to the server and JS / CSS minification + compression.
I'm confused as to how its slower then with 10% less players and being an updated version...
- Yes, all of this is a sacrifice for the better future of Torn. Most players are enjoying RESPO, and older players are slowly getting used to it - although to unlearn 9 years of habit it'll take a while. And no, the whole team is making changes to our dev server daily, and we're releasing these changes twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays.
10% of players left due to RESPO, the 90% remaining is about 70% older players who have no choice but to get used to it as (put simply) the way your implementing the update is based mostly around the idea that any who choose to leave will be replaced with new players who are attracted to the server via advertising. If you're team is making changes daily then it should really have been pointed out in the announcement also - as this is the stage where a lot of players are no doubt asking the question of how long certain issues will take to be fixed. If you give them a list of the fixed issues every now and again that would also help - as I'm still seeing issues from Day 1 that are still around.
Not intending to argue or tell you how things need to be done - just simply a fan and donator who isconfused at the way the situation is being handled.
