Upcoming Patch Preview - R51 Discussion

Unknown

finwe wrote:

I am slightly confused on this. Is this a way to trade iso between members? Is it a second daily reward that turns donations into iso?

As I understood it:
Each Alliance member will contribute to a fund. For example every member that logs in and plays a round will raise the fund by X Iso.
After a day this fund is distributed between the Alliance members. So to speak a second daily reward that turns Alliance activity into Iso.

If this is the case then it may be worth reconsidering the lower activity members of alliances as they will be riding the gravy train and reducing the amount of benefit to other alliance members who are more active? Im sure some alliances already do this but I know mine was trying to avoid that sort of behaviour where possible

Verno5x

CNash wrote:

I read it as "players who aren't in an alliance will be forced to pay X amount of ISO per day, which will be distributed amongst players who are in an an alliance". Which, to be honest, sounds a bit **** - a daily "non-alliance tax"?

Please clarify. I'm in an alliance myself but if my interpretation is right, then that's a terrible feature, on a par with the PVP skip tax.

Reading the announcement and interpreting it this way takes a lot of effort. It's clearly something to reward people for being active and in an Alliance. There is nothing in this announcement to even imply that players not in Alliances will be penalized (other than not getting the bonus ISO that others are getting).

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

Fluffyudders wrote:

IceIX wrote:

- Agents bearing low spec devices such as an iPhone 4 may get a warning when starting the game stating that their experience may be substandard.

As an Android user, I whole-heartedly endorse this message.

I'm sure there are Android phones with similar low specs as compared to a 3.5-year-old iPhone.

Except the android phone would have to be 5 years old to have those specs...

Konman

Cutesy, in character messages are fun and all, but actual real descriptions of changes would be really helpful. I don't like the alliance changes on first read, because the reading of said change is open to interpretation, and thus confusion. From the one line description of the "iso sharing" change, there have been about 4 different thoughts expressed about what It really means. My opinion on it has already been posted by a few others here, in that it appears to just screw over non-alliance members.

Better explanations would be beneficial. Thanks

CNash

Verno5x wrote:

CNash wrote:

I read it as "players who aren't in an alliance will be forced to pay X amount of ISO per day, which will be distributed amongst players who are in an an alliance". Which, to be honest, sounds a bit **** - a daily "non-alliance tax"?

Please clarify. I'm in an alliance myself but if my interpretation is right, then that's a terrible feature, on a par with the PVP skip tax.

Reading the announcement and interpreting it this way takes a lot of effort. It's clearly something to reward people for being active and in an Alliance. There is nothing in this announcement to even imply that players not in Alliances will be penalized (other than not getting the bonus ISO that others are getting).

It's not that much of a stretch. The key phrase that needs interpreting is "Each day, other active Agents will contribute Iso-8". Does "other active Agents" mean everyone playing the game, or does the "other" imply that only players without an alliance will contribute ISO? And what does "contribute" mean here - do they actually have to contribute the ISO that they have earned, or does this just mean that the "pot" of bonus Alliance ISO is increased for every person who plays, with no detriment to the non-Alliance users?

I second the notion that while in-universe patch notes are nice, they're also an easy way for the developers to make things deliberately vague. I'm not sure what kind of purpose giving vague patch notes serves - if they don't want us to know about new features until they're implemented, why write patch notes at all?

KaioShinDE

The other agent bit is just flavor text, it'll come from the system. It won't be taken from other players.

Unknown

The way I interpret it is that when you log on for the first time in that day, you give everyone in your alliance but yourself ISO. So if everyone logs on in a 20 member alliance, you and each other member will get 19 batches of ISO.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Team_Xtreme wrote:

Any word on the heartbleed issue? viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6093

Not at the second. Last followup we had internally everything was fine. A couple of the data servers use Amazon services but there isn't any communications or RAM storage on them that would be worthwhile to anyone. A malicious hacker would be able to see that yes, in fact, IceIX just requested and received the data for the Bad is Good event and the results of that search are thusly.

I see from that linked thread that supposedly we're non compliant somewhere though, so I'll double check. It shouldn't be coming up in any case since those cloud services were fixed by Amazon, so I'm not sure what's up. Best to be safe.

Come on guys, you showed your utter incompetence on designing the server component in a dozen ways but this really blows the gasket. The world rates this problem as a 11 on the 1-10 scale (read ANY related article). How hard it is to upgrade your OpenSSL to the most recent one without the problem really? I'm sure you can find a way to do the right thing once in a while when it is really important.

hex706f726368

Just came here to add my voice to the chorus of complaints about the event tokens not turning into heroics anymore. Adding a grace period for casual players seems reasonable, but making it permanent is disappointing.

_RiO_

IceIX wrote:

Team_Xtreme wrote:

Any word on the heartbleed issue? viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6093

Not at the second. Last followup we had internally everything was fine. A couple of the data servers use Amazon services but there isn't any communications or RAM storage on them that would be worthwhile to anyone. A malicious hacker would be able to see that yes, in fact, IceIX just requested and received the data for the Bad is Good event and the results of that search are thusly.

I see from that linked thread that supposedly we're non compliant somewhere though, so I'll double check. It shouldn't be coming up in any case since those cloud services were fixed by Amazon, so I'm not sure what's up. Best to be safe.

Very nice that you've investigated your server architecture for vulnerability to Heartbleed and made an effort to weed it out. I hope your triage team will show similar effort when fixing what the issue actually discussed. Namely; the fact that the Android game client (you know; the thing users install on their phones?) is confirmed susceptible to reverse Heartbleed.

Would also still be mightily interested to know if the game clients for the other platforms are susceptible as well...

IceIX

Lyrian wrote:

To me, this reads as "members of an alliance receive an ISO-8 stipend based upon the number of active players in the alliance each day."
This would mean: 1) Larger alliances yield higher stipends 2) Everyone in the alliance has to play every day to receive the maximum stipend for an alliance's size

Is this the correct interpretation, IceIX?

That would be correct, yes. This is not a "non-Alliance tax" or taking anything away from those that don't want to be in an Alliance. It's a bonus for those that *are* in an active one.

IceIX

_RiO_ wrote:

Very nice that you've investigated your server architecture for vulnerability to Heartbleed and made an effort to weed it out. I hope your triage team will show similar effort when fixing what the issue actually discussed. Namely; the fact that the Android game client (you know; the thing users install on their phones?) is confirmed susceptible to reverse Heartbleed.

Would also still be mightily interested to know if the game clients for the other platforms are susceptible as well...

I explicitly stated in that reply that according to that app it seems that we're non-compliant somewhere, so I'll follow up and double check.

Cousin Simpson

Chimaera wrote:

IceIX wrote:

This is true, but we get *far* more CS complaints that users lost their special tokens or now can't use them for the pack they wanted than the relatively few power gamer/min-maxers that specifically wait post event to turn in "sub-standard" tokens.

Weird. I always would have thought the more casual people would snap crack the token the second they got it.

N00bs at least are likely to have roster cramps, so that they won't open it unless they have an open slot.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

To me, this reads as "members of an alliance receive an ISO-8 stipend based upon the number of active players in the alliance each day."
This would mean: 1) Larger alliances yield higher stipends 2) Everyone in the alliance has to play every day to receive the maximum stipend for an alliance's size

Is this the correct interpretation, IceIX?

That would be correct, yes. This is not a "non-Alliance tax" or taking anything away from those that don't want to be in an Alliance. It's a bonus for those that *are* in an active one.

You're not daft though, you understand how this works. Not only are the best covers being reserved for people in large (paid for) alliances, but now they are going to get a bunch of extra ISO to level those covers.

I get that you're making a stack of money from people increasing alliances but that is because there is huge in game benefits for doing so. I know MMO's can't resist the urge to make people group up or piss off but to see it in a match 3 mobile game is mental. Along with the more ridiculous changes to tokens you've literally killed any reason for me to spend another penny on the game, now Marvel Heroes is getting it.

Unknown

People need to relax until we got more details. It's ok to debate but why get angry over what could be a very minor bonus ISO for alliances? There are bigger fish to fry.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

- Pending applicants to an Alliance are now not able to chat with Alliance members. This prevents unscrupulous Agents from creating dummy accounts to spy on rival Alliances.

Who would ever do that?...... *cough*

Unknown

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

IceIX wrote:

- Pending applicants to an Alliance are now not able to chat with Alliance members. This prevents unscrupulous Agents from creating dummy accounts to spy on rival Alliances.

Who would ever do that?...... *cough*

"At last, I will intercept DjangoUnbuffed's secret alliance strategies!! Wait, this is exactly the same as their public alliance thread, but with three times as many posts about twerking??"

IceIX

gamar wrote:

"At last, I will intercept DjangoUnbuffed's secret alliance strategies!! Wait, this is exactly the same as their public alliance thread, but with three times as many posts about twerking??"

Dang it TU1, you're supposed to make sure you deny all the existing applicants! They can't know about our plans to take over the MPQ-verse by the power of the twerk!

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

gamar wrote:

"At last, I will intercept DjangoUnbuffed's secret alliance strategies!! Wait, this is exactly the same as their public alliance thread, but with three times as many posts about twerking??"

Dang it TU1, you're supposed to make sure you deny all the existing applicants! They can't know about our plans to take over the MPQ-verse by the power of the twerk!

Ahh, the power of the twerk. Much underestimated, it is hmmmmm....

And yes, Yoda is in our alliance.

Edit: and he is a mad twerker.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

"At last, I will intercept DjangoUnbuffed's secret alliance strategies!! Wait, this is exactly the same as their public alliance thread, but with three times as many posts about twerking??"

We have secret alliance strategies? I'm always the last to know...