Set building

[DeletedUser3434]

Thanks for screwing up my frozen orc set. Now they dont work.

 

[DeletedUser9601]

Thanks for screwing up my frozen orc set. Now they dont work.

I'm in the same boat. But it turns out that we were getting a benefit we weren't supposed to for the last 3 months. So I try not to think of it as "Inno took something from me" but rather "I got a nice boost for 3 months that wasn't intended." Your mileage may vary.

 

[Xelenia]

I would like to refer you to rule number 6 of the game rules:

6. Bugs
It is prohibited to exploit bugs or faults in the games' programming and during gameplay that could represent an advantage for you or for other players.

Each player is required to report any bug immediately to the Support team.

Benefits derived from exploiting bugs may need to be reimbursed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was a bug that was not fix in a timely manner, allowing many of the players to exploit it. Rather than reimbursing the goods and the benefit received during this exploitation, we have chosen to make the players aware of the fix for them to better adjust their cities accordingly.

You were not screwed out of anything, you have not experienced any loss.

Xelenia

 

[Ashrem]

While the OP's message was a bit unreasonably testy, there was absolutely no way that any of us could have know this was a bug. It gives all the appearance of working exactly as intended and we were never told any different until today. It is not very nice to imply players are exploiting in this case. It is a bit rude.

 

[Rathoril]

Didn't realize it was a bug. Agree with Ashrem.

Very glad I chose to get burning pools from the last event now that my mana fountains are less effective... although even with the nerf they are still better than willows.

 

[SoggyShorts]

6. Bugs
It is prohibited to exploit bugs or faults in the games' programming and during gameplay that could represent an advantage for you or for other players.
Each player is required to report any bug immediately to the Support team.
Benefits derived from exploiting bugs may need to be reimbursed.

Booo hissss
We asked plenty of times how roads and sets worked, and discussed at length what was possible. At no point did anyone give us even the slightest hint that only combinations of different buildings in a set could be used as a road, and that anything else was a bug.

No one should be accused of using an exploit in this instance.

 

[DeletedUser9601]

No one should be accused of using an exploit in this instance.

Agreed. In fact, the wording describing how street connections work in the various tool-tips give no indication this was a bug. I think its fine to retroactively decide this. Frankly what I did with Frozen Fountains felt a bit exploit-y. I'd rather get better-balanced rewards in the future if Inno doesn't need to worry about people stringing together 15+ of the same set buildings to get around the need for roads.

But don't say we were exploiting anything. Especially when several of us, including myself and Soggy, made posts indicating our plans to do so.

 

[Mykan]

We asked plenty of times how roads and sets worked, and discussed at length what was possible. At no point did anyone give us even the slightest hint that only combinations of different buildings in a set could be used as a road, and that anything else was a bug.

We did ask but we asked on the forum and we know that the forum volunteers can't read the developers minds, would be nice and scarier if they could .
So it is very likely they had no information to correct the queries and like us explored it as it arrived.

Definitely some communication issues regarding sets but I can live with a mistake and the communication has as a whole been improving.

No one should be accused of using an exploit in this instance.

I believe the point of the post about the bugs was not one to accuse anyone of exploiting it, but to point out that an unexpected benefit had been gained. The change is not "screwing" the people involved but correcting the overly generous benefits. An attempt to change the perspective from "I was hard done by" to "Oh I got more than I should have, lucky me"

 

[SoggyShorts]

For set buildings it works slightly differently: The building itself needs a road connection to the Main Hall. When set buildings are placed right next to each other and only 1 has a connection to the Main Hall, it counts as if all these set buildings have that connection

I just read through all of the live and Beta threads regarding set buildings when they first came out, and that's the only inno quote I could find.

 

[DeletedUser9601]

I think language is important ("bug" vs. "exploit," etc.), but for me, it comes down to official responses. In this case, where the bug/exploit was fixed by fixing the issue, I have no complaints. But I do worry about the threat of "taking back" goods/resources/gold/whatever gained from a bug. A lot of games I've played in the past toed this line, and admittedly it can be a challenging set of decisions for the developers. But I'd hope that so long as a player is not acting with malice, or doing something that clearly contradicts the stated intent of an in-game mechanic, that the fix will always be just to make the mechanics work correctly.

I always go back to my days in WoW, in part because that game had (has, I guess) a long lifespan, and had so many updates and changes, and had such amazing breadth, that there was always some bug or exploit. And I think those developers did a good job of only handing out punishment when someone had clearly figured out an unintended game mechanic and profited immensely from it.

In my instance, this "exploit" made 6 of my 15 Frozen Fountains go from about 10 mana/square/hour to 12 mana/sq/hr. Not a massive boost, but significant (17%), due to the lack of roads needed. Still better than anything I could get (Willows/Libraries), but the flip side is that I would have been pretty annoyed, based on tooltip information in-game, if I kept opening crates on Frozen Fountain day expecting to get the set bonus "no roads" connection.

 

[ekarat]

I don't think the official interpretation is in any way inherently obvious. In fact, it still doesn't completely make sense to me.

No, I never got a bonus I shouldn't have because I didn't have multiples of a building until this most recent event, though if I had known, I might not have worked to get multiples.

In fact, I'm still not sure I completely understand how this works -- if you have multiples of the same building in the same set, they effectively count as belonging to different sets? If I have 2/2/1/1/0 copies of spring set buildings, do I have a set of 4 and a set of 2? And which buildings need roads?

 

[DeletedUser9601]

If I have 2/2/1/1/0 copies of spring set buildings, do I have a set of 4 and a set of 2? And which buildings need roads?

I read it to mean: so long as each building touches a building that is different from it, then the connection counts. So in your case, so long as each "2 building" touches 1 of the "1 buildings," they'll all be a chain, and 1 road connection for the whole set will be enough.

But if you had the buildings like this (apologies for ASCII art) where you had 2 A buildings, 2 E buildings, 1 C building and 1 D building:
[Ax][E][E]
[C][D]
[A][road]
The E building on the right would also need a road. Because it is a E building, and it only touches another E. Whereas the A building up top touches an E building, and the A building below touches a C building.

Edit: changed B to E, since B triggered bold font

 

[Xelenia]

I believe the point of the post about the bugs was not one to accuse anyone of exploiting it, but to point out that an unexpected benefit had been gained. The change is not "screwing" the people involved but correcting the overly generous benefits. An attempt to change the perspective from "I was hard done by" to "Oh I got more than I should have, lucky me"

Thank you Mykan

Spoiler

Perhaps if I had added, "intentionally...or un-intentionally" ...

 

[SoggyShorts]

Perhaps if I had added, "intentionally...or un-intentionally" ...

I think the problem lies in how gamers see the word "exploit".

Spoiler: The simple everyday definition

make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource).
"500 companies sprang up to exploit this new technology"
synonyms: utilize, harness, use, make use of, turn/put to good use, make the most of, capitalize on, benefit from;
informalcash in on
"we should exploit this new technology"

Spoiler: Game exploits

In video games, an exploit is the use of a bug or glitches, game system, rates, hit boxes, speed or level design etc. by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers.

Gamers often feel that the use of an exploit is cheating, and rarely refer to unintentional use of a bug as exploiting.
Here's an example: If, due to a bug, Golems started taking 30% less damage from everything, but all that a player noticed was that they are awesome, so they trained and used Golems more, then calling that an exploit would get you some hate mail. If players knew that Golems were bugged, said nothing, and then trained bunches of them, then they are taking advantage of a bug and exploiting it.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's about intent, and saying that players benefited from an "exploit" sounds like calling them cheaters.
A bug is the devs fault.
An exploit is the players fault.

 

[kctanzen]

I had a partial winter set (fountain / vortex / troll) won while in Dwarves. So, I wasn't aiming to get the mana bonuses, just liked to collect the prizes
i don't regret having them up while I had the luxury of space (choice not to upgrade actually) with them in my city and gaining the coin / culture / tools / dust.
I do not for one bit regret that I took them down yesterday and really only had a net loss of about 940ish dust production and 2500 culture.
I could replace most of that culture with a Phoenix nest from this last event .. but need the flexibility right now for the darn mushroom farms!

I feel the footprint used and lack of flexibility of these larger sets doesn't justify their rewards back to me.
The change to "work as intended" requiring each unique set to have a road connection further strengthens my opinion and will make me even less likely to choose pursuing those types of things in the future.

 

[HJK84]

I'm on the fences about this whole ordeal.

Where once I was thinking of stacking certain Set buildings was clever, to now, it being not as good as I thought.
I also recall many people talking about these things, and we all were under the impression that it was all "fair game"

Come to now, it really wasn't. And out of the blue the blame was put under; it was a bug and not the way we intended it to work.

My FS' AM, said, that to me just sounds like a "escape" code for devs. Right after a game update Set Buildings begin to work differently, and to fix it they do this and say, oh it was a bug this whole time.
Where as, Imo. it should've maybe been mentioned in the Release Notes, something along the lines of: Set Buildings update; due to a bug, bla bla bla will now work as intended.

I know how business' work. And if you outright call them out on such things, and call them liars... boy oh boy do they get upset. But they know, you can't do anything about it.

Personally I respect and fully back the reasoning behind the "bug fix". To me it makes all the sense in the world.
1 set, 1 set building of each to make the set +1 road connection. Extra set buildings would need another +1 road connection.
I love it!
I can say it doesn't affect my city at all. Only on my future planning with upcoming Set Building Events, if any

I just feel bad for the ones who planned and worked out their cities according to set buildings working as they did. Imo. the only thing they lost is, time.
Time to now, re arrange and plan a work around, if necessary.
I would especially feel bad, and mad even.... if $ was spent to stack up many of the same set buildings, to now realize, oh crap I just rented these things and I feel like it wasn't worth the $, lol

Whole ordeal just smelled bad. But understandable, if true.
I would add, a heart warm; "sorry for the inconvenience this might of caused some of our players" might of gone a long way.
But that's just me, a compassionate gentle soul

 

[DeletedUser3434]

I would like to refer you to rule number 6 of the game rules:

6. Bugs
It is prohibited to exploit bugs or faults in the games' programming and during gameplay that could represent an advantage for you or for other players.

Each player is required to report any bug immediately to the Support team.

Benefits derived from exploiting bugs may need to be reimbursed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was a bug that was not fix in a timely manner, allowing many of the players to exploit it. Rather than reimbursing the goods and the benefit received during this exploitation, we have chosen to make the players aware of the fix for them to better adjust their cities accordingly.

You were not screwed out of anything, you have not experienced any loss.

Xelenia

You say "exploit" I play the quest earn the points it says I need to get the prize Frozen Orc. I hover over the frozen orc building and it says ONE building needs to be connected to the road for all to work. It was connected per instructions, how is that "exploit"

 

[DeletedUser3434]

Except if you hover over the building Frozen Orc. it says ONE needs be connected to road to work.

I'm on the fences about this whole ordeal.

Where once I was thinking of stacking certain Set buildings was clever, to now, it being not as good as I thought.
I also recall many people talking about these things, and we all were under the impression that it was all "fair game"

Come to now, it really wasn't. And out of the blue the blame was put under; it was a bug and not the way we intended it to work.

My FS' AM, said, that to me just sounds like a "escape" code for devs. Right after a game update Set Buildings begin to work differently, and to fix it they do this and say, oh it was a bug this whole time.
Where as, Imo. it should've maybe been mentioned in the Release Notes, something along the lines of: Set Buildings update; due to a bug, bla bla bla will now work as intended.

I know how business' work. And if you outright call them out on such things, and call them liars... boy oh boy do they get upset. But they know, you can't do anything about it.

Personally I respect and fully back the reasoning behind the "bug fix". To me it makes all the sense in the world.
1 set, 1 set building of each to make the set +1 road connection. Extra set buildings would need another +1 road connection.
I love it!
I can say it doesn't affect my city at all. Only on my future planning with upcoming Set Building Events, if any

I just feel bad for the ones who planned and worked out their cities according to set buildings working as they did. Imo. the only thing they lost is, time.
Time to now, re arrange and plan a work around, if necessary.
I would especially feel bad, and mad even.... if $ was spent to stack up many of the same set buildings, to now realize, oh crap I just rented these things and I feel like it wasn't worth the $, lol

Whole ordeal just smelled bad. But understandable, if true.
I would add, a heart warm; "sorry for the inconvenience this might of caused some of our players" might of gone a long way.
But that's just me, a compassionate gentle soul

 

[DeletedUser3434]

Except if you hover over the building Frozen Orc it says ONE building has to be connected for all to work.

 

[Ashrem]

Personally I respect and fully back the reasoning behind the "bug fix". To me it makes all the sense in the world.

Really? Did you consider that it is impossible to get the full advertised bonus on one of each building unless you have multiples of some others? Which means that under the modified rules it is not possible to get the intended (advertised) effect from one of each building in a set.