Layering working as expected

[collax]

I would like you to explain to us dense people the scenario in which this motivates people to power level and what sort of heavy exploitation would occur. I'm genuinely curious as to what people thing is actually going to happen.

I've watched a lot of classic streaming and not once have I seen any exploiting of layering and this is by people who are actively trying to get BiS for their level so would have a lot of motivation to abuse the system now, which they aren't.

There is literally the video of the one getting multiple arena chest for the trinket with layering.

Also you don't imagine how far some of the hardcore crowd that played on private server are willing to go when they find something like that to abuse. And they do impact all the server (just look for the devilsaur mafia for example, with the gold they got by doing that, they literally were able to buy world boss by paying guilds to stop any other player from trying to get close, if you were not part of the guild that handled the mafia, it was impossible to get close from any world boss. If they manage to get the same amount of gold with layer abuse, they will lock down entire zone at will by paying pvp guild).

[AceofH]

- Asks to get into beta
- Gets access to beta
- Plays the beta
- Finds a bug
- Opens a ticket

OH WAIT, NO, LET'S BITCH ON FORUMS INSTEAD

this isn't a bug though, this is working as intended.

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And if they wanted to fix the abuse of this chest, they'd probably implement some kind of hidden debuff that prevents you from opening more than one of these chests in 15 minutes, instead of scrapping the entire Layering system. What did you expect to achieve with your rant?

I mean, when you go to a medieval faire, do you expect them to release a couple dozen rats, a handful infected with the Plague, just for immersion's sake?
Because that's what the Classic launch without Layering would be: not many characters would get old.

so we have to implement one fix to adjust for another fix. or how about we just don't use layering. go ahead. use sharding in the 1-10 zones like they normally wanted. that fixes everything.
1) congestion in low level zones.
2) server load at launch.
3) keeps rare resources rare, unlike layering.
4) prevents layer hopping for exploitation.

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This. Also, beta is for bugs exactly like this so they can be addressed and squashed before going live. If it goes live and people are abusing layering to farm black lotus and Gromsblood, or to farm high-level rares and mobs for traveler's backpacks, then it's an issue. Until then, the appropriate response in beta is to report it every time it comes up and push to get it fixed.

except its not a bug. how can you people not understand this. when they announced layering i predicted exactly this would happen.

[sopeonaroap]

Did you play Beta / Stresstests ?
It was literally impossible to finish quests or find questmobs.
Layering is needed the first 2-3 weeks.

I also prefer layering over too many opened servers. If they open too many servers we will have the same problems as on live: Many servers die out after the hype is gone or have a totally unbalanced faction ratio.

it wasn't needed in vanilla. you folks like to say you want classic, but you don't want classic

[FelPlague]

Could be for the whole phase 1 so potentially months. And even if it's only 2 weeks, it's still gamebreaking. You only need 1 day of play to get to stv.

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Yeah but there is still the nodes/chest abuse ? (And i don't see how this can be fixed)
https://clips.twitch.tv/MagnificentFastSageMoreCowbell

shame that sharding was going to prevent this but then people cried so much they had to move to layering

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Mhm, which is enough time to permanently ruin the server economy.

how so? if there is only 3 layers that only means triple the goods, really not that economy breaking.
specially much better then dynamic respawns or other ways to deal

but hey yall didnt want sharding, which did not have this problem.

[Bhanzai]

There is literally the video of the one getting multiple arena chest for the trinket with layering.

Also you don't imagine how far some of the hardcore crowd that played on private server are willing to go when they find something like that to abuse. And they do impact all the server (just look for the devilsaur mafia for example, with the gold they got by doing that, they literally were able to buy world boss by paying guilds to stop any other player from trying to get close, if you were not part of the guild that handled the mafia, it was impossible to get close from any world boss. If they manage to get the same amount of gold with layer abuse, they will lock down entire zone at will by paying pvp guild).

I've seen that video but I am capable of using some critical thinking skills. Now I believe that there are going to be far more players than on beta which means that there will be a lot more people going for chests which means that the likelihood of having someone who likes you enough to try to get you a chest on another layer that doesnt have several other people trying for the same chest is small.

You're 2nd argument has nothing to do with layering and everything to do with pvp. By the time world bosses come out layering will be gone and guilds will pvp to keep world bosses to themselves. Newsflash that happened in vanilla, you know, with no layering.


We also have no clue how many ppl they are limiting on each layer now or what that number will be in live.

All you people are drama queens.

[oplawlz]

shame that sharding was going to prevent this but then people cried so much they had to move to layering

but hey yall didnt want sharding, which did not have this problem.

Replacing sharding with different named sharding is not what anyone wanted or asked for.

[taishar68]

There is literally the video of the one getting multiple arena chest for the trinket with layering.

Also you don't imagine how far some of the hardcore crowd that played on private server are willing to go when they find something like that to abuse. And they do impact all the server (just look for the devilsaur mafia for example, with the gold they got by doing that, they literally were able to buy world boss by paying guilds to stop any other player from trying to get close, if you were not part of the guild that handled the mafia, it was impossible to get close from any world boss. If they manage to get the same amount of gold with layer abuse, they will lock down entire zone at will by paying pvp guild).

I'm not saying that what you're saying is impossible, I don't know about all possibilities, but think about it pragmatically. Say there is this cabal that plans to corner the economy, as you're suggesting, by layer hopping for gold...to do this on a scale necessary to wreak the havoc you are suggesting you need a really large group effort, like hundreds of people planning to do this together in accord, planned out and so on and so forth...and that means it will not go unnoticed. Unless the community is asleep all the time, they'll catch on fairly quick. Reporting abusive behavior or exploits is your friend. If you're talking about a handful of players...I highly doubt they'll do any widespread damage.

As for world first type things...we're not children (most of us). If you care enough about that sort of thing, you know to ignore someone who exploited their way to the top. Barry Bonds is not in the hall of fame despite his records, because he cheated.

Just my $0.02

[FelPlague]

Replacing sharding with different named sharding is not what anyone wanted or asked for.

sharding and layering are very different, and layering is even worse.

[AceofH]

sharding and layering are very different, and layering is even worse.

they are not that different. and all i saw from most of the anti sharding community was
1) guarantees that it was limited to low level zones only.
2) guarantees that it would be removed as fast as possible and never seen again. no bringing it back "as needed" for stuff like holidays or AQ.

[FelPlague]

they are not that different. and all i saw from most of the anti sharding community was
1) guarantees that it was limited to low level zones only.
2) guarantees that it would be removed as fast as possible and never seen again. no bringing it back "as needed" for stuff like holidays or AQ.

they are very different


sharding= just starting zones for a few weeks, changes you to shards that need players, either if yours is too empty or too full
layering= only changes you when you join another party, effects the entire continent and will go till phase 2, including all high level zones.


so come on man, do some research.

[AceofH]

they are very different


sharding= just starting zones for a few weeks, changes you to shards that need players, either if yours is too empty or too full
layering= only changes you when you join another party, effects the entire continent and will go till phase 2, including all high level zones.


so come on man, do some research.

they work very similarly. the only real difference is the SIZE of the shard.

[Tojara]

It's at worse, until the end of phase one? There's no world bosses in phase one, so the only real application is rare resources (devilsaur leather, rich thorium, and black lotus). All of which is a problem, especially for the economies on said server.

Keep in mind that layering probably won't be as extreme on the live servers. There was an absurd amount of people doing stress test with limited servers available, it's unlikely that they would need dozens upon dozens of layers for each individual server when it goes live (especially considering there will be more servers).

There's lots of ways they could potentially fix this, beyond keeping an eye on people heavily 'exploiting' this by being on a mega realm with a dozen different layers, and hopping between each of them to net dozens of say black lotus an hour. They could behind the scenes merge people into a specific layer based on social conditions too, for example those in the same guild or occupying friends lists could be merged onto the same layer. This wouldn't completely remove the problem, but it would make it more difficult to pull off. Another more rigid approach would simply make it impossible to hop layers at a frequent rate. What this would mean is that being invited to a friends group (that you know is on another layer) would indeed put you on that layer, but you both wouldn't be able to jump to a different layer (or return to your own) until a period of time elapsed. Finally they could just give players a debuff upon entering a new layer, preventing them from skinning, herbing, mining, or looting chests for 'x' amount of time as well.

I honestly think the benefits of layering far outweigh the negatives though. The spirit of layering is to simply ease each individual zones questing load and potentially increase performance for people in those zones. Does anybody seriously have a problem with people hopping layers to avoid a highly contested area for questing? I don't. I do however take issue with the implications of layering at high levels, at least for resource acquisition. People are naive if they think that certain people won't abuse the living shit out of layering in 45-60 zones if they realize that there are like a dozen layers on their server, and they are one of the first herbalists to reach these zones. What once became a pretty rare sight in finding a black lotus, will now become a factor of ten or more for those first couple weeks. Rare herbs not being that rare have a huge impact on not only a servers economy, but PvP and PvE as well.

Even if it's not Vanilla like, layering wasn't Vanilla like either. While I'd prefer a system without layering, I'd also like to actually play the game upon launch, something I wasn't able to do on a consistent basis over 15 years ago when the game first launched. That said, I think one of my previous suggestions would probably be the best source of action. Changing layers just debuffs your character for 'x' amount of time, preventing them from interacting with nodes, chests, or skinning beasts. Doesn't solve everything, but prevents massive amount of hopping to find one that's relatively empty and ripe with resources.

As far as the clip goes, that's something they need to fix on live servers as well. One of the most annoying things in Legion (and even BFA warmode) was people in combat with you in PvP just vanishing because they were losing by hopping to a different shard. That aspect of the entire system is super stupid.

[FelPlague]

they work very similarly. the only real difference is the SIZE of the shard.

again no, no they dont, and the size may not even be different, i listed above the differences. there is many more but i was simply being summerable to make stuff easeier understood.

[God Save The King]

Yeah but there is still the nodes/chest abuse?

The node/chest abuse requires there to be other active layers that do not have active farmers on them farming those spots. You also need to coordinate and attempt to get people on different layers to do the trick. That specific clip has been debunked, since it was taken from the Beta before layering was implemented, and it was just sharding (which rebalances as you log in, assigning you to the lowest pop one).

You can fix it if you wanted to, but I don't think Blizzard sees it as a legitimate issue, more of a cute edge case of their technology. You could limit people from changing layers for X minutes after gathering a node/chest. You could set the layer as the person who recently opened a node instead of the group leader. Since you'll only have a limited number of people you can exploit on other layers, they could simply make a permanent layer change if you group up with the same people often. Give an hour cooldown for layer changes. List goes on.

[collax]

The node/chest abuse requires there to be other active layers that do not have active farmers on them farming those spots. You also need to coordinate and attempt to get people on different layers to do the trick. That specific clip has been debunked, since it was taken from the Beta before layering was implemented, and it was just sharding (which rebalances as you log in, assigning you to the lowest pop one).

You can fix it if you wanted to, but I don't think Blizzard sees it as a legitimate issue, more of a cute edge case of their technology. You could limit people from changing layers for X minutes after gathering a node/chest. You could set the layer as the person who recently opened a node instead of the group leader. Since you'll only have a limited number of people you can exploit on other layers, they could simply make a permanent layer change if you group up with the same people often. Give an hour cooldown for layer changes. List goes on.

People have done it on the stress test (someone managed to get not 2 but 7 agm in 12 minutes).
As for the not active farmer condition in the same zone, it's easy when you are one of the first lvl 60. Btw people are also testing stuff to exploit layering for even faster levelling (non stop aoe grinding by hopping layer without moving to another zone mean you could get to 60 with less than 4 day played with a good group of mage).

Also rare mobs farming (thing like tidal charm, you just hop layer to try to find the mob you search and you get it alot faster by doing that, same thing about rare hunter pets).

I have seen some of the hardcore crowd from private server literally describe all the system they will be setting with alts in differents layers on different account just to exploit it in the firsts key weeks to get what they want. Once they have gold they can literally control the server the way they want so they will always try to find a way to exploit something if they can see its possible even if you think it isnt.

[Nathanyel]

so we have to implement one fix to adjust for another fix.

I meant that very hypothetically. I'm not saying they even need to fix this.
I realize this trinket is quite strong, but it's not worth it to scrap Layering entirely just for this issue.
The layer you get invited to did already exist, and likely has other players around aiming at this trinket, too. Just because the Beta doesn't have enough active players right now doesn't mean there won't be when Classic goes live, especially in the first "couple of weeks or maybe a month".

Regarding resources, you realize Classic didn't have node sharing, right? A Black Lotus would've been gathered by someone else soon anyway, but there wouldn't be more of them. That can't "destroy the economy".

[gushDH]

What do you prefer:

1) Layering for 2 weeks to 2 months
2) Vanilla Launch experience, where you literally could not play at all for the first week at least.

[freezion]

how so? if there is only 3 layers that only means triple the goods, really not that economy breaking.
specially much better then dynamic respawns or other ways to deal.

It's not gonna be a problem, period.

That there's more of the goods, is not going to cause more people to suddenly have more gold, as it needs to be ''produced'' by quests, looting and vendoring items first. so he either have to sit on them till people have adequate gold and sell them at ''normal'' price, or sell them at a price that matches the current inflation level.

If anything, it's gonna make the rare mats cheaper and more accessible. but again layering is a temporary thing, and even if it runs till phase 2 i doubt somebody is capable of hoarding enough rare mats to affect the economy indefinitely in those few months.

[AceofH]

What do you prefer:

1) Layering for 2 weeks to 2 months
2) Vanilla Launch experience, where you literally could not play at all for the first week at least.

i would prefer what was initially advertised. sharding. low levels only. a few weeks only.

[gushDH]

i would prefer what was initially advertised. sharding. low levels only. a few weeks only.

Layering was initially advertised for 2 weeks up to the whole first phase. That was from the first interviews on youtube.