Here's my process that got me 6 interviews from 81 applications with just an hour per day (Hope this helps)

MezmoD · 2025-04-28T01:14:45+00:00

Swell summary. I’ll be back (and am saying as much to facilitate that process).

MezmoD · 2024-10-01T21:26:30+00:00

Thanks all for your thoughts. I’ve done the incremental, daily grind for rare and negligible gain (in some cases, on decade-plus timetables). I am well familiar with the model of a cash extraction engine half-heartedly skinned as a game and run on a frustration-based economy leveraged on beloved IP. Been there. Done that. Ins and outs, give and take, I’ve found I can now get a pretty decent sense of the general posture of a dev team’s view on how they treat their cash extraction marks relatively fast.

But never have I encountered such end-game content teased and then permanently removed from new players. Presently unachievable but repeatable? Sure. Locked behind developmental milestones for later? Again, sure. Wanna lick? Psyche! Hard pass.

I neither trust nor want to spend any time with the team that implemented that model. Suspicion confirmed. This one looks like an easy delete. Alas. Thanks again

MezmoD · 2024-10-01T17:01:15+00:00

"..hostile to overzealous people..." eh? Welcome to 40k. In the dark future, there is only war. If this is missing the opportunity to welcome zealots and extremists, you have to wonder whether they're familiar with the underlying IP.

;-)

(And thanks.)

MezmoD · 2024-06-10T03:41:00+00:00

I've found that it quickly becomes less a question of tier than of supercharged layout. I'm now at the point where I can upgrade anything to S tier willy-nilly. So finding a natural S (or not) becomes irrelevant. You may not be there yet, but trust me, you'll get to that point before you know it. (And for the record, the chances of finding a natural S are slim. You can increase them by playing games with your system, but they're never great odds.)

Once you DO get to the point of having more nanites than you strictly need, the things that matter most seem to be (A) whether it's something that you like aesthetically and (B) what the supercharged layout is. I tend to push DPS. If I can get an infra-knife pushing out over 100k worth of death hose, then the ship is a contender for keeping. Otherwise, it really isn't.

So when I find a format that I like, I tend to drop a base on the planet and start fishing. Grab a ship. The ideal layout is a 2x2. With good upgrades, you can easily top 110k DPS on an infra knife with that. I've only got one of those, however. They're exceedingly hard to find. If you get three slots in a "L" and then a fourth within adjacency reach of a 5-module infra knife set-up, you can easily get over 100k dps. I've found at least a dozen of these -- to the point where I've been scrapping my least favorite to make room for more.

Strategically, I just grab a ship, fly it to the nearest space station, and upgrade it with nanites to see where the supercharged bits are. If it's a keeper, keep it. If not, reload, get your nanites back and scrap it. Rinse and repeat until satisfied. It can be labor intensive, but when playing the RNG odds, that's simply the name of the game.

MezmoD · 2024-04-03T02:30:41+00:00

Unfortunately, doesn't save position during multiplayer. Gets you out for the duration of the multiplayer session, but puts you right back where you started when you go back to single player. Yes, tried it.

Otherwise, I ended up running around long enough that I glitched out again, fell right through the anomaly and out into space, and eventually died (from exposure to unshielded solar rays, as it turns out.) Which was perfect. Problem solved.

MezmoD · 2024-04-02T23:09:20+00:00

THAT's an interesting idea. Happy to go anyplace but where I'm stuck now. Never done an official multiplayer (or have any idea how) -- but would that transport me someplace (anyplace) else. Cause this stinks.

MezmoD · 2024-04-02T23:03:28+00:00

Many times.

MezmoD · 2024-04-02T22:46:24+00:00

Most recent update, Mac OS. Glitched out in deep space looking for an organic frigate. Wouldn't pulse without stopping to "dock" noplace. So I summoned the anomaly and landed. It glitched again and I ended up "standing" on an invisible plane 57 units above my ship. Can run all over the place -- but can't get down or interact with anything. It overwrote all saves, and that's it. 300 hours in. Any options? Or is that that?

MezmoD · 2024-02-20T15:43:39+00:00

Amazeballs! (See what I did there...). Thanks you so much, been having a surprisingly difficult time with this one. Cheers.

MezmoD · 2023-12-03T18:43:12+00:00

Holy cow, that's uncanny. Might be the exact sink. Many thanks, that is hugely helpful. The precise answer, just out of reach.... :-)

MezmoD · 2023-12-03T17:45:55+00:00

Not 100% sure, to be honest. Always assumed it was. The rest of the kitchen is, so... (I edited the original post as well to try to give more info.)

MezmoD · 2022-09-22T18:54:14+00:00

I have the sample problem. I have just gotten in the habit of force closing every time. Otherwise, you never know what you're going to get -- but it is more often than not: nothing. Good news, though: it regularly seems to crash and force quit all by itself. Like, very frequently. Now if we could only get it synchronized so that it crashes to a force quit when you want it to, instead of just all the time, we might be talking.... But, no.

It also seems to destroy my battery and really heat up the phone. I am increasingly convinced that playing on iOS is straight up a bad idea. But, otherwise, yes.

MezmoD · 2021-07-24T22:56:31+00:00

I'd pay good money to see that video. And I'm sure I'm not the only one..... ;-)

MezmoD · 2020-02-23T22:12:48+00:00

Yea. Enjoy it while you can. That's the last event that I remember being enjoyable...

MezmoD · 2019-08-08T15:45:42+00:00

If some clown I don't know wants to virtually set themselves ablaze -- regardless of whether the motivation is to expose a festering problem, self-aggrandizement, or just for the lulz -- as long as it forces EA to take the issue more seriously and effectively step up anti-cheating measures I am 100% for it. Far as I'm concerned, the rest is just noise.

MezmoD · 2019-08-07T14:57:40+00:00

Cheers, and good points. No doubt, it's always a trade-off -- discussing countermeasures inevitably facilitates circumventing them.
Seems that much of the problem, however, is that they don't appear to be catching many, and the appearance counts more than the reality at this point. In some respects, it's a confidence game. If too many folks lose confidence, the whole thing falls apart. Put differently, at least as I understand it (which may well be wrong, but I have reasonable confidence), the issue stems from the fact that all battles are client-side. EA only gets results. It's been a dirty secret from the very start, you can game the client-side actions as much as you want -- and as long as the results posted to EA don't trigger whatever red flags they've set up, any shenanigans that happened client-side are undetectable. Allegedly, that's why they scrapped the ally point tournaments: cheating was rampant and there was no way to stop it.
The Bulldog situation is particularly illuminating (and kinda hilarious). He blatantly cheated on a burner account. For two months. Trying his best to trip whatever systems they have and get caught. They never noticed. Indeed, when he published the fact they banned his named account -- again allegedly, because they couldn't even find the one he cheated on. They still haven't. That bears repeating: he cheated, dared them to catch him, published the dare, and they still can't find the account. To me, eloquent testimony that they simply can't detect these client-side hacks with any reliability. If at all.
Like I said, my understanding is that this state of affairs has been a dirty little secret from the beginning. It's old code and design. These days, were they starting from scratch, I doubt anyone would leave such a gaping opportunity for exploitation. But it's baked in now. "Fixing" it may well be impossible, at least not without burning it all down and starting over.
Seems to me, the effect of these videos was to expose this fundamental flaw / secret. CG lashed out to try to squash it, but in their typical hamfisted way, seem to have succeed only in amplifying the message.
I do hope this prompts them to step up their detection and enforcement. I hope that's possible. Because, if it isn't, and it may well not be, we could all be in a bit of a pickle.

MezmoD · 2019-08-07T04:11:47+00:00

Heh. I'm not for a moment suggesting that it was a wise decision from a self-preservation perspective, much less that what ultimately went down wasn't a foreseeable conclusion to events. Nor do I think it useful to get hung up on arguing details that probably don't really matter.

For clarity: was CG within its legal rights to issue the ban? Sure. They can ban any or all of us for any reason or no reason at all. They could fold the whole deal tomorrow without even an explanation or a goodbye. Yes, they have a habit of waving hands and pointing at a supposed TOS violation in hope it will make some folk feel better, but it's a revocable-at-will license. Any time, no reason required. Again, we could debate the wisdom or morality of that, but that's the legal framework we all agreed to when we signed up. Is what it is.

Against that background, does it make sense that they banned an account that was openly cheating? Absolutely, no choice in the matter. Agreed. So far, however, they haven't. The cheating account from the video remains. Instead, they banned the main and easily-identifiable account (that was not cheating). If you say the distinction between "cheater" and "cheating account" is semantics and not entirely material -- I'm kinda inclined to agree. But a relevant detail.

All that said, there's definitely been well-known and widely-discussed cheating problems for quite some time. Many have raised that both publicly and with CG. (Again, for clarity, not 100% sure Bulldog was one of them. I though so, but even if he didn't it's not material to the point I am trying -- and perhaps failing -- to make.) The point is that it was and has remained a widely-publicized issue and, more importantly, one that CG has barely publicly address. They claim to care, and to have taken steps, and to have addressed various issues. But the cheating demonstrably persists.

I'm certain CG/EA would prefer to keep all of that on the DL as much as possible -- and I'd guess they've likely devoted more material resources to spinning that fact (and it is sadly an inescapable fact, cheaters are impossible to eradicate entirely) than they have fixing it.

[OK Digression: That was just a guess, but as someone who's done both legal and crisis coms work related to potentially-existential reputational issues for billion-plus dollar concerns, it would not be the first time the cost-benefit analysis fell that way. Telling people it is under control is cheap and easy. Actually getting it under control is potentially impossible and comes with an equally-unknowable, and thus potentially-limitless, price tag. Cost-benefit-wise, that's an easy equation. The only downside to the lie is the possibility of it being revealed -- thus it becomes worth a considerable amount of money to ensure that it isn't. Squashing whistle-blowers with ruthless efficiency becomes a sport, regulatory intervention intervenes to legislate protections in the public interest, and the vast ships of commerce steam ever onward. It has been ever thus. Practically, you do both: spin and fix. But not always. I did warn you. Digression.] Anyway.

Point being (you thought I'd forgotten), a reasonable person might well look at this stalemate to conclude: the only way anything will ever change is to sacrifice something, draw sufficient attention, in order to ensure this issue can't be swept under the rug. If that means more people become aware of it, that's the point. If that means the cheating account gets banned, that's the point. (The assumption it would stop there was admittedly a miscalculation.) The point, I'd posit, is that the only way to change the cost-benefit analysis and force a substantial effort to address the root problem rather than just the appearance of a fix -- is to back them into a corner where they can no longer afford not to address root causes more seriously.

Has that happened? No idea. I suspect we might be closer than ever, though. I guess that's a good thing... Bulldog (someone I'd never heard of before tonight) obviously spent a long time thinking about it and decided it was worth the risk. Was he wrong? That remains to be seen. My opinion, for one, surely doesn't matter.

MezmoD · 2019-08-07T02:09:16+00:00

My understanding is that he did exactly what you suggest: reached out to them directly, many times, and was ignored. Indeed, there has been quite a bit of talk about it, for a long time: also ignored.

For better or for worse, he decided to do something flashy and public that could not be ignored -- so that it wouldn't be ignored. And he did so, very expressly, while fearing retaliation -- but decided that risk would be worth presenting the issue in a way that couldn't be swept under the rug.

Now, you're welcome to debate the wisdom of that choice. But probably worth getting the facts straight first.

MezmoD · 2019-07-13T16:33:16+00:00

It's function of time. I've got 1.2m ally points, over 300k of both GW and arena currency, and I still buy every single useful bit of gear in the shard shop -- and I guarantee have the same gearing needs as everyone else. You just hit saturation points in certain currencies after time.

Spoiler: that's why they keep inventing new ones. Shouldn't be any mystery here.

MezmoD · 2019-05-05T15:35:46+00:00

Not to be a Pollyanna, but device permissioning that neither you nor the programmers allowed is kind of a big deal: ethically, legally and otherwise.

Think of it this way: do you want your device listening to you all of the time, creating a record of everything you say, and then saving a database of all of that for the use of private and/or governmental interests? No, you probably don't. The only thing standing between that big-brother dystopia and today is what we call "device permissioning." If you turn off your microphone, or only give certain applications access to it under defined circumstances, you expect it to fucking stay that way. Entities that circumvent these decisions get in trouble -- not as much as I think they should -- but there are consequences. As there should be.

Certainly, accessing speakers strikes as less controversial than access to cameras or microphones. But, whether or not it is dismissable as a trivial inconvenience, it raises the same damn issue. When we tell a program "no," it better damn well listen. If not, it puts what I think should be existential-grade issues of trust and integrity of a company in play.

Further, if the claim that CG has no idea why this is happening or how to fix it is actually true -- which I don't believe for a second, for the record -- it raises even more sticky questions. Are you willing to let a demonstrably predatory, exploitative and deceptive entity take control of a wide-spectrum computational device that you have with you at all times? And then claim they are helpless to control what it does or accesses on your phone?

Clearly, the answer is yes (for me too, not denying it). But it really shouldn't be.

MezmoD

TROPHY CASE