Mazing... *shakes head*

[Guest]

There are a few problems. The main one is BOT programming, BOTing with mazes ruins it for everyone. I have recently maxed my Logic and my wife has 17.50 Charm and its practically worthless. I did get a few 26$ Payouts but that was rare. Most of the time (7 out of 8) I wasn’t even able to get 5$ and 5$-6$ payouts were the normal (if one out of every seven even was a payout at all).

Its perfect for me and my wife. Something we can do together "interact" socialize while playing towards getting money. Not Pizza with all those players, something more personal. Something that I loved doing. And now its not even worth looking at.

You would think that ANY money making object that would be harder than "one click of the button" would pay out better then a mindless Jam. At this point I wouldn't care if the payout over time was the same as Jam, but for crying out load Maze's are a HELL of a lot harder then a Jam yet you get 98% less payout over time then some boring single player mode Jam.

When I first played this was the funnest way to get money. I don’t want to cut apples by myself, this is a "Social" game and something fun I can do with my girl. It is the only reason I chose Logic as my max lock skill.

I'm sure all "multi player" money objects payouts are crap, but this one hits to close to home.

I know the problem is third party programs. Why don’t you guys hire "Punk Buster", a program that prevents BOTS to the "T". Then there would be zero cheating in this game, and we could all have better payouts. Something has got to change.

*le sigh* Give me back my Maze!!! *grumbles*

 

[Guest]

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I'm sure all "multi player" money objects payouts are crap, but this one hits to close to home.

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Code is the best multi-player object I have found. It would necessitate getting a 3rd account, but you've already got max in one of the 3 skills it takes to do it with, logic. The other two skills are mech and body, and body can also be used in making pizza, which is something that alot of people report 'crap' pay in, but I've always hit decent pay when I personally have played it, but I am considered a *snob* player in that I refuse to play with non-skilled players, and contrary to popular belief, the pay with close to a max skilled team is ALOT better in pizza or code is alot better than a non-skilled team. Maze and band has been crap pay almost since the inception of OWP, but with Band unless the bug has been fixed the payout is a flat zero no matter what you do.

Anyway, my advice would be to either get a 3rd account to share between the two of you, or to make a friend that is skilled 20.99 in the 3rd code skill and have your wife skill whichever skill that friend doesn't have. With amnesty coming we'll be getting extra skill locks, so that second skill probably would not have to be maintained too long, provided you reactivated old accounts rather than starting with fresh ones, that is.

 

[Natedawg26]

<blockquote><hr>

There are a few problems. The main one is BOT programming, BOTing with mazes ruins it for everyone. I have recently maxed my Logic and my wife has 17.50 Charm and its practically worthless. I did get a few 26$ Payouts but that was rare. Most of the time (7 out of 8) I wasn’t even able to get 5$ and 5$-6$ payouts were the normal (if one out of every seven even was a payout at all).

Its perfect for me and my wife. Something we can do together "interact" socialize while playing towards getting money. Not Pizza with all those players, something more personal. Something that I loved doing. And now its not even worth looking at.

You would think that ANY money making object that would be harder than "one click of the button" would pay out better then a mindless Jam. At this point I wouldn't care if the payout over time was the same as Jam, but for crying out load Maze's are a HELL of a lot harder then a Jam yet you get 98% less payout over time then some boring single player mode Jam.

When I first played this was the funnest way to get money. I don’t want to cut apples by myself, this is a "Social" game and something fun I can do with my girl. It is the only reason I chose Logic as my max lock skill.

I'm sure all "multi player" money objects payouts are crap, but this one hits to close to home.

I know the problem is third party programs. Why don’t you guys hire "Punk Buster", a program that prevents BOTS to the "T". Then there would be zero cheating in this game, and we could all have better payouts. Something has got to change.

*le sigh* Give me back my Maze!!! *grumbles*

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im sorry to hear stuff like this but its good that your out in the open about it....i tried mazing with a friend about a month ago and we said to hell with it cause the payouts were worthless...we couldnt believe how bad it was....youd think by now they would have found something to combat the bots but i guess not...im sure theirs some experienced programmers out their somewhere right? oh well as the post mentioned above code is a good option since it does have decent payouts and you only need 3 but hopefully before long the whole payout situation will be fixed...im sure they are just more concerned with amnesty right now...which is probably smart if they want old players like us back for good

 

[Guest]

Maze is the first reason I no longer play this game.

Back in the day it was basically all I did. Maze with a few friends in the game, especially one that I roomied with in Test Center. Then, maze was removed for more than 6 months for a "fix" after years of neglect of the botting issue. My friend ended up moving to another game, which is where I play now.

She still played when maze returned, but the changes to payout were too much...especially overwork penalty which when first introduced was a huge slap in the face to honest players who just happened to be better than EA expected anyone to be at Maze or Pizza (guess they thought we were all "slow"). That was the excuse that we were given, but bots were producing much more from maze than humans ever could, no matter how good. However for some reason they were unable to differentiate between 2 humans playing together that might make about 35k a round total if they're good. or 1 human playing 2 accounts that could make 60-70k (still legal), and an illegal program that made close to a million simoleans per round. So with overwork you were limited to far below your own ability. You couldn't do any better than an idiot at the maze table. This was unnacceptable to us and maze died. And as it stands it will never live again.

 

[Natedawg26]

<blockquote><hr>

Maze is the first reason I no longer play this game.

Back in the day it was basically all I did. Maze with a few friends in the game, especially one that I roomied with in Test Center. Then, maze was removed for more than 6 months for a "fix" after years of neglect of the botting issue. My friend ended up moving to another game, which is where I play now.

She still played when maze returned, but the changes to payout were too much...especially overwork penalty which when first introduced was a huge slap in the face to honest players who just happened to be better than EA expected anyone to be at Maze or Pizza (guess they thought we were all "slow"). That was the excuse that we were given, but bots were producing much more from maze than humans ever could, no matter how good. However for some reason they were unable to differentiate between 2 humans playing together that might make about 35k a round total if they're good. or 1 human playing 2 accounts that could make 60-70k (still legal), and an illegal program that made close to a million simoleans per round. So with overwork you were limited to far below your own ability. You couldn't do any better than an idiot at the maze table. This was unnacceptable to us and maze died. And as it stands it will never live again.

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sadly I hate to do it but i agree with you on maze basically long gone from the game...hopefully they will find a way around it....i understand the slowness with uping the payouts though cause all it takes is a few idiots with some bots to ruin it again then the whole point of removing our money would be pointless

 

[Guest]

What I don’t understand is, if some tool like me can search Google and find the "third party program" (with just two words, first link) that ruined the maze game for everyone, how come the dev's can't search and find the same program download it and find a way to prevent it?

I would pretty much agree to anything to have Maze back to just "Simi decent" payouts. Its not that I want to make more money then a player that's making jams (even though its a million times harder then "click.. Jam".), its just the only way I have FUN making money. Everything else is a drag. At this point I wouldn’t care if Mazes paid out Half of what Jams payout 51$ Jam = 5-21$ Maze, Hell I would love 5-10$ every other maze, I just don’t like that 80% of the mazes usually equals 0$!

If they wanted to install their own third-party program, to be run in the back ground, to make sure NO other programs were running while playing EA Land.. If that means getting Mazes back to decent payouts .. I say "sign me up".

And what game do you know where the harder the challenge the worse the payout?

 

[Guest]

Another thing.. EA makes Battlefield &amp; UO. Battlefield has Punkbuster, and UO last I played was going to add Punkbuster, How come EA Land cant utilize this program as well?

*note: As much as I miss, and frustrated by Mazes. EA Land is way better then TOS ever was.

 

[Guest]

I totally agree with you. In beta and in the first year of TSO, I made a fortune mazing. Best of all, it took a brain to do it. No mindless clicking. Then the templates came out that irritated me. Next I heard about the bots. I need a game for my brain.

Wouldn't it be great if EA could utilize the premise of the maze for a different type of logic game that no one has made a bot for yet. EA owns pogo and has taken the idea of our Restaurant Job Track into Pogo under a Diner game. Why can't we have some other cute pogo games to work on while in EALand.

One of my favorite ones is TubbleBees but it requires you to know English and there are many international players now. Other games like Poppit could be used and payouts could depend on how well you do.

If you want to just socialize like some, then you can just go click the jam tables and boards if you prefer that type of activity. Personally, after returning just a couple of weeks ago, I am already bored and don't know how long I'll last. From 2002 when I started this game, the game content is basically the same. What other game in the history of online gaming has managed to get away with that?

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

Another thing.. EA makes Battlefield &amp; UO. Battlefield has Punkbuster, and UO last I played was going to add Punkbuster, How come EA Land cant utilize this program as well?

*note: As much as I miss, and frustrated by Mazes. EA Land is way better then TOS ever was.


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Well, alot of people had big objections to Punk Buster if I remember reading the UO forums (I was playing that) at the time. It's a 3rd party program in itself and alot of people had real issues with it being downloaded onto their computers, some for paranoid-type reasons, others for legitimate security ones. I don't know if Punk Buster has improved some of those security issues or not, but as much as I want bots gone from the game, EAL's own ToS prohibits 3rd party programs and I think contradicting themselves in that manner would only promote people finding more loopholes in the system like they do with afk hosting and circumvention of the timeout feature. There are ways that we as players can act as 'agents' for EA and alert them when we see behavior that we note is suspicious, and then it is up to EA to do something about it. If we turn them in but they don't enforce their own ToS then it isn't gonna do much good and so far that's been the problem, although it's gotten alot better since our new dev team has been put in place. Players have at least BEGUN to get popped for stuff that they've gotten away with for the last 3.5 years scotch-free. There's still alot of players getting away with it, but at least I'm not seeing very many of them on the top 100 list for money like I used to in the production cities......so we're making progress.

As far as a game for the brain, pizza does that though admittedly to a lesser degree, but that's one reason so many people are doing it now, which in turn under the system of dynamic payouts has driven the payout down. If more people flocked to code, or band if they'd fix the zero payout bug, pizza payouts would rise at least some, and then rise some more when drains in the game are used. I'm baffled at leading pizza right now...hubby can do it but I am just slowwwwwwwww. My forte' is code. I can solve codes and pffffft on the cheat sheet, sometimes it goes around its thumb to get to its finger, proverbially speaking so I can solve the codes faster without it than with it, and with it it turns into that mindless clicking.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

Well, a lot of people had big objections to Punk Buster if I remember reading the UO forums (I was playing that) at the time. It's a 3rd party program in itself and a lot of people had real issues with it being downloaded onto their computers, some for paranoid-type reasons, others for legitimate security ones.

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Don't get me started with UO.. If you think this forum is negative the UO one is 10x's worse. They have sweat shops over sea's to sell UO gold (UO gold = RL Money all using third party programs). That game is SO riddled with 3 party programs and hacker's it's unreal. When the mini Arties came out you would see hundreds of afk players casting EV's everywhere and not even collecting the gold or items on the corpses *shakes head* and I would talk to them and no one would say anything, I would even kill them off and thier ghost would still be running in the same pattern thier live self's were running.

Again it was riddled with third party programs, 80% of the hard core players would not play unless they had them. Not to mention their speed hacking third party programs in PVP *roll's eyes*. If UO got rid of everyone's cheating programs they would lose half of their subscription base. So yes, you do get a lot more people pancakes about Punk Buster. The funny thing is half those players pancakes about it played Battlefield with me and you HAVE to have Punk buster to even play that game competitively. It was SO about cheating in that game. They would use 3rd party programs to skill their Taming skill all day. UO is a Skill based game and some skill's were VERY hard to gain. Like Taming, I had a elder Tamer and up in the 114's it would take 4 hours to get .01 in skill.

Making the game that hard, encouraged people to sought after those programs. UO Players opinion’s on Punk buster are not to be taken seriously.

<blockquote><hr>

EAL's own ToS prohibits 3rd party programs and I think contradicting themselves in that manner would only promote people finding more loopholes in the system like they do with afk hosting and circumvention of the timeout feature.

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Well Punk buster would be apart of the game if they did introduce it, so its not really going to be that much of a 3rd party program. Also there would be NO loopholes with punk buster that's what this program does. It goes out and searches for every loophole finds it, finds a fix for it, and then uploads it to everyone’s punk buster. Keeping it updated all the time and preventing bots. The thing about Punk Buster is, it wont "turn you in" it will just make it so you can't start the game, it would say "Please make sure all other programs are turned off before stating EA Land". It doesn’t "rat you out", and it wont say that if you have internet explorer open or any other programs that is "safe" just one's it knows is a third party program that effects EA Land.

<blockquote><hr>

There are ways that we as players can act as 'agents' for EA and alert them when we see behavior that we note is suspicious, and then it is up to EA to do something about it.

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How well has that been working? And even so that wont stop all bots just the small percentage that actually get caught.

Pizza and codes are ok, but its not fun. Unfortunately for me there is no exception to maze nothing that fill's that empty void. Pizza *shrugs*, Code *shrugs*, Just nothing compares FUN wise like Maze.

I found a avid Mazer last night, she has a Maze house (that is a maze in itself) very cool person. Anyhow we mazed four about 2-3 hours didn’t get much money but we did pull in a 36$ one, a new high.

This is how bad it has gotten, I have 20.99 skill and she had 20.something, we start with 47$ so we have 47 moves before we are totally out of money. several times we didn’t get anything one time it started SO far away that I just had to count the moves, it was 71 spaces to finish this maze! 71!! that's -24 *blinks* Are you kidding me?

If you have two players in the 20's I think the payout's should be at least 5 bucks! not -24. Most of the time I had to restart the maze because of this. *shrugs* I'm just so distraught about this. There's got to be a way to fix this problem. Even if they don’t use punk buster.

CBrewton5 I don't want you to think I'm attacking your post or anything, I'm just responding

I like your input, with out it I would have nothing to "think" about. So, Thank you!! *bows*

 

[mameloot]

Yes...PLEASE make maze playable again

As stated, it was the one object in-game that was a completely participatory for all people playing. It required a high level of attention and co-operation.

Even if there were no payouts...as it is I can't complete any mazes.
With two people at level 14 in their respective skill we were only allowed 19 moves to complete a 30 move maze. We attempted at least 20 mazes before giving up.

Maze is a great game, and it's a shame that at the moment it's just a pile of kindling.

mame