Maze is back! But Maxis Fumbles the Fix
by Alphaville Herald on 13/04/04 at 5:50 pm
by Ian
Many of you have heard about the reintroduction of The Tomb Hunters of the Lost Llama aka “The Maze”. The Maze was taken out of service in the holiday season of 2003 because of exploitation by 3rd party mazebot programs. Before that sims could literally make ten’s of millions of simoleans a day, in some extreme cases, close to a billion by using mazebots. It took Maxis 9 months to deal with this problem, during which time the price of a million simoleans dropped to as little as $4 (and in some case less). Many thought Maxis knew about the problem all along, and finally took it out only because the complaints were adding up from loyal tso players. A few weeks after Maze was removed, Maxis’ PR front woman, Tigger, released a note that showed what developers were working on, and the priority of these updates. Maze re-introduction was low on the list, and was not projected to be out until June 2004. However, on April 13, 2004, Maxis has released the new Maze in Test Center. But before you get too excited…
Before you get too excited, there are some things to consider. A note posted by Tigger explains how they will attempt to minimize 3rd party program exploitation. Maxis has now implemented a declining payout system to prevent another Simolean hyperinflation and “3k per money object houses”. The new payout system is not bad for those who play the honest way, and is designed to minimize the earnings of those who play against the “Terms of Service” by deploying mazebots. When you play Maze over an extended period of time, the payout with go down. If you use the object, say over 500-1000 times in one hour, you will notice the payout decrease. Tigger, did not say by how much, or what time period. Unfortunatley, none of this will help the problem of bot exploitation. Sims who will use these third party objects, will not care about the fix, because they are still likely to make a million simoleans per hour no matter what.
I decided to see what this new “maze” is like, so I updated in Test Center to check it out. When I entered TC the city was deader than a rusted doornail. NO Money Houses were open in the top 100, so I had to make my own… Well I was there, and was able to complete a maze in 40 seconds. I made about 7 or 8, I did not see the payout decrease yet. However, someone I know who uses these “bots”, said that after the 10th
maze he said he got “$0″ per maze. However, it took him 20 seconds to make 10 mazes. Thus, payouts are not on the number of mazes made, but the amount of time it took for them to be completed. The reason that this new Maxis strategy won’t help is that the speed of the mazers can be adjusted to human speed or any rate above human speed. Accordingly, it looks like mazebots will be able to run at some rate above human speed, and will be able to do so 24/7. Running 4 mazebots, one should still be able to complete 200,000 mazes per hour.
Many who sell simoleans and use these third party products commented that they are fully against this new “fix”, fearing that it is too weak and will lead to the saturation of the market that they have worked so hard to get it up to $50+ per mill. Maxis fucked up again!
Now for my editorial:
Why did it take them almost 4 months to implement a stupid idea like this? Couldn’t they have done something like not allowing users to bypass the celebration after each maze is completed? Or couldn’t they have prevented the maze from going so fast you don’t need to green? Alternatively, between each maze they could require some type of “confirmation” that you are there – for example requiring you to type in random letters/numerals that they give you. For example, when you sign up for an e-mail on Yahoo! you have to type in a word that they give you in a box, all jumbled up. That is to ensure that there are NO BOTS registering accounts. The new system, of declining payouts for super-human speeds still won’t help. It’s not like it doesn’t take more than 2 minutes to edit the speed the mouse clicks to complete the maze. Sigh, this just shows us who the real monkeys were on April Fools Day!
Urizenus
Apr 13th, 2004
Rumor has it that maze was already in AV before it went down for maintenance.
TBT
Apr 13th, 2004
So let me tell the world and maxis exactly how they screwed up and exactl how botters will combat their fix on day one of a release yet again..
You ARE an IDIOT!
Ian
Apr 13th, 2004
TBT, it was meant for them to know so they can fix it, so sellers won’t have to deal with the downpour of simolean prices…And if you haven’t noticed TSO people don’t care about what others think..they just work on their own agenda….and you if you don’t like what a newspaper has to say then throw it out…and unsuscribe.
MattyS
Apr 13th, 2004
Hey,
If you ask me this will work good…because now you wont be able to maze into the red zone like u used to be able too. And now u will have to have it at human speed making it so that you wont make like a million an hour…..I think this idea could work…lets wait and find out
MattyS
Apr 13th, 2004
Hey,
If you ask me this will work good…because now you wont be able to maze into the red zone like u used to be able too. And now u will have to have it at human speed making it so that you wont make like a million an hour…..I think this idea could work…lets wait and find out
Urizenus
Apr 13th, 2004
TBT, I don’t think you have to worry. EA is way way way to arrogant to think that anyone here has good advice about fixing the game or anything else. And if they do try to fix it again, we can rest assured that it won’t be for nine more months and then they (i) won’t follow our advice and (ii) will make matters worse. All this assuming they haven’t pulled the plug by then, of course.
winginit
Apr 14th, 2004
Why did it take them almost 4 months to implement a stupid idea like this?
If I was going to guess… I’d say the person who programmed pizza, maze, etc. is long gone or on other projects. Secondly, the code is probably a mess, so it would take an enormous number of man hours to fix it.
But they do, now, have someone working on the sims who can penetrate the payout system. What is hilarous, if you read the stratics thread on this, is that person clearly has never played the game, nor communicated with anyone who played the game. The payout reductions are coming way to early for the average player (let alone the good ones).
Ian
Apr 14th, 2004
wiginit, you are correct, but Tigger, is wrong. IT isn’t based on the amount you do, but the time you complete mazes. As in, if you complete one every like 2 seconds, by the 10th one you get $0….Obviously they did something wrong again. I am sure for the honest players will get this error to, since there are some ultra fast players. also those who don’t use third party objects, but have 2 screens open. You are allowed to do that, nothing agaist TOS, of playing with your self with no macro doing it for you. Most of those people can make a maze in 30sec-1minute.
MattyS
Apr 14th, 2004
If you ask me the reason i took so long for them to bring it back was they wanted to wait for all econemy to settle again
MattyS
MattyS
Apr 14th, 2004
Hey all
,
Just thought U all might want to know that in TC u can trade up to 10 million at a time…Thats right through *trade* TEN MILLION. That is awsome considering we used to only be able to trade 100k
Ian
Apr 14th, 2004
10 million? I thought it was 1billion or 100mill tops
RB
Apr 14th, 2004
Uri Said:
TBT, I don’t think you have to worry. EA is way way way to arrogant to think that anyone here has good advice about fixing the game or anything else. And if they do try to fix it again, we can rest assured that it won’t be for nine more months and then they (i) won’t follow our advice and (ii) will make matters worse. All this assuming they haven’t pulled the plug by then, of course.
======================================================
So so true Uri. They are morons to the max. I could turn around TSO in a snap myself. But they don’t want to listen to us sorts of people, because they don’t want to make TSO too much better. They are just waiting for TS2 release, so they can scrap TSO a little while later with minimal reprecussions.
TSO is DOOMED. Prophecy in effect.
=)
- RB
Urizenus
Apr 15th, 2004
thanks for that info MattyS, but now I’m really really really confused about Maxis’ motives. What possible reason could there be to expedite trades of 1 million plus, other than to make things easier for simolean dealers? Well, I guess the dealers won’t nead Nyk’s payout bot anymore. lol.
RB
Apr 15th, 2004
Won’t need to use shops now either. lol. Hooray for EA making our lives easier again. =) bless their seller helping moves. =D
- RB
MattyS
Apr 15th, 2004
np all,
I think it will make it easyer for rare items
Ian
Apr 15th, 2004
YOu all make some valid points, however I am pretty sure they implemented the new “Trade System” to prevent scamming for rares.
Urizenus
Apr 15th, 2004
Good point Ian. That would help with the rare pet scam, but it amounts to a concession by EA that rares have substantial real world value.
MattyS
Apr 15th, 2004
lol sorry all my mistake its 999,999,999 (100 million) Not 10 lol
MattyS
CherryBomb
Apr 18th, 2004
After thinking it over since this design was published, I have to say this is a pretty clumsy fix. Pizza bots and such are a nuisance, but they are no major threat to the game as long as they work at human speed. I figure that “farmed” Simoleons are prolly down from about 80% of the economy to about 20% since maze was disabled. There simply was not a pressing need to fix anything except the maze.
Also, looking at the limits the designers thought were “reasonable” it’s clear that nobody at Maxis is playing much TSO, or even watching the people that do. Same thing with the Japanese release. Anybody playing the game for 20 minutes would realize that there are tons more European players than Japanese, and release in Europe first. But noooooo, they had to piss away their time fooling with fonts instead of working on something useful.
Sally
Apr 18th, 2004
I dont get the artical, but I am very intrested. Do you all mean that ppl used robots do decode doors to do mazes faster?
Me
Apr 20th, 2004
people used automated programs to complete the maze when running 1 charisma and 1 logic player on their own.
DarkNeoKnuckles
May 10th, 2004
I read many of all your comments, meantime i think to myself…..Why Complain so harsly about TSO while you are addicted to the game…
Doesnt make any sense with those of you complaining maxis not paying any attention to the players…..
Yes you have a point , though why are you still playing TSO?
- DarkNeoKnuckles
Urizenus
May 10th, 2004
Just because you’re a junkie, it doesn’t mean you can’t complain about the dealer. I was just thinking of Lou Reed in — what’s that song? — waiting for my man? — about his dealer.
“He’s never early, he’s always late,
First thing that you learn’s that you’ve always got to wait”
or something like that.