Your Thoughts on Exploiter Punishment

[Flachette]

next time a money exploit comes up im using it, obviously AE does nothing to exploiters

[Oriantha]

I have not posted on this forum before. I posted regularly on Tazoon. However, I don't care for this forum or the moderation (Lock quickly...ha ha ha)
However, today I feel I must speak...no shout...out about the recent dragon exploit.
Recently, dragons who participated were punished...only to find that the punishment was rescended and hoard will now be restored.
I have a hoard of over 3 million. I have worked on it painstakenly and it will never be at the requirements...I'm sure. I always worked hard to meet them but that ended at Level 60.

This leaves a really bad taste in my mouth and I'm sure it does the same for many others. Shoked really.... [8o|]
So, you saved 30 players....what about the rest of the player base??

Three things come to mind.
1. Enforce punishments. You just leave yourself open to further explotation. Further angering the playerbase which will lead to a further loss of subscriptions. [:(]

2. Unfortunately, I do understand why this occured. The hoard requirements are unatainable after you reach a certain level. I used to hang back....and not level....making items that were below my skill level so that I could hoard myself. It took hours upon hours....
After L60, it's just not possible. I would have to spend every waking hour making items that I receive no points for and be stuck at the same level for weeks...in order to build hoard and keep up with the logirithmic increases. [:'(]

3. Better yet, fix an exploit quickly. Make it known and advise that severe punishments will be enforced. Stick with it. [:S]


I haven't been playing alot recently. Actually, I've been playing Wow. It's just a bit more fun. And exploiters...well....they are OUT. Bye bye....out of the game. In addition, they inform the playerbase, what was explited and what they did about it!

It just makes you look bad...AE. You playerbase is lashing out at you in the forums. Stand your ground! [:@]

And on a side note, get off the IRC....I've never seen any game that has such bad communication and requires it's playerbase to download/install new software to communicate. Silly. [:#]

[Syllis SunFlower]

I'll have to back you up on this Ori, but I will say I'm sad to here you've been playing WoW. Hope you don't get completely hooked and we can see you soaring thru the skies of Istaria on occasion. Chaos has lost far too many good people (and Dragons), here's hoping you decide to stick around. [:)]

[Jayle Artwright]

Lets change the name exploits to naughties??

what do ya say exploits make it seem bad

[pogowolf]

But 'Naughties' makes them sound so good!

[Aamer Khan]

turquoise text now?

Yikes! my EYES are on fire!

[Jazmyn]

"It was not drop only. It's well known since beta of game and was for months available on any trainer as random pick."



Oh, uhm.. I didn't know that. But, I've only been playing for uhm.. 5 months here, and only played for one month of the beta.

It was the first I'd heard of that spell. In case you haven't noticed, you can't get random picks from trainers and there aren't any lore keepers in game anymore, They are now formulatrons which you can get random picks from, but I'd never heard of that one before. Most brand new players do not know where to get forms at all. I don't know how long it's been since some of you have helped out a new player, but I do it every day. I know how lost they are, and I can understand how they probably would neither understand, nor come back, if they got their account "banned" for something they had no clue on.


"First of all tier I mobs drop brass items and not silver. Which is dropped by level 20 mobs+."

Yeah, color me surprised! It was a crown and I picked it off a sandstone pebble golem while making bricks at the quarry south of Parsinia. Gave it to a baby dragon and he got all excited, stating that it was something like 3600 HV.

The point I'm trying to make here is that, not EVERYone has been around since beta, not EVERYone knows ahead of time what something should be worth in HV or when sold.

" it was hoarded a lot, so a sudden change from 144 to 7777 is hard to oversee"

I'm NOT trying to say be lenient on those who KNEW it was a bug, just pointing out that there are new people in the game who really might not have known. I'm not going to make any accusations that they should have known better when by looking at the levels of some of them, there was no way they could craft a Tier III spell. (My understanding is that it wasGenerate HealthIII) Therefore, it must have been given to them.

<Enter the burn them at the stake crowd>

.....So, the exploit goes deeper than dragonsperhaps. Perhaps the spellcrafters should be punished too? Especially if they took payment to make those for dragons who couldn't make it themselves? Perhaps all exp the spellcrafter earned should be taken away as well, in addition to a coupleof levels just for punishment? Perhaps we could assume that they all did take payment for it, and take a few gold from their bank account in punishment for it too?Perhaps we could assume they evenadvertised it! Let's burn them at the stake!!!...

...You know what happens when you assume, don't ya?... Okay..

You can't make sweeping judgments...Any punishment should not be just an across the board "You knew better" type sweep, there should be warning that something is not right first.Then I think it should be handled privately and on a case by case basis between AE and the exploiter.

I know that you must be looking at the "been around since beta" crowd, and people are angry. I'm just trying to remind everyone that there are these (us)new folks around too. In your zealous pursuit of the exploiters, try not to run over (or burn)the innocent.

[Catharsis]

Tant, and Peaches, you've missed my point. Currently there is little external incentive to report exploits save the threat of punishment - and punishing the players in Hz does not seem to be in AE's best interests. Hz does not have the kind of expansive numbers of EQ or other "larger" games; and, as has been pointed out elsewhere, it's a safe bet the current players are of an age demographic that won't suffer unwarranted "punishment" lightly. I surmise that AE understands this, and I also reason that they do not have the resources to thoroughly investigate each and every instance of possible exploitation - as defined by intent.

Hence the current dilemma which hasmany here surrounding AE with pitchforks and torches. I trust that most of us would report a potential exploit on our own incentive of fair play. However, that's not all of us, or this wouldn't be an issue, would it? What I suggest instead is providing a positive incentive to report an exploit, perhaps in game currency or XP - something that might make reporting exploits a profitable alternative to chancing the exploit. Of course, reward would be contingent upon verification that there is indeed an exploit, and that of course could be verified to the players by it's removal.

This is a game we've all subscribed to. We're not sitting in class; we're not being babysat, we're not drudging away at work. Games should provide postive incentives to accomplish goals - meaing it should be fun and rewarding to play. Why not take one inherent problem with any online game and turn it from a potential liability to a potential asset?

Why, in any game, should I be wary of a quest, an exchange, a MOB, or anything that might potentially be an exploit? That's placed the burden of potential consequences from coding errors, or, as I assume, simply unforseeable circumstances, on the customer, instead of on the vendor. That's a tad backwards, don't you think? If a product is faulty, should the customer be held liable?

My bottom line here: I don't use exploits, nor would I, and I would report them. Use of an exploit is cheating, and worst of all, it's cheating one's self of what the game was originally bought for. That being said, if I had unknowingly used an exploit out of sheer ignorance - and most of you who know me know that's entirely possible - and I found myself at the tail end of one of the draconic measure suggested here, I'd be rather angry.

And you know you wouldn't like me when I'm angry, don't you?[;)]

[Pharcellus]

Using the tired old saw of "HZ can't afford to punish exploiters" just doesn't wash. After watching just about every one of my old friends from beta leave because of the laissez-faire treatment of the water-walkers and the gangaf exploiters and with me considering it now over this, AE loses players over exploits no matter what. The question, as has been posed before, is what players does AE want to keep? Exploiters or honest folks? From my experience, you lose more players from having a nonexistant to impotent policy towards cheaters than if you have a draconian one. Worse, you get what we have now: a situation where the only answer for anyone if they have issues with exploiters is "exploit early, exploit often" and "if ya can't beat 'em, join 'em".

I agree that positive incentives would be one step in the right direction. In addition, have a well thought-out and managed policy towards exploitation, with some amount of public exposure to give the playerbase the opportunity to build faith and trust in a system that is demonstrably a) fair, and b) effective.

Any product, including tangible goods in real life, can be used for good or ill. Some of the liability is one the maker of a product to make sure it is used as intended. However, no product is perfect, neither is the development efforts for that product, nor the people behind them. Responsibility for proper use of a product, especially one that has a defect, HAS to be a shared exercise. Like Tantalyr said above, people have to use (un)common sense. Yes, there are situations where someone may not realize that what appears to be a harmless boon may actually be a defect that is wrong to use. Even still, I would find it VERY hard to believe that someone would be ignorant of this particular "defect" because of the magnitude of the exploited benefit. Yes, it is still possible to be ignorant of it, but the circumstances under which someone could have a valid claim to ignorance are vanishingly small in this case.

[Serat]

next time a money exploit comes up im using it, obviously AE does nothing to exploiters

For what its worth, you could consider this as punishing yourself. If exploiting a game mechanic is cheating the gaming elements of a MMORPG, and it is upsetting because you enjoy the gaming elements or otherwise rely upon those gaming elements being fair, then utilizing a cheat would be disregarding your own values of gamesmanship. Utilitarianism notwithstanding, you're moral benchmark is rarely served by saying that because a wrong goes unpunished I should then accede to the standards of the wrongdoer.

As for what should be done to exploiters, I make a distinction between manipulation of gamecode/client exploits and abuse of developer implemented bugs. If one actually hacks the client or the client's interaction with the gameworld, I believe those people need to be banned.

Then we have developer implemented bugs. There are two different subclasses. If a bug allows gold to be duplicated, it is clear by the intentions of the player that they are utilizing a bug for a pernicious purpose. This is evidenced by the fact that no other system of normal game operation allows for the duplicating of gold. It is clear that under no circumstance could the developers have envisioned that this operation of the code was intended.

The second class of developer implemented bug exploits are normal systems gone bad. This is the dragon hoard situation, where the player is using a normal process but getting a disproportionate reward. Getting the same quest multiple times could also be placed in this categoy, because a player cannot know for surethat the developer's intent is that this particular quest should not be repeated. Bans for using a developer implemented bug of this type are too extreme, with the sole exception that a ban for conduct after a developer notice that X behavior is an exploit until the code can be changed,put on the login page, should alwayscontitute an bannable exploit. For this type of exploit, I agree with many that removal of reward plus some form of punitive detriment in game is usually warranted, unless it is a close call. For example, if the bug involved a brand new system (the new blighted weapons selling for 100 silver each, as an example), I don't think punitive resolutions are warranted. Intent to exploit cannot really be easily established by such conduct because there is no norm for the player to test their behavior against.

Finally, I do think that developers are well served by loudly proclaiming punishments when exploits are found, but are better served by creating incentives to have exploits reported. The incentives could be in game, but personally I think it is better to reward the player, not the character. Anonymity for such rewards is important, though an announcement that the reward was given to someone is equally important. A free month to the first three players who report a serious exploitable bug would encourage the players to report exploits, help encourage a culture of player conduct conducive to gameplay, and keeps players in the game who care enough about the game to report behavior even when they could gain a short-term advantage for their character by utilizing the exploit.

[Vahrokh]

I'm NOT trying to say be lenient on those who KNEW it was a bug, just pointing out that there are new people in the game who really might not have known.

In fact to the new people the developers did not do anything just because of this.
But we are discussing who got a penalty, not those who did not, don't we?

I'm not going to make any accusations that they should have known better when by looking at the levels of some of them, there was no way they could craft a Tier III spell. (My understanding is that it was Generate Health III) Therefore, it must have been given to them.

The newbies, the real ones, were skipped by the devs. The ones got in the net are old foxes. They know the trade. Just mention the good old: "I am cancelling 15 accounts and bringing 380 guild members with me" innuendo.

And because they got old foxes that then they cowardly retreated. The old foxes knew that doing much scene and belly ups they'd get pardoned. They are influential, they feed guilds with the stuff they do. They can contract with AE like peers now.
And AE gave them authority. The next time it will go even worse. Now all know who will win the day.

<Enter the burn them at the stake crowd>

You think people out there are out to get others foaming at the mouth.
Nope. It's just policing routine. If you see it as "odd" it's because AE never had a firm position before.

Where I work, or everywhere you walk you have to conform to a set of rules.
If you rob just 1 grand and are caught in the act by police... what excuse will you invent? You know that you'll get worse than having to give it back, don't you?
Or you believe that policemen are mad, want to burn people etc?
No, they do their job.

And if a regular guy sees a policeman closing one, two or even three eyes before a thief he just caught... what do you do? You smile at the luck of the thief? You clap at the policeman?

.....So, the exploit goes deeper than dragons perhaps. Perhaps the spellcrafters should be punished too? Especially if they took payment to make those for dragons who couldn't make it themselves? Perhaps all exp the spellcrafter earned should be taken away as well, in addition to a couple of levels just for punishment? Perhaps we could assume that they all did take payment for it, and take a few gold from their bank account in punishment for it too? Perhaps we could assume they even advertised it! Let's burn them at the stake!!!...

Well, a spellcrafter making a lot of particular spells in a short period can be very easily be tracked.
And once again, it's not about rabble taking vengeange. It's regular appliance of the very rules that AE makes us approve at every login.
In real life if there is a corruptor and a corrupter, both go in jail. So be it here.

...You know what happens when you assume, don't ya?... Okay..

You can't make sweeping judgments... Any punishment should not be just an across the board "You knew better" type sweep, there should be warning that something is not right first. Then I think it should be handled privately and on a case by case basis between AE and the exploiter.

I know that you must be looking at the "been around since beta" crowd, and people are angry. I'm just trying to remind everyone that there are these (us) new folks around too. In your zealous pursuit of the exploiters, try not to run over (or burn) the innocent.

See... we are not talking about the sex of the angels. It's very easy, it's called SQL. A database language that easily allows an operator to see with no doubt what someone did at any particular moment.
It's not being zealant. They broke the TOS (term of service) with AE. And were dishonest to the other players getting an edge and putting them into disadvantage into vital things like getting equipment thru drops, getting money (the spell sold _very_ well and that was corrected too) and getting able to become ancient with months in advance after (some of them) slacked their homeworks for months, while the others worked like mules.

That's it. Let's talk of real people and real consequences on other people who chose to stay correct.

Not of untouched newbies or supposedly theoric maybe virgin prostitutes.

[Jazmyn]

Wow Vahrokh! You seem toknow an awful lot there for a player.

"But we are discussing who got a penalty, not those who did not, don't we?"

Yeah, and my understanding was that everyone who hoarded it got hit for it. Whether they knew it was an exploit or not.

"The newbies, the real ones, were skipped by the devs"

Oh, that's good to hear. I myself have no way of knowingif the supposed "newbie" I spoke tois or is notreally a newbie at all. I'm sure glad you know these things! You're sure about your facts on this right?

"You think people out there are out to get others foaming at the mouth."

Uh, yeah, yeah, thatIS the general impression I get from some of the people here. Most definitely.


I'm just glad thatthe vast majority ofthe people I meet in the game are wonderful people.

[Machivelli]

[img]/Web/Themes/Generic/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]Catharsis wrote: Maybe I missed it in all this. Tant, but define an exploit. The mood I get here is an explot is any advantage that someone else found that the poster hasn't. We all know that's not what you're shooting at here, but doesn't intent come into play? After all, my understanding of an exploit is the deliberate manipulaiton of a fault in the game mechanics - the key being "deliberate". If, for example, an NPC gives out ungodly XP for an easy quest, how is the player to know that that is indeed a programming error? Especailly if the player is a noob?

(And if this sounds familiar, I recall there was indeed an "exploit" of this nature early in the game)

How's this sound - why doesn't AE REWARD those who discover and report exploitable bugs, instead of risking punishment of those ignorant they have committed an offense? After all, while we may be toying with legal principles here, what we're really addressing is economic principles, aren't we?

I have the same definition of an exploit--the deliberate manipulation of a glitch in the game mechanics. I certainly recognize that the recognition of a game glitch can be difficult at times. For example, the fact that a given obidian tool may sell to a pawnbroker for, say, 215 copper when the programmers might have intended it to sell for only 195 copper would not, in my view, be an obvious glitch and should not subject those who sell the tool to any retribution.

What I deal with here, though, are the obvious glitches. To use some historic examples, walking on water was clearly not intended by the developers so the guild that discovered and used the exploit should have been punished. Similarly, since no NPC trainers previously purchased items from players, it should have been obvious to those who sold items to the NPC blacksmith that something was amiss. And more recently, it seems to me that the first time a dragon player saw the hoard value of the health spell in controversy was exorbitantly larger than any other spell of the same tier, he/she should certainly have concluded that this was a glitch.

The rule I have always followed in MMORPG's I've played is simple: if some activity in the game appears wrong, don't do it (and certainly don't repititively do it). While that rule certainly doesn't provide a bright line definition, it instead requires that you simply use common sense.

That said, I do agree with other sentiments expressed here that at the very least once an exploit is discovered and reported, the developers should either (a) immediately fix it, or (b) if the fix will take some time, post something on the login page alerting folks that they are aware of the exploit, are in the process of fixing it, and warning players that anyone caught continuing to use the exploit after the posting will be punished accordingly.

That is by far the most sense that I have read in this thread. So many of you want to lop off heads at the first sign of someone having an "Unfair" advantage over you. This is natural, I too stopped playing Diablo after learing of trainers. Tho I did not begrudge those people that decided to use them. It was their CHOICE to do what they did, it was mine to walk away from it.

The only time a player should be punished is if they have been informed that what they are doing is an exploit, and that continued use will result in said punishment. This does not include taking back ill-gotten gains, that should be automatic. Some of you may argue that we should use common sense and know that if it looks to good to be true, then it is. Well I submit to you that not everyone has common sense. Doubt that, get out on the road and drive in a large city.

This last part comes from the App Dev (Comp Sci Degree) in me. Why in the hell are you people so angry with the players, and ok with the Dev's for allowing this kind of bug?!? ********** ************, it's programming 101, you design, develop and test test test test! How many patches have gone from Blight to one of the live shards in under a week? How many times have we discovered that the patch actually broke something? And there is not a single arguement that can justify this, not were short staffed, or under a crunch. You have the mechinisim in place to weed these kinds of problems out ... USE IT! And please don't give me the in a "Perfect World" speech. If there was not a Blight server, I would understand, but there is, and at one point someone with some brains (Was a App Dev I promise, AE Management would never come up with this) said, "HEY We should have an environment where we can test out all of our patches/enhancements and content updates". I have a feeling this person was either laid off, left the company over "Moral" issues with AE management or is being ignored.

[Vahrokh]

Wow Vahrokh! You seem toknow an awful lot there for a player.

It's not difficult to know some game and players behaviors.

For the game it's sufficient to be a decent C++ programmer.
For the players to be of a certain age. It's not like players act here better or different than in real life.

It was their CHOICE to do what they did, it was mine to walk away from it.

In a multiplayer game it's different than a single player game, where you can play in god mode and be happy with it.
In a MMO when one gets an edge on the others, the others get a disadvantage.
If a dude can get infinite money or reagents or anything, he will be able to win in the bids, to win the best techs, to win the uber plot, to grab all the customers because he "has all".
Sure the others can close an eye or two or four but they indeed got the shaft.

The fact that the fact does not matter to YOU does not mean that it does not matter to others. They DID sweat for their success after all and fairly.

The only time a player should be punished is if they have been informed that what they are doing is an exploit, and that continued use will result in said punishment.

... but again we are talking of the sex of angels. Let's take a lesson of reality. Both AE and expecially GN have no staff, no way, nothing _in practice_ to operate "as one would expect". So we are left to play by common sense and hope. Because we won't get a warning. It's not SOE nor Blizzard with lots of GM vigilantes. Here we have _0_ in EU and one in NA if all goes well.

Well I submit to you that not everyone has common sense. Doubt that, get out on the road and drive in a large city

Go and invest someone in a large city or have a big crash and you see that you are forced to get common sense fast, maybe in jail to "help" you get it sooner.

Why in the hell are you people so angry with the players, and ok with the Dev's for allowing this kind of bug?!?

Because it's the players who consciously and criminally choose to exploit the bugs, which are something almost granted in a software with weekly changes.

And because it's the players who agree to a sign off a terms of conduict and license agreement at each game start, not the developers.

HEY We should have an environment where we can test out all of our patches/enhancements and content updates

The simple fact that Blight is anothershard makes it unique and some bugs won't show up at the same rate or kind.
The simple fact that the players on Blight are darn few makes impossible to test all the stuff at every release. In fact the most common problem is old features breaking.

On a live shard it's easy that in any given moment someone uses most of the game features. In Blight there are simply too few people to try all each week.

It's not a neat thing, where you fire up a debugger (that in DirectX apps is not that easy to use at all) and happily watch some 10 lines of code and a bug is caught and blinks nicely, ready to be removed.

You get gigs of database data that get loaded on demand and that have to be consistent. The latest exploit was just about it, a data entry error. An error that no debugging software could catch but a guy looking at it in the right second while the formula had been loading from the DB.
There are ways to catch even these but AE cannot afford them.
Not having a definite internal abusements policy then, makes AE employees take decisions on their whim. So what for one was a little mistake to let go on, for another would be grave.

In the end there is responsibility on both sides: the "corrupter" (AE) and the "corrupted" (the exploiters who accept the undue).
AE pays his behavior by losing actual money and customers.
Players could as well pay their behavior by losing game money and hoard.

[Machivelli]

Umm, most if not all of your rebuttals are bunk. I play a bi-ped and have never taken part in an exploit, so keep the "YOU" part out of it. I to "sweated" to take my primary class of Cleric to 100, without multicalssing! Far more work then any dragon has ever dreamed of doing! And don't skip quote, that only proves your ingnorance, I said all "Ill-Gotten" gains should be taken back, money, plot and items not withstanding! You play yourself off to be among the "High and Mighty", yet I submit you have the attitude of a peasant!

One last note .... if you knew that there was a bug when you sold something to a Blacksmith trainer and you fixed it. Wouldn't you go to all of the NPC's to insure that the bug hadn't replicated itself to other areas? Yet after the famous Blacksmith scandal some players found ways to sell things to other NPC's. Any App Dev worth his salt knows that debuggers are only but one tiny little tool in their bag of tricks.

But I digress, your agenda is to cut off heads, so by all means, don't let me get in your way. The next time you unwittingly take part in an exploit in this bug ridden game, be kind enough to stretch your neck for us, get a cleaner cut that way.[;)]

[Jayle Artwright]

What it all come down to is if you exploit you should be punished. No ifs ands or buts about it. They cheated by using the exploit and were caught. Punishment is due, and no amount of complaining should change that fact. It shows weak wills and lack of accountability to those in power.

[Silvanathan Shadowbane]

I know I'm thought of as some anti-dragon person here...but I think if most of us 'bipeds' found an exploit that gave us gold,or quicker xp etc alot of people would have used it. Right or wrong it's human nature for most people to try and get something for less work...Was it wrong? Sure...but banning, etc? If it wasn't reported or caught or fixed is it thier fault for using it? I've been taking alot of dragons on hunts lately and never realized before the pain in the arse it is for them to get HV...not many items dropped by monsters give to HV. And then some pay fairly high to use gold/silver strike/rage.

Depends on whether you're hardcore anti - cheater or not. How many people here have played a single player game and used an editor to change stats,xp,gold, etc? Well this is a slightly different version of doing that. They found a way to use it, did it and now they have been called out on it and several had thier HV's put back to before the exploit was used. Why beat the issue to death?

flame away [^o)]

[Seikojin]

[img]/Web/emoticons/emotion-3.gif[/img] I totally agree here... It is true that if found, anyone will try an exploit, just to see the reward... Its like finding a new crime and seeing if it works... You KNOW something is wrong with it... But deep inside you just want to know if it works and if it is wrong... And when they come and bust down on ya, you get pissed because you know you were in the wrong and got busted...

We all know these exploits are just bugs in the long run... So whining/complaining about them isnt going to make them a game feature...

I think its insane that they track that much detail of the players activity...

I mean to be able to go in and line item remove Hoardvalue based off the number of broken items you put in there... I mean.. ********... thats insane...

Sorry got off track there... As for the topic of punishment...

I think they should do what they did... Plus announce it over the system... Say hey we found an exploit people used, removed the assets it yielded and fixed the broken, yet exploitable item/feature... Sorry for the inconvenience, and have a wonderful day...

[Poony666]

[img]/Web/emoticons/emotion-3.gif[/img] I totally agree here... It is true that if found, anyone will try an exploit, just to see the reward... Its like finding a new crime and seeing if it works... You KNOW something is wrong with it... But deep inside you just want to know if it works and if it is wrong... And when they come and bust down on ya, you get pissed because you know you were in the wrong and got busted...

Not ANYONE, there are honest people in game beleive it or not, who will NOT try an exploit even for curiosity sake.

[Seikojin]

:o
Anyone who doesnt try an exploit does not know what it is...

Anyone is not EVERYONE... So I guess your a someone and not an anyone... :P

My point isnt about curiosity... It's about the hidden beast within all to gain... Gain power, wealth, influence, prestige... Everyone does it in everday life.. In game, out of game... It's like running ahead of someone to get to a node that you left behind... Theres a reason for everything, and denying participation just shows that you think about it and more heavily by it than those who blindly use it...

>not to be mean<