What happened with the exploits?

[kierg10]

So i havent played ddo for a while but i constantly go on the forums.......and now i am reading about how some people exploited and it is somehow turbine's fault. What i really want to know is what actually happened :) pwease tell me /bambieyes

[mjknehr]

Bumpity... for inquiring minds who dont live in the forum 24/7...

whahappen?

[Siro]

As far as I know, it is a no-no to post exploits on the forums even if they've been fixed. Suffice it to say, bank error in their favor.

[karsion]

Talking about exploits may give you an unduly moderator attention. Check google tho

[Ulurjah]

You won't get a specific answer here because it's against the rules to talk in specific terms here. There are other places where it has been explicitly laid out.

As for general answer: there was an unintended way for people to generate plat and high end randomized loot (including unbound +3 tomes) simply by clicking repeatedly with very little time and zero risk (other than to their accounts) required. These people apparently used this exploit to completely buy up everything of value on the auctioneer, and then continued to do so even as massive inflation occurred.

The reported numbers are anywhere from 6-15 +3 tomes (unbound) per hour generated by this exploit and it apparently went on for days.

The outcry is because these people have reported (elsewhere) that their bans were very short and they got to keep everything they exploited.

[der_kluge]

In a nutshell:

One of the new challenges in U12 had an exploit by which people were able to generate unlimited amounts of money and/or loot.

And some people did so - generating millions, and millions of plat, and some folks were able to generate dozens of +3 tomes.

Those who generated tons of money were also able to clear out the inventories on the auction house.

[Arnhelm]

Reports are the exploit was reported on Lammania... *sigh*

[Munkenmo]

http://www.eoinbutler.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/bank_error_in_your_favor.jpg

i really don't know a better way of putting this.

[In_Like_Flynn]

http://www.eoinbutler.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/bank_error_in_your_favor.jpg

i really don't know a better way of putting this.I knew a top hat had something to do with it!

[Jasparion]

The reported numbers are anywhere from 6-15 +3 tomes (unbound) per hour generated by this exploit and it apparently went on for days.

A friend of mine was in a group with 5 guys from the same guild and they were joking about how they were expecting a 1 week ban some time soon but didnt care. When they returned they had over 100 +3 tomes between them. And all the plat they would ever need.

Its sad noone from Turbine will ever respond to any of these threads because I really only have one question I would like them to answer:

"Do you think the punishments you hand out do anything to stop this sort of behaviour?"

If those guys returned from their 1 week ban to find ALL their money and gear gone and ALL the money and gear from EVERY toon they gave the tomes/plat/GS mats/scrolls/etc. to, I dare say they would think twice before so openly and blatantly cheating in future.

These people are quite literally laughing at Turbine. If I worked at Turbine I would actually feel humiliated by this. But they just dont seem to care.

The T&C says Turbine can hand out any punishment they wish, up to and including deleting characters and entire accounts. It would be nice if they actually enforced this from time to time, so the cheaters would think twice before doing it again.

If all that happens is a 1 week ban, next time something like this happens the number of people involved will be doubled or tripled. It may as well be Diablo 2 with full access to the equipment codes...

[Ulurjah]

A friend of mine was in a group with 5 guys from the same guild and they were joking about how they were expecting a 1 week ban some time soon but didnt care. When they returned they had over 100 +3 tomes between them. And all the plat they would ever need.

Its sad noone from Turbine will ever respond to any of these threads because I really only have one question I would like them to answer:

"Do you think the punishments you hand out do anything to stop this sort of behaviour?"

If those guys returned from their 1 week ban to find ALL their money and gear gone and ALL the money and gear from EVERY toon they gave the tomes/plat/GS mats/scrolls/etc. to, I dare say they would think twice before so openly and blatantly cheating in future.

These people are quite literally laughing at Turbine. If I worked at Turbine I would actually feel humiliated by this. But they just dont seem to care.

The T&C says Turbine can hand out any punishment they wish, up to and including deleting characters and entire accounts. It would be nice if they actually enforced this from time to time, so the cheaters would think twice before doing it again.

If all that happens is a 1 week ban, next time something like this happens the number of people involved will be doubled or tripled. It may as well be Diablo 2 with full access to the equipment codes...


As I understand it, Turbine has never taken the time to develop good item/money tracking tools for their devs/service/gm's to use. Back in the Asheron's Call days it was impossible for them to track exploit use and ban individuals so they had to do a big rollback when a very damaging exploit like this happened.

Similarly, they have had to do a couple short rollbacks in DDO for the same reason.

What they have never done, as far as I know, is individually remove exploited gear/money because as I understand it they don't have a reliable and fast way to determine what was exploited or not. I believe they could actually do it if they wanted to but the cost in manpower is apparently too much to be worth it.


This is why they won't publicly respond. Nothing they can say will help the PR disaster. The only thing going on the record would do is make things worse. So they just close ranks and say nothing and hope it blows over.

They seriously need to develop some exploit clean-up tools though ... it's clear that more and more people realize that they won't face any kind of actual punishment so more and more people join in each time an exploit situation arises.

[mjknehr]

wow, i'm so far out of the loop its emberrassing.

I never heard of the CC wand deal-y-oh until the party was over...

now this!?. man i gotta get tighter with my guildies and stay in the know ;-)

I thought stuff looked a little high on the AH lately, but figured some money-bags was just buying up stuff on Cannith.

[sirgog]

The first rule of exploit club is, you do not talk about exploit club.

[Ovrad]

[snip]

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/6908/bankerrorinyourfavorcop.png

Fixed it for ya :D

[Rumbaar]

You know how Turbine originally allowed people to buy rods from the CC event for Gold coins, and how they were so easy to make and sell that people made millions of plat? That was poor designing and testing by Turbine, I hazard to guess the issues with the current 'Challenges' are along this line of 'exploiting' a poorly implemented, tested and released pack.

[Xenostrata]

You know how Turbine originally allowed people to buy rods from the CC event for Gold coins, and how they were so easy to make and sell that people made millions of plat? That was poor designing and testing by Turbine, I hazard to guess the issues with the current 'Challenges' are along this line of 'exploiting' a poorly implemented, tested and released pack.

Not quite true. Can't say much, but the rod fiasco was simply using a bad decision by Turbine (ie high base cost on the wands) to make lots of money. There is no way that any part of the current screw up was WAI.

[donfilibuster]

One thing to frown at is that finding a glitch like this is the dream of any unethical player.
This is fairly worse than the actual mess the economy can get.

[kierg10]

thanks for the replies i think i understand now...

[Vanquishedfo]

let me sum it up. at least on my server it is likely thousands if not more +3 tomes where generated and stored away. TRs will now never fear eating full sets each life on thier way to completionist creating a new more powerful breed of TR who dont worry over waisting tomes.

Multiple mule accounts sitting with max plat and banks full of tomes and other high end items worth storing for trade.

The economy in DDO will NEVER recover from this one and will result in a long term shift just as much as the currency shift to platinum did but far worse.

Worse it paints a light on turbine saying there is no point to play fair and in fact it seems more and more like if you want to get ahead in DDO you need to find ways to cheat the system and have nothing to fear except maybe a light scolding

[Grace_ana]

let me sum it up. at least on my server it is likely thousands if not more +3 tomes where generated and stored away. TRs will now never fear eating full sets each life on thier way to completionist creating a new more powerful breed of TR who dont worry over waisting tomes.

Multiple mule accounts sitting with max plat and banks full of tomes and other high end items worth storing for trade.

The economy in DDO will NEVER recover from this one and will result in a long term shift just as much as the currency shift to platinum did but far worse.

Worse it paints a light on turbine saying there is no point to play fair and in fact it seems more and more like if you want to get ahead in DDO you need to find ways to cheat the system and have nothing to fear except maybe a light scolding

How does having an increased supply of and reduced demand for a specific item create inflated prices, exactly? I'm quite sure that isn't economic theory.

[Ulurjah]

How does having an increased supply of and reduced demand for a specific item create inflated prices, exactly? I'm quite sure that isn't economic theory.

The assumption is that the exploiters won't need money right away but have money to spend on stuff which drives inflated prices. If they have any kind of smarts, they won't flood the auctioneer with tomes, so one imagines the price for tomes staying high.

[Syllph]

The economy in DDO will NEVER recover from this one and will result in a long term shift just as much as the currency shift to platinum did but far worse.

Worse it paints a light on turbine saying there is no point to play fair and in fact it seems more and more like if you want to get ahead in DDO you need to find ways to cheat the system and have nothing to fear except maybe a light scolding

A number of things. First The bug was reported on Lamania on multiple occasions and was reported again when it went live. Turbine did nothing about the glitch so people abused it.

Why should the players be punished? Seems to me that Turbine created a faulty glitch and ignored the reports. If the forum would like to place blame place it not on the players but on the people who knew about this for days and days, could have immediately shut the server down and attempted to solve the problem or simply closed the Challenge (like they did with fens awhile back).

Take one look at the AH. Notice something? Everything is set for 2 million plat. Seems most of the server has no issue with getting rich for this. Wake up: that's exploiting too. I sincerely hope all those who are crying for bans aren't posting scales for max buyout . . . I've yet to see someone not taking advantage of the AH.

Additionally, seems every other post is saying the economy will NEVER, in big bold letters, recover. People said the exact same thing with CC and in less than a month prices were normalized. when the source of the glitch is gone as it has been dealt with, then the source of income is also gone. People will not have infinite plat forever and eventually when a buyer continues to post scales for 2 million and time and time again it bounces back into their mailbox... they will eventually lower the price. It's not rocket science.

Exact same thing happened during CC. and I made a post then about it too : http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=304541
The economy normalized exactly the way I said it would. It will here too.

People are saying this is WAY bigger. Really? Do you have the numbers from those who exploited during CC? Do you have the numbers of those exploiting from the challenges? Seriously people, you might -think-this is bigger but nobody has that data and if they do you're guilty of not informing Turbine of know exploiters.

I'm so tired of seeing these kind of threads, It's been a few days. Give it a month and if things are still crazy then come back and necro this thread and say, Syllph you were wrong.

[Jasparion]

How does having an increased supply of and reduced demand for a specific item create inflated prices, exactly? I'm quite sure that isn't economic theory.

Unlimited supply of money in the hands of cheaters... gee I wonder what happens to the price of rare/high demand items.

Perhaps you checked the AH over the last week or so? 300k plat LDS now 900k? I remember when Planar Girds were as little as 80k plat. Then they jumped to 200k plat around the time of CC. Now they are 700k.

+2 tomes also went through the roof.

So maybe the price of +3 tomes will come down because thousands were created from nothing in a very short time, but Id never seen a +3 tome on the AH so I cant imagine that will have much effect.


Why should the players be punished? Seems to me that Turbine created a faulty glitch and ignored the reports. If the forum would like to place blame place it not on the players but on the people who knew about this for days and days, could have immediately shut the server down and attempted to solve the problem or simply closed the Challenge (like they did with fens awhile back).

"Its not my fault I cheated. Its their fault because they made it so easy."

Is that really your argument? So if there is no red light camera on an intersection you'd run the red?

[Jasparion]

Double post.

[Grace_ana]

The assumption is that the exploiters won't need money right away but have money to spend on stuff which drives inflated prices. If they have any kind of smarts, they won't flood the auctioneer with tomes, so one imagines the price for tomes staying high.

That's a lot of assumptions.

Even if they keep all of the goods to themselves, that just means the prices basically stay put. If they put stuff on the AH, they drop. Since they no longer need those items and there is less demand, prices also drop.

As far as flooding the market with plat and driving up prices, unlikely. The plat cap in reality just isn't that high, and within a week or two tops that plat will be out there and prices normalize. I mean, what are they gonna buy? They just got a ton of stuff. LDS? Fine, they can buy a whole 6-9 at current prices. How long does that last? Additionally, since there is the option of getting more large Shroud ingredients on higher difficulty levels now, the increased availability helps keep the prices down anyway.

It just makes no sense. If people want to yell about how cheating is bad, fine. That's an opinion and a moral stand, and I have no desire to poke at people about that. But when I start seeing stuff like "OMG WE WILL NEVER RECOVER FROM THIS" I have to shake my head. This isn't a plat-stabilized economy anyway. I mean, plat falls out of vases. Have you seen that? It's nuts.

[Syllph]

Unlimited supply of money in the hands of cheaters...

"Its not my fault I cheated. Its their fault because they made it so easy."

Is that really your argument? So if there is no red light camera on an intersection you'd run the red?

Are you really willing to completely close your eyes and pretend that's not exactly what people do in this game? Seriously, if there is a way to make something easier the vast majority of players chose the path of least resistance.

Epic Big Top (Jump), The shroud (boxing in), I dream of Jeets (Boxing in) shall I go on? These are/were all abusing the game in a way that it was not intended but do to game mechanics they can and will be abused. Unless you haven't run a shroud or an EBT then chances are you're guilty of "Its not my fault I cheated. Its their fault because they made it so easy."

Additionally, since when is this unlimited? The glitch was stopped. This means it's limited. And how exactly can you be sure that they made mule accounts and have more than one toon? Do you know something you're not sharing........ Hope you wouldn't be guilty of this either.....

[Jasparion]

That's a lot of assumptions.

As far as flooding the market with plat and driving up prices, unlikely. The plat cap in reality just isn't that high, and within a week or two tops that plat will be out there and prices normalize.

Depends on how many toons they bothered to get to the plat cap. Not to mention all the people who were selling 300k LDS for 2 million are also flush with cash without cheating (though I dare say many would have known what was going on and chosen to benefit from it).

Turbine should have a very good idea of how much plat was created, and how many +3 tomes were created (database query summing all of item code xyz123 looking at day before and day after exploit went wild). I dare say they would even have some idea of the average daily trades on the AH and could therefore work out how long things will remain messed up.

Its just a shame they refuse to acknowledge what is going on.

Its an even bigger shame they dont actually punish people. If you only cared about "beating" the game and could do it in a way to always have the very best of things, but the cost was having to play on an alt account, would you even think twice?

Extra stuff:


Are you really willing to completely close your eyes and pretend that's not exactly what people do in this game? Seriously, if there is a way to make something easier the vast majority of players chose the path of least resistance.

Of course people do it. The point is, Turbine are not doing anything to stop it.


Epic Big Top (Jump), The shroud (boxing in), I dream of Jeets (Boxing in) shall I go on? These are/were all abusing the game in a way that it was not intended but do to game mechanics they can and will be abused.

Are you honestly saying melee guys boxing in a mob is an exploit?


Additionally, since when is this unlimited? The glitch was stopped. This means it's limited. And how exactly can you be sure that they made mule accounts and have more than one toon? Do you know something you're not sharing........ Hope you wouldn't be guilty of this either.....

I have no idea whether it was done. But if you were going to create 100 or more +3 tomes and make as much plat as you could, wouldnt you be using as many toons as possible? Thats just common sense.

But you are right. A few dozen or few hundred people with a few hundred million plat each, created in the space of a few hours, shouldnt have any significant effect...

[Syllph]

Are you honestly saying melee guys boxing in a mob is an exploit?


Hhahaha big bold letters YES!

Come on would your Dungeon Master allow his players to box in a mob because it was aggroed on a player out of range? :)

Seriously don't be that guy who is going to say this isn't out and out cheating. Yet almost 99% certain you are guilty as is the rest of your server. I've never seen a shroud done differently.

[Grace_ana]

But you are right. A few dozen or few hundred people with a few hundred million plat each, created in the space of a few hours, shouldnt have any significant effect...

It won't, really. It's pretty easy to make a ton of money in this game if you want to. Whether that is over a few hours or a few weeks, it doesn't make much difference in the end. From what I am hearing, prices are already starting to normalize, and off-AH prices in the trade channel are what they've always been. Sorry to ruin the doom.

[Rawel_San]

let me sum it up. at least on my server it is likely thousands if not more +3 tomes where generated and stored away. TRs will now never fear eating full sets each life on thier way to completionist creating a new more powerful breed of TR who dont worry over waisting tomes.

Multiple mule accounts sitting with max plat and banks full of tomes and other high end items worth storing for trade.

The economy in DDO will NEVER recover from this one and will result in a long term shift just as much as the currency shift to platinum did but far worse.

Worse it paints a light on turbine saying there is no point to play fair and in fact it seems more and more like if you want to get ahead in DDO you need to find ways to cheat the system and have nothing to fear except maybe a light scolding

I keep hearing all this about 1000's of +3 tomes yet I have seen zero posts for trade of them in channels,
on forums or anywhere else. I mean obviously you probably don't want to post "10 +3 tomes for trade pm me"
but you would expect at least one or two to show up somewhere since they are dropping in elite amrath (now
that I actually know for sure) so trading one would be reasonable to get away with.

Will be interesting to see if they start showing up in a week or two or if the "other forums" might have been wrong about that bit.

Also what other "high end items"? You don't specify that, shroud ingreds? scales? scrolls? Alch ingreds? What
other high end items are there really nowadays?

Don't get me wrong the price of stuff for sure went up on Thelanis but not quite as much as people seem to be
making it out to. LDS are up at 400-450k which is what they used to be at for ages and is only about a 50% hike
from the 300-400k pre u12 days. Greaters are up to about 1.3k AH which is quite a hike since they used to be
about .7-1k pre u12 but still the difference is only about 2x compared to an almost 5-10x increase with
plat becoming the standard since obviously people can't divide by 10.:D

Anyhow not arguing morality,punishments or anything else just sort of confused on the real vs. perceived
effects. The blood stone's seem to be at 500k which is lower then I ever remember them
(1 mill was more usual), but then again I haven't bought one for some time.

[LordPiglet]

CC was more publicly known then the last one, however information regarding it is not available on turbines site. You'd have to go elsewhere to find out about this one and renown exploits used by certain guilds.

[Jasparion]

Hhahaha big bold letters YES!

Come on would your Dungeon Master allow his players to box in a mob because it was aggroed on a player out of range? :)

D&D has rules around this. So short answer would be "yes".

Though I guess in theory you would maybe require a strength check or something else to hold back the 8 tonne Demon. But then again, in DDO I bet there are plenty of raging HOrc Barbs who would WIN that battle.


It won't, really. It's pretty easy to make a ton of money in this game if you want to.

Hundreds of millions of plat? I certainly wouldnt say the AH will never recover, but it will be annoying trying to buy things for the next few weeks/months while all that additional plat works its way through the system.

[Dreamshifter]

They seriously need to develop some exploit clean-up tools though ... it's clear that more and more people realize that they won't face any kind of actual punishment so more and more people join in each time an exploit situation arises.

This. So very much this. They really need to get a good set of tools for the GMs as well. Quality of life fixes are important, and I would be fine with U13 getting delayed (or more likely, U14 since 13 is likely well started by now) in exchange for good tools for tracking items, both for exploits, and for lost items.

[Rumbaar]

They seriously need to develop some exploit clean-up tools though ... it's clear that more and more people realize that they won't face any kind of actual punishment so more and more people join in each time an exploit situation arises.Yeah, they tried that in the past. It was called the Maban event!

[Raptormesh]

Heh, so the players waiting for the next +3 tome sale should just wait for the next exploit if the repercussions are so slight, if they don't give a rat's behind about ethics of course.

[Syllph]

Jasparion: Are you honestly saying melee guys boxing in a mob is an exploit?

-Syllph: YES! would a DM allow this in PnP?

-Jasparion : D&D has rules around this. So short answer would be "yes".

Though I guess in theory you would maybe require a strength check or something else to hold back the 8 tonne Demon. But then again, in DDO I bet there are plenty of raging HOrc Barbs who would WIN that battle.


Fair enough pretend to be blind. bottom-line: We're exploiting the mechanic of the game engine because the mob is trying to find the one who did the most damage and the rest stand there and even /dance. Because nobody else does damage the engine fails. Exploiting game mechanics is still exploiting. This is abusing the rules and to think that you would even try and pretend it's not is fairly simple of you. You know fully well it's an exploit please don't pretend it's not.

[donfilibuster]

For those saying that "the prices will normalize", don't forget that we always say that and the inflation have never diminished.
When the gold was changed to plat, people turned a blind eye. And the prices didn't normalize.
When the guild vendor replaced the broker, prices didn't normalize.
When the cove made the auction house go awry for a time, prices didn't quite recovered.
On everyone of those times you could ask players in trade channel and they'll believe the higher prices are correct.
Greedy sellers favorite line is "but that's the AH price" when overpricing items, while the new players and the clueless players don't know better and follow suit.

Prices may normalize once people get return to run quests for stuff and get loot to sell for cheaper.
Can't quite do that when there's an event around, and Turbine do events too often.
Things like u12 giving you more chances at large mats are bringing prices down and pass 'em around.
Same goes for the desert scroll trader, etc. this is not entirely bad, your item value doesn't diminish because the currency grows stronger.
So things like the exploit messes with these badly, you can't just hope that the prices will normalize on their own.

[Grace_ana]

For those saying that "the prices will normalize", don't forget that we always say that and the inflation have never diminished.
When the gold was changed to plat, people turned a blind eye. And the prices didn't normalize.
When the guild vendor replaced the broker, prices didn't normalize.
When the cove made the auction house go awry for a time, prices didn't quite recovered.
On everyone of those times you could ask players in trade channel and they'll believe the higher prices are correct.
Greedy sellers favorite line is "but that's the AH price" when overpricing items, while the new players and the clueless players don't know better and follow suit.

Prices may normalize once people get return to run quests for stuff and get loot to sell for cheaper.
Can't quite do that when there's an event around, and Turbine do events too often.
Things like u12 giving you more chances at large mats are bringing prices down and pass 'em around.
Same goes for the desert scroll trader, etc. this is not entirely bad, your item value doesn't diminish because the currency grows stronger.
So things like the exploit messes with these badly, you can't just hope that the prices will normalize on their own.

Except...they've already normalized in several places.

[Jasparion]

Fair enough pretend to be blind. bottom-line: We're exploiting the mechanic of the game engine because the mob is trying to find the one who did the most damage and the rest stand there and even /dance. Because nobody else does damage the engine fails.

Ah, I wasnt aware that by doing nothing it improves the blocking? The only time Ive seen people make the meat wall is when everyone was wailing on the mob. And that is absolutely okay in my view.

Simply think of the mechanics of 2 WF standing in a door way fighting a mob while the casters/ranged behind are hammering away. Unless the mob has a way of getting around the doorway, then its common sense that it will get stuck. Of course, at some point the mob should switch its attention away from the caster it cant reach and take a swing at the melee. Something as simple as a non contact counter so if after 10 seconds it has not been able to make an attack roll on its target it will switch to the next closest/2nd on aggro table/etc.

And if people are manufacturing a block by deliberately *not* fighting, then this is something which should be stopped. However, I dare say its harder to prove this is being done, than doing a database search and finding a guy who had no +3 tomes a week ago, and 112 today. And 40 LDS, 200 rare scrolls, 8 Planar Girds, and 20 million plat across his toons.

And on further inspection, he also mailed a similar number of items/plat to a bunch of other accounts...

[donfilibuster]

Yeah varies by server and item types.
And Orien seemed to miss this latest blitz, altought few good stuff was up for sale.
The other previous ones were quite noticeably.

As for items, the price hike used to show in tomes, not so much boss beaters or large mats these days.
Things like con items seems to go up and stay up, things like sp pots never change price no matter what.
Even the +2 con items got the 10x back in the days of the gold to plat change, and people were like 'shush' let us sell high.

[ahpook]

Hhahaha big bold letters YES!

Come on would your Dungeon Master allow his players to box in a mob because it was aggroed on a player out of range? :)

Seriously don't be that guy who is going to say this isn't out and out cheating. Yet almost 99% certain you are guilty as is the rest of your server. I've never seen a shroud done differently.

Are you seriously going to compare boxing in a Boss with melees to this recent exploit? Seriously?

Here is a hint.

Many (most?) people will argue that boxing in is WAI. But I can't see anyone rationally being able to claim that about the current issue. Plus you can write pages on how you beat a quest by boxing in the boss and that posting will be here to see until the next big forum purge. However describing in even vague details this current issue will get the post deleted and your self a forum ban. Go ahead and prove me wrong.

PS, I have heard a couple mentions that this was reported on Lam but never with any credible evidence to support that. Is there even a vauge reference to a bug report about an exploit on the Lam forums?

PPS for those looking to get in on the action, the problem was fixed with Mondays patch. Google might give you the details though.

[balancetraveller]

Yeah varies by server and item types.
And Orien seemed to miss this latest blitz, altought few good stuff was up for sale.
The other previous ones were quite noticeably.

This is the one reason you'll fall in love with Orien... Too n00bish to cheat! :D

[PurdueDave]

All I want to know is where I can find out the information so that I can keep up and use these exploits. If there is no penalty I see no reason to be missing out. PM it to me. Send it in in game mail, throw me a tell. Whatever.

Unfortunately, it would seem the penalty for telling you about an exploit is far more severe than executing the exploit.

[BitkaCK2]

This is the one reason you'll fall in love with Orien... Too nEWbish to cheat! :D

Fixed and +1
http://cubscoutpack1970.com/images/GR_salute.jpg

bitkaCK2

[Red_Knight]

Hhahaha big bold letters YES!

Come on would your Dungeon Master allow his players to box in a mob because it was aggroed on a player out of range? :)


Actually, yes I would And in fact, I have. But then the players roleplayed it rather well.

Back before DDO Unlimited the STK end boss was really freaking nasty. Had a DR to pretty much everything so high only magic missile or an adamantine weapon could hurt it. And of course at launch you couldn't move while casting a spell cause movement would interrupt it. You had to have mobile casting to move while casting, but most players thought it was a wasted feat.

Back then, soloing STK was something to be proud of. Not many could do it since you needed very specific and sometimes hard to find gear. Or very specific feats if a caster. The only known effective tactic was to have a sorcerer or two (wizards could do in a pinch) stand in one corner, while the melee guys shield wall and the cleric keeps everyone standing.

Was doing this an exploit? According to you Syllph it was. Do you know what most people would call that? Battle tactics. You know the arcane casters are the only ones who can hurt this foe, so you protect them. Sometimes those tactics fell apart. Back at launch my sorcerer quickly became a favorite for STK and Stormcleave parties cause unlike most casters, I could move to dodge attacks. A fact which had helped many STK attempts sucseed despite a near total party wipe.

Now, if people are shield walling via /dance... THAT might be an exploit. But shield walling it's self isn't one. It's a battle tactic. But then I guess you'd consider an arcane archer standing on the 2nd level of the prison in Waterworks part 2 and firing at the kobolds down below an exploit too. Or standing on a cliff in Stormcleave and firing ranged weapons at the wolves to kill them safely.

Wait, that means that the NPC mobs must be exploiters! They frequently have ranged mobs in places melee either can't reach or can't reach easily.

[Orratti]

A number of things. First The bug was reported on Lamania on multiple occasions and was reported again when it went live. Turbine did nothing about the glitch so people abused it.

Why should the players be punished? Seems to me that Turbine created a faulty glitch and ignored the reports. If the forum would like to place blame place it not on the players but on the people who knew about this for days and days, could have immediately shut the server down and attempted to solve the problem or simply closed the Challenge (like they did with fens awhile back).

Take one look at the AH. Notice something? Everything is set for 2 million plat. Seems most of the server has no issue with getting rich for this. Wake up: that's exploiting too. I sincerely hope all those who are crying for bans aren't posting scales for max buyout . . . I've yet to see someone not taking advantage of the AH.

Additionally, seems every other post is saying the economy will NEVER, in big bold letters, recover. People said the exact same thing with CC and in less than a month prices were normalized. when the source of the glitch is gone as it has been dealt with, then the source of income is also gone. People will not have infinite plat forever and eventually when a buyer continues to post scales for 2 million and time and time again it bounces back into their mailbox... they will eventually lower the price. It's not rocket science.

Exact same thing happened during CC. and I made a post then about it too : http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=304541
The economy normalized exactly the way I said it would. It will here too.

People are saying this is WAY bigger. Really? Do you have the numbers from those who exploited during CC? Do you have the numbers of those exploiting from the challenges? Seriously people, you might -think-this is bigger but nobody has that data and if they do you're guilty of not informing Turbine of know exploiters.

I'm so tired of seeing these kind of threads, It's been a few days. Give it a month and if things are still crazy then come back and necro this thread and say, Syllph you were wrong.

Player's are punished. It's just that the ones punished are the one's who didn't know about it and missed their cut. Who really cares about the economy. What drives the ingame economy is how much you're willing to pay for an item not what it's put up for. If you aren't willing to buy it the price gets lowered or it won't sell.


Heh, so the players waiting for the next +3 tome sale should just wait for the next exploit if the repercussions are so slight, if they don't give a rat's behind about ethics of course.

Yes they should. Ethics have nothing to do with it. None of the 10 commandments have been broken that I know of. It isn't stealing to take things created out of thin air. Cheating is biblically acceptable. After all the walls of Jherico or watever the spelling is, weren't stormed, they cheated and got let in the back by a *****. What I would be after is equality and what is more ethical than seeking equality. If so many achieved a superior advantage in this manner it is only right to try as hard as possible to do the same.


Unfortunately, it would seem the penalty for telling you about an exploit is far more severe than executing the exploit.

How ironic is this? It would be so much better for everyone if you could share these things with all. How about at least publishing a turbine book with a list of them so we can all use them equally.

[Rumbaar]

Doom and doom, but know even when they wrongly banned people for the Maban event it took them a while to get all the names and details. I'm sure they are making sure they get it right this time.


But I did make a funny, them checking to make sure they get it right :D

[Cade_Wells]

i know they will never do it and yes i've said this before

BUT with out the community knowing there is a effective way of dealing with things like this i.e. know that people get proper bans / items removed etc people in the future will just do this

well last time when they found an expliot out they got a little slap on the wrists and got to play again in a week and keep all the equipment HECK i'll do that i could do with XXX (fill in the blank with gold / items etc)

if thats the way turbine wants to play it all good but thats what will happen :)

[Syllph]

Are you seriously going to compare boxing in a Boss with melees to this recent exploit? Seriously?

Of course not, If you go back and read the entire dialog between us you'd see I was trying to answer his question why would players exploit. My argument was player inevitably take the easiest route to victory.


-Syllph would your DM allow this? Red_Knight - Actually, yes I would And in fact, I have. But then the players roleplayed it rather well.

Your DM would allow the moster to be so stupid that 6 players standing around them doing absoultely nothing but blocking their path-finding abilities while making sure "DON'T SHIELD BLOCK! It draws aggo." was being shouted all out while another player was standing there doing absolutely nothing because it had already drawn aggro AND while the cleric is mass buffing around it?

Good luck Role Playing that under my DMing. I would laugh if the players pulled that one. That is what we are doing.


Was doing this an exploit? According to you Syllph it was. Do you know what most people would call that? Battle tactics.

Yes again it's abusing the system. The game checks for who deals the most aggro. Come on, don't pull the Role playing card here. You're not making strength checks to grapple, you're not using tactics you're abusing the game engine.

I'm not trying to compare this exploit with another I'm simple showing you that player when given the opportunity will never do things the hard way.


But then I guess you'd consider an arcane archer standing on the 2nd level of the prison in Waterworks part 2 and firing at the kobolds down below an exploit too. Or standing on a cliff in Stormcleave and firing ranged weapons at the wolves to kill them safely.

Comparing apples to oranges. Abusing the engine and -using- terrain are two completely different things. The first I would not allow the second I would encourage. Attacking from a strategic point is good battle tactics and is the joy of playing a ranged caster/archer. No game mechanics are broken (except again when the mob can't reach you and stands there being pelted again and again all while doing nothing or cooking in a firewall while looking dumbfounded at the caster just out of Pathfinding range. Would your DM allow the big boss ogre to stand there while you were on rock pelting him? Or would he correctly have the ogre seek cover? Good luck Role Playing that one with me. That's abusing it too.


Wait, that means that the NPC mobs must be exploiters! They frequently have ranged mobs in places melee either can't reach or can't reach easily.

Now we're talking! Ok let's say you're in the coal chamber getting pelted with arrows from an archer way above you. It now has your aggro. Tell you what.. Stand there until you die. Next have your buddy stand next to you in the acid rain it throws up. Just stand there, the mob is out of range guess you're out of luck. No, you don't do that. You seek cover or attempt to find an alternate route.

Can you really be so closed minded to try and say this is WAI?

The one point I will totally agree with is that everyone does it, it's a great tactic (albeit cheesy) and the Devs don't seem to mind. But don't tell me about your DM allowing it or that you could role play this. We're purposefully making sure the meatwall does nothing so that the archer/caster has aggro. We're not role playing anything.

[inggold]

How does having an increased supply of and reduced demand for a specific item create inflated prices, exactly? I'm quite sure that isn't economic theory.

When you print more money, the existing money is worth less. Inflation. Sorta Economy 101 type stuff.

In action.....

If a few hundred people on your server just printed enough platinum to fill multiple accounts, anything they may want is going to seem VERY expensive now.

Large Guild Slot items? Yeeaahhh.....

That extra Planar Gird? Yeeeahhh, sorry.......

That person is on their third TR, and happened to be out of +3 STR tomes and wants one, you do too. Yeeaahhh...

[Miow]

How does having an increased supply of and reduced demand for a specific item create inflated prices, exactly? I'm quite sure that isn't economic theory.

Because the few have such things and can set any price they want...

[Aurora1979]

Because the few have such things and can set any price they want...

yep. de beers own most of the worlds diamonds. The non blood type according to them.

They get to set the market price on them. Same here

[Barazon]

A friend of mine was in a group with 5 guys from the same guild and they were joking about how they were expecting a 1 week ban some time soon but didnt care. When they returned they had over 100 +3 tomes between them. And all the plat they would ever need.

Its sad noone from Turbine will ever respond to any of these threads because I really only have one question I would like them to answer:

"Do you think the punishments you hand out do anything to stop this sort of behaviour?"

If those guys returned from their 1 week ban to find ALL their money and gear gone and ALL the money and gear from EVERY toon they gave the tomes/plat/GS mats/scrolls/etc. to, I dare say they would think twice before so openly and blatantly cheating in future.

These people are quite literally laughing at Turbine. If I worked at Turbine I would actually feel humiliated by this. But they just dont seem to care.

The T&C says Turbine can hand out any punishment they wish, up to and including deleting characters and entire accounts. It would be nice if they actually enforced this from time to time, so the cheaters would think twice before doing it again.

If all that happens is a 1 week ban, next time something like this happens the number of people involved will be doubled or tripled. It may as well be Diablo 2 with full access to the equipment codes...

Deleted characters or accounts make people stop playing, which means, you guessed it! LESS $$$ coming in! I guess the aphorism here is: Don't delete the hand that feeds you!

[MrkGrismer]

I guess I spent too much time as a DM, because if I was Turbine instead of banning the accounts I would put a curse on each of their character such that all of their equipment took a point of damage every minute...

Non-removable.

Super secret.

[Barazon]

I guess I spent too much time as a DM, because if I was Turbine instead of banning the accounts I would put a curse on each of their character such that all of their equipment took a point of damage every minute...

Non-removable.

Super secret.

Hah, I used to play on a MUD called Moral Decay, and the damage system there had 6 possible targets: 2 arms, 2 legs, body, and head. You could lose a limb and get it healed back, but losing your head... Each target had a percentage associated with it, the chance that any random attack would hit you there. When one of the "gods" of the game wanted to punish you for some reason, they'd pull the "fat head" trick, and change your character's head % from the default (I think it was 10) up to like 50%.

[Eladiun]

Reports are the exploit was reported on Lammania... *sigh*

Just like many of the previous ones.

[Cade_Wells]

All I want to know is where I can find out the information so that I can keep up and use these exploits. If there is no penalty I see no reason to be missing out. PM it to me. Send it in in game mail, throw me a tell. Whatever.

Yep totally aggree next one i need to know, a week or so perfect for what you get in return

what a complete JOKE!

[ahpook]

Of course not, If you go back and read the entire dialog between us you'd see I was trying to answer his question why would players exploit. My argument was player inevitably take the easiest route to victory.


Thanks for the clarification. If you are explaining behaviour that makes sense. But just so you know, my reading of your original post was that you were in fact justifying the behaviour. In essences saying its OK to use the recent exploit because exploiting is what people do. If you block in monsters, you might as well loot infinite chests that are clearly not WAI.

[Orratti]

Deleted characters or accounts make people stop playing, which means, you guessed it! LESS $$$ coming in! I guess the aphorism here is: Don't delete the hand that feeds you!

Well you may or may not quit playing. You may just convert the F2P account you secreted all your free loot on into a paying account. Who will miss you? Those who used the exploit were in the minority anyway so no real money loss right? There are so many hands feeding Turbine biting off a few here and there won't hurt. It isn't like DDO is their only game or even their most populous.

Either way you will quit or probably quit at least over abusing exploits that give you free plat or items in the future. If turbine doesn't want people to VERY actively start trying to use exploits they should be considering some kind of serious actions.

[Vint]

me too please. 1 week ban is a good deal, hell even 1 month is totally worth it. next exploit i'm in! hope it's tomes, plat or even better xp. can't wait!

remember the good old days when people got perma banned for exploiting some eldrich runes or xp and now you can fill your inventory and bank with +3 tomes, major pots and all the plat you can carry and get a few days.

no comment

[Ulurjah]

Yeah, they tried that in the past. It was called the Maban event!

From what I understand that was something they did one time, and not a tool developed.

I'm talking about developing tools to help their GM staff. Tools that could be fed criteria and spit back a list of matching accounts for the GM's to look into. Tools that could allow the GM's to do restoration of stuff when a bug strikes and causes loss, etc...

[HAL]

Why should the players be punished? Seems to me that Turbine created a faulty glitch and ignored the reports. If the forum would like to place blame place it not on the players but on the people who knew about this for days and days, could have immediately shut the server down and attempted to solve the problem or simply closed the Challenge (like they did with fens awhile back).

This kind of answer makes me laugh. And if a store fails to lock its door and people help themselves, it's not the fault of the thieves, it's the fault of the store for not locking the door. Sure - LOL.

And it's not the same as the CC wands. Those wands were given a value and were able to be sold. If a store accidentally marks an item $1.00 instead of $10.00, it is not the fault of the customer if they "stock up".

[Urjak]

IMO it is hard to compare the CC wand exploit with the challenges one ... CC wands were widely known and up for a long time. Most people who took part in the first CC also sold wands. On average most players (at least the ones I know off) made about 2 million plat. While this ofc was a huge gain for many players, 2 million plat are spent very quickly as well. (And making those 2 million plat from wands also took several days of farming, not just (what I read on the forums) less than an hour) So the marketprices normalized really quickly and also the power level of most players was not influenced much.

With the challenges exploit this is a whole different story. Here a select few players who knew about it and had access to challenges used it to acquire insane amounts of wealth. While I expect the market to return to normal prices quickly, those select few players will now forever have a lot more wealth than any other player in this game. Ofc those 4 mill plat you can store on one toon will be used up fairly quickly as well. But then they can just sell one of their 500 +3 tomes for 2 mill plat and can go on never ever worrying about money again. THIS is what makes this exploit so terribly unfair and broken (and will probably lead to another bunch of uber-elitists with every possibly gear, because they can simply buy it (and dont tell me that if you get that esos shard and someone offers you 10 +3 tomes you wouldnt be tempted^^))

[squeek1984]

Sounds like SOJs for everybody!

[extraocular]

nm

[Vormaerin]

yep. de beers own most of the worlds diamonds. The non blood type according to them.

They get to set the market price on them. Same here

Actually, that hasn't been true for years. Ten or fifteen years ago, De Beers stopped selling diamonds they didn't dig up themselves, because proving provenance is too difficult on the wholesale market. They only control about 1/3 of the market today, whereas they were 90% of the market twenty years ago.

[gloopygloop]

One thing to frown at is that finding a glitch like this is the dream of any unethical player.
This is fairly worse than the actual mess the economy can get.

I think that the worst part about this exploit and the dowsing rod fiasco and all of the many and varied exploits that existed (and continue to exist) is the feeling that it gives to normally honest people that they "need" to exploit as well or risk being left far behind the power curve.

I hope that they do figure out some way to take away the loot that people get through exploiting.
I also hope that they figure out some way to give people back the loot that they lost due to Turbine's bugs.

[gloopygloop]

This kind of answer makes me laugh. And if a store fails to lock its door and people help themselves, it's not the fault of the thieves, it's the fault of the store for not locking the door.

When the store keeps getting robbed week after week, month after month and continues to tell the people who stole from them that they can keep what they stole... then the store gets to share some of the blame.

[Vormaerin]

it gives to normally honest people that they "need" to exploit as well or risk being left far behind the power curve.


What power curve? This isn't a PvP game. You aren't hurt because someone else has a +3 Tome and you don't.

Do you even WANT to run a quest with the kind of players who think its important to find something like that out about fellow players?

[mystafyi]

I hope that they do figure out some way to take away the loot that people get through exploiting.
I also hope that they figure out some way to give people back the loot that they lost due to Turbine's bugs.

Sadly, turbine cant replace lost loot from a bug. Do you really think they can now track items?
They cant even fix the bugged bug reporting tool fgs. No need to continue on about the numerous other bugs they cant fix.

[donfilibuster]

Maybe the cheaters are not the only ones that need a pull of the ear, if this were an online business someone could get fired over this.
Granted, a programmer is safe as the QA procedures are fixed, so the bug testing is limited by the deadlines.
That's a cornerstone of the computer age, you ship first patch bugs later.
But still, free +3 tomes is sales lost, so money is lost, which at the very least it earns an audit of said QA procedures.
Just a tought, maybe too rough a measure but sometimes is needed to get things straight.

[JOTMON]

Maybe the cheaters are not the only ones that need a pull of the ear, if this were an online business someone could get fired over this.
Granted, a programmer is safe as the QA procedures are fixed, so the bug testing is limited by the deadlines.
That's a cornerstone of the computer age, you ship first patch bugs later.
But still, free +3 tomes is sales lost, so money is lost, which at the very least it earns an audit of said QA procedures.
Just a tought, maybe too rough a measure but sometimes is needed to get things straight.

Doubtful there probably was a boost to the DDO store.

Lots of players plat cap.. need more bank space, need more shared bank space, need more shared plat space.
Buy more ingredinets, need bigger bag.. no tome to farm subterrain.. buy a bag..
$$$ sale sale sale...

Newly Rich players spend loads of plat on AH items for whatever the price.
Plat dilutes into the general popluace less 30% cut to AH.
Rich populace spends plat to buy more overpriced AH items...another 30% cut.
Everyone poor again, mass redistribution of assoted AH items.
So they dont sell a few +3 tomes that are generally not that usefull anyway.
Everyone loaded up bankspace with stuff they may not use.. put it all back on the AH overpriced.
In a week or so it will all be back to the normal overpriced AH.
Rinse Repeat.

Did it change the game.. no... quests still waiting to be run and...Ladder lag still waiting to annoy me.
Do have to say selling 2LDS for 2mil plat after ah cut still makes me smile, until i buy some overpriced scroll on the AH.

[~Glimrac]

and not being able to buy them for 400-500K ticks me off. Nothing funny about an economy so fragile a few cheaters can damage it.

[toaf]

did someone just say SOJs for everyone? long live diablo 2 hardcore east :D

[gloopygloop]

Sadly, turbine cant replace lost loot from a bug. Do you really think they can now track items?

No. I don't think that they can now track items. That's why I wrote "I hope they do figure out". I'd like them to figure out some way to help the poor bastards that get hosed by Turbine's bugs.

I'd also like them to figure out a way to take away most of the incentive to exploit by taking away the loot that people get by exploiting. I doubt that most of the exploiters would even be mad. "What? I lost all of the +3 tomes that I got from that exploit? Yeah, I kind of figured they'd figure out how to do that eventually."

But it would reduce a lot of the incentive to exploit.


They cant even fix the bugged bug reporting tool fgs. No need to continue on about the numerous other bugs they cant fix.

I agree that the bugged bug reporting tool is another serious problem. It's hard to feel sympathy for Turbine over this exploit when it was reported to them before the update went live AND reported again after it went live.

[gloopygloop]

and not being able to buy them for 400-500K ticks me off. Nothing funny about an economy so fragile a few cheaters can damage it.

If you think it was just a few, then you didn't spend any time on Argo last weekend, watching vast throngs of people run back and forth from the bank to a vendor like mad.

[Grace_ana]

When you print more money, the existing money is worth less. Inflation. Sorta Economy 101 type stuff.

In action.....

If a few hundred people on your server just printed enough platinum to fill multiple accounts, anything they may want is going to seem VERY expensive now.

Large Guild Slot items? Yeeaahhh.....

That extra Planar Gird? Yeeeahhh, sorry.......

That person is on their third TR, and happened to be out of +3 STR tomes and wants one, you do too. Yeeaahhh...


All of this would be true if we had a plat-stabilized economy. We don't. Money is constantly being "printed" when we get quest rewards, break vases and boxes, etc. It's pretty rare people spend more on repairs than they gain in rewards, so the economy is constantly gaining more plat.

Do you think that this is the first time we've had a bunch of people plat capped with so much stuff they have nothing to do but buy and sell? There have been tons of people like that around forever and ever. Yet they don't go playing with the AH to drive up prices of everything, because what's the point if they are already basically plat capped? What's the point anyway? It hasn't happened before, and I don't see any reason to think that will happen now.


Because the few have such things and can set any price they want...

Unless the devs suddenly removed the ability to get those things by questing, that's entirely untrue. If prices are too high, people will just go farm for the items. The items for sale will not sell, and then prices will drop. It's really not that big a deal.

[grandeibra]

@grace-ana

sorry but your post is off base IMHO. Earlier exploits were often about the ability to plat cap all your toons. Prices on AH then went up but in time came down to about the level they had been. Not that big of a deal.

However, this most recent exploit is NOT about capping money for all your toons. It is about having pages of items that will allow you to keep max capping your toons for longer than DDO will stay up. For years and years. Since, as you said, money will keep being created, these cheaters will have a constant influx os fresh cash from non-cheaters. This exploit is so much more severe than anything that has taken place before it that it can't even be compared or analyzed based upon our past experiences.

Yes, lifetime banning paying customers is not good business acumen in general. But, when the longterm ramifications are that regular players, especially new ones, can't use the AH my bet is that Turbine will lose a tremendous amount of money from not coming down ultra-hard on the cheaters this time.

[Cogdoc]

Seeing that:

1- DDO is by far not a PvP game, there is no actual competition between players, you play on the same team.
2- DDO is very solo friendly, nothing you can get from the AH or other players is actually _needed_ to complete all content.

I think this uprising of the community over fictional gains of some of the members is a bit overdone.

Cogdoc

[Koowluh]

However, this most recent exploit is NOT about capping money for all your toons. It is about having pages of items that will allow you to keep max capping your toons for longer than DDO will stay up. For years and years. Since, as you said, money will keep being created, these cheaters will have a constant influx os fresh cash from non-cheaters. This exploit is so much more severe than anything that has taken place before it that it can't even be compared or analyzed based upon our past experiences.


Really, this argument (and more have made it on this thread and over the forums) does not hold up to me. Why? I'm going back to my Doom reference. No, not the dooooooom thread, the actual original game.

When I first started playing PC games, I was about 12 years old. I had cheats for each and every game. I played every game with cheats. Strangely enough, I was done with those games within a day or two. There was absolutely no challenge and they were boring as hell. IDDQD and IDKFA really took the fun out of the game.

Once I was a bit older, I fired up a few of those games again, but used no cheats. Doom suddenly got a lot more scarier. A monster standing around the corner could actually scare the **** out of you, because you could die and had to start over.

Now back to DDO. What would you do if you had pages full of tomes, a bank full of items, all your toons capped and completed, basically IDDQD-ed and IDKFA-ed through the game? I personally would quit. There's absolutely nothing to do in the game anymore.

You got everything. You win the game. Woohoo. Now what? Start another character and cap that one as fast as possible too? Will be a cakewalk with all the items you got. You may need some extra bank/inventory space fast on that character. You may need to buy some bags for it (thanks for that reply JOTMON!). Willing to spend some TP on that? Great, more money in the pocket for Turbine, so they won't be complaining about your exploiting/cheating (although not admit that). You'll quit pretty soon afterwards anyways, because you're bored out of your skull having everything already. So money spent and no bandwidth used. Win/win for Turbine.

I've seen this happen on other online games, especially the cheap MMO ones. People cheat the living daylights out of the game, become the largest buyers because they need space to store all those ill-gotten gains and then quit shortly after, only returning sporadically to glance if "their" stuff is still there.

Of course, I'm being totally speculative and making assumptions here. Feel free to shoot me down.

[Phemt81]

Now i get why some people will never sign a thread like this...

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=349899

:rolleyes:

[rayworks]

Anyone else think the most recently revealed exploit wasn't an accident? The "bug" was reported on the Lammania server, apparently by multiple people, yet Turbine still went live with it. That's either gross incompetence or it was on purpose. Given lots of other things Turbine has done, it would not surprise me if it was.

The question would be "why?"

[grandeibra]

@koowluh
Now back to DDO. What would you do if you had pages full of tomes, a bank full of items, all your toons capped and completed, basically IDDQD-ed and IDKFA-ed through the game? I personally would quit. There's absolutely nothing to do in the game anymore. Totally agree. Personally I get very bored at that stage of a game. Hopefully many/some/all of the cheaters will feel the same and quit hihi

[Cogdoc]

Anyone else think the most recently revealed exploit wasn't an accident? The "bug" was reported on the Lammania server, apparently by multiple people, yet Turbine still went live with it. That's either gross incompetence or it was on purpose. Given lots of other things Turbine has done, it would not surprise me if it was.

The question would be "why?"

Allow me a comment, as this is not the first time I see this popping up in the thread. Major Malphunktion has confirmed that this was never actually reported on Lammania. They have gone so far to even check forum archives as well in case it was raised as a forum post but got removed, but they found nothing. Nix.

Cogdoc

[mystafyi]

Major Malphunktion has confirmed that this was never actually reported on Lammania. They have gone so far to even check forum archives as well in case it was raised as a forum post but got removed, but they found nothing. Nix.
very true, but as we all know if it was bug reported using the bugged bug reporting ingame tool, it was most likely deleted. I personally know of 3 bugs that were reported via this "tool" and yet later dev's say they have never ever heard of such bugs.

[krackythehoodedone]

Yes the ultimate Irony.

The exploit was reported on Lamania and ingame but the bug reporting tool is itself bugged

This has been confirmed elsewhere..not that i expect this thread to last much longer

[gloopygloop]

Allow me a comment, as this is not the first time I see this popping up in the thread. Major Malphunktion has confirmed that this was never actually reported on Lammania. They have gone so far to even check forum archives as well in case it was raised as a forum post but got removed, but they found nothing. Nix.

Cogdoc

MajMalphunktion said that Turbine never received a bug report about this issue. I believe him.

At least one person that I know from in game says that he bug reported this issue while it was still in Lamannia. I believe him. (Somehow, his forum posts kept disappearing from that thread, so that's a bit weird.)

I don't see any conflict between these two statements, though, because of issues that we've had with the Bug Reporting tool in the past that are likely still a problem.

[Razcar]

Now i get why some people will never sign a thread like this...

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=349899

:rolleyes:The reason I won't sign a thread like that is that it is unrealistic and pointless. Turbine won't make an update with just bugfixes because:

1. Their marketing people won't think they can sell it. They want attractive bullet points which scream out "NEW". New content, new features, new things to sell. Not some dusty old bugs that's gotten fixed. That is just not something to put in a gaudy mass mail - at least from a sales person's point of view.

2. It's a little embarrassing. While bugs and problems are an accepted part of software, it is not something to flaunt. Making a whole update just dedicated to bug fixing signals that DDO is in desperate need for it, and that DDO may be more buggier than other MMOs. If that is true or not is irrelevant, but Turbine signaling that it might be is not attractive for them.

3. Turbine does not make what we ask for. Because they think they know better what we want than we do ourselves. Maybe they are right, maybe not. For example: Ask people in game, ask people on the forums and many, many want the PrE's finished. Yesterday. The reason being that building complex characters is one of the most powerful game aspects we have in DDO and one of this game's major selling points, and PrE's are an important part of that.

Yet Turbine has sprinkled out the class PrE's sporadically over 4 years, at a snail's pace, and still less than half of the tiers are in game. At this pace the planned PrE's will be finished sometime in 2016. So what we say, or want, doesn't mean much. Turbine will make things like Challenges instead.

[Cogdoc]

The reason I won't sign a thread like that is that it is unrealistic and pointless. Turbine won't make an update with just bugfixes because:...

Simply because its not how it should be done. Versioning and updates should not work that way. Lets take a 3 tier versioning concept for example:

Tier 1 : Version 1, 2 and 3 are huge content and game updates, like an expansion pack
Tier 2 : Version 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 are smaller content updates (= additional recipies for crafting what was introduced in a major content update, additional challenge dungeons to the already introduced challenges, you get the point) or re-balancing updates for say clas balance issues in a pvp game.
Tier 3 : Version 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.3 are bugfixes, hotfixes, patches for technical issues, like GUI fixes, addon, LUA fixes, API fixes, etc etc.

So I myself, would not dedicate an Update (thats Tier1 in DDO compared to my previous example) to bugfixes only. Let them bring on the new content in those, but in parallel make smaller patches to fix bugs, and you dont have make a big fuss and sale pitches about these.

Cogdoc

[rayworks]

Allow me a comment, as this is not the first time I see this popping up in the thread. Major Malphunktion has confirmed that this was never actually reported on Lammania. They have gone so far to even check forum archives as well in case it was raised as a forum post but got removed, but they found nothing. Nix.

Cogdoc

I don't buy this. I've put in bug reports before and gotten responses back that were basically "this is an unreported/not known problem".

Really? I just reported it. Its known now, how can you send me some stupid reply like that?

[Cogdoc]

I don't buy this. I've put in bug reports before and gotten responses back that were basically "this is an unreported/not known problem".

Really? I just reported it. Its known now, how can you send me some stupid reply like that?

I see that there are a lot of people who doubts what Major Malphunktion says, but for me if I dont believe him regarding Turbine actions who should I believe? All the exploiters who used this exploit, as you mention in your complaints, and got all the tomes and money, you think I should believe them instead?

I of course see your point, and yes maybe Turbine has also created an uncomfortable situation for themselves here with the bug reporting tool being (hehe) bugged. But I honestly dont expect that the playerbase where people go all out and exploit a bug to such an extent would have _surely_ reported this on Lamannia, even if they have noticed it.

I accept that there is a possibility that it was reported and the bug reporting tool ate that report and said yum, but until one guy who actually reported it himself comes here, stands up and declares this, I picture this to be an idea without a background.

Cogdoc

[karsion]

I don't buy this. I've put in bug reports before and gotten responses back that were basically "this is an unreported/not known problem".

Really? I just reported it. Its known now, how can you send me some stupid reply like that?

Ah yes, the usual choice of:

"This is not known problem, there is nothing we can do about it"

"This is known problem, there is nothing we can do about it"

:D

[krtkoo]

I have to say I am personally rly dissappointed from no action from Turbine – it is clearly that they know who used the exploit, cos they already banned them for a little time.
If (and I doubt this) Turbine is no table to find out when were items looted on chars on such account - at least what they could have done is delete all plat on those chars excep 100k on a char, delete all +3 unbound tomes (store tomes are BTA and have visually another icon as in game tomes, so this could have been done without any risk of deleting tomes bought for TP), delete all pots except lets say 100.

All this could have been done – yes those pple could have some other FTP accounts with some itmes saved, but Turbine would have done at least something more than few days or 2-3 weeks bans.

[Cogdoc]

...I accept that there is a possibility that it was reported and the bug reporting tool ate that report and said yum, but until one guy who actually reported it himself comes here, stands up and declares this, I picture this to be an idea without a background.
Cogdoc

And I believe that it is really a difficult situation with the bugged bug report tool, but when it bugs out with not sending your report to Turbine, do you also get a reply for your report? As if you dont, can that be an indication for you to report it again, or make a forum post about it on the Lammania forums? Or on the general forums. Or on DDOVault forums.

Cogdoc

[Phemt81]

The reason I won't sign a thread like that is that it is unrealistic and pointless. Turbine won't make an update with just bugfixes because:

1. Their marketing people won't think they can sell it. They want attractive bullet points which scream out "NEW". New content, new features, new things to sell. Not some dusty old bugs that's gotten fixed. That is just not something to put in a gaudy mass mail - at least from a sales person's point of view.

We never said it is convenient for turbine, at least on the immediate future...

Yes they can't sell the "Bugfixes pack!!!!" (but i'd buy one lol) but that should be worked out to assure:

1) Quality of the product

2) Customers fidelization

3) More newcomers

This should realistically lead the company to farm more money in the long terms. Simple as that.

Also at the rate each update generates bugs, the game will suffer major glitches or even stop the playability at certain point. I see it as quite mandatory, maybe not done as a single focused update, but bugfixes are needed now and then, like it or not.

[BladeTricks]

Exploits are like corruption. I either want less of it, or more opportunity to participate in it.

[somenewnoob]

So, in "another place" where they have a forum type thing, it looks like at least one person who exploited this didn't get anything except a warning.

Way to lay down the law Turbine. So I guess we get one free pass each.

(probably get a harsher sentence just for posting this :rolleyes:)

[lugoman]

Has anyone at Turbine said the bug reporting tool is actually bugged? I could see bugs being reported to one group who decides what is important enough to fix and then passing only those bugs to the programmers. Maybe the exploit wasnt considered big enough to pass on at the time.

[Auran82]

Exploits are not gone, simply evolved.

Like always.

[fullmetaljackrabbit]

I used the in-game bug reporting system to report that the in-game bug reporting system is buggier than a $3 hooker. I'm sure it'll be fixed shortly.

[MaximusParthas]

rally the devs! arm the forums! burn them at the stake! time in prison should be seriously considered.
community service maybe.
we should file formal charges. help! pc police! international adventures broke into the ddo.com exploit bank an took ...stuff! The economy is in shambles, our crops are failing and somebody aught to do something to somebody for doing something we can's say here about how things are being done everywhere when evil exploit bank robber people are doing the things that they so deviously do. that you' would probably do to if you knew how to do what was being done durnit.
please don't underestimate them. if they can have supreme +3 tomes for every toon they ever make each tr life and a googlegagillion zillion plat to buy anything they want ingame forever-n-ever?, well, then by dinner tomorrow they will most certainly conquer the world!


um... mr exploiter sir, can i raid with you guys?




bumpity