Ban the Exploiters

[Cyr]

We are aware of an issue where players can trade items that are normally restricted. We will be fixing this in the future, but in the meantime, please do not engage in this exploit. Players caught may face disciplinary action.

LOL!

So you guys finally man up and say something is an exploit AND THEN you say people CAUGHT MAY face displinary action...

Come on Turbine...Fair warning is being given.

You then need to follow it up with 'players caught will be permanently banned from the game'.

[Riggs]

This bug where in Lammania before it saw light on live servers like the previous bug and Turbine was aware of them before the release date. For what I know this bug is the forth in order of appearance that Turbine didn't do anything in order to prevent future exploits. So, after 2 patches and not corrected I really saw people thinking this is not a bug but worked as intended...

To the other side I saw a LOT of people loosing items from shared or reincarnated bank and clearly Turbine support system never returned them. Moreover I saw a LOT of time wipes due to lag or boss exploits. I saw a LOT of time no reward for a lot of effort (6 consecutive Tod, in elite too and not a single ring saw in that **** chests or like the recent bug in wich a 20th completition, something like 2 months of grinding and expectations for an item and only 2-3 useless items in that reward and nothing said by Turbine about this...)

And I can continue with tons of other bugs or exploits by raid bosses that ended in a loss of time and expectations for 12 people...

I saw people returned to the game after some monthes they said bb cause near 2 years grinding a quest is not enought for Turbine idea about what a character should have... (I reached 103 completions with my main alt in various lifes and never found a red helm...).
Finally someone can have what searched so long and is this a fault? Sorry but I can understand those people using this "exploit" about something so hard to find that had to be unbound from start (or a better drop rate) and anyway announced so near a year ago by Devs...

So now we have near all endgamers that used this exploit (even those that decided not to use previous ones but at the end said "f..k all, I nerded too much this game to don't have a f...g item and Turbine don't do anything about exploiters")...

I'd like to remember that nothing new was created as in the previous bug/exploit but everything was in those backpacks because someone grinded, played and lost time so much that someone other can benefit of this!

I heard a lots of ideas in how to punish guilty and sincerely nothing is good:
-ban all exploiters. So we can definitevely say bb to DDO as half servers will be banned and the half left will not have people to full an lfm (or there will not be an lfm at all, as endgamers are those that creates lfms).
-delete all epic items or those involved in exploit (not exploits parts included). Like to say You have to grind 2 years more...)
-the absurd idea to ban 10% of them to intimidate the others? Where are we? Are We in Dark ages where 10% of those that fleed a battle were killed?
Come on, lets stay serious and say what we need.

I dont play for a couple months and all sorts of bugginess seems to have happened (still waiting for my new iron defender on my new artificer to stop bugging out every 2 minutes and become useless).

From the tone of the first couple pages, apparently 'everyone knows' what is going on, and it is 'super widespread'. If that is the case - clearly the people howling for bans on everyone are not business people that realize banning half of all players and losing half of all income is a good business plan.

There is a phrase used on the forums before many times "Exploit early and exploit often". That is because bugs that negatively affect players get left sitting often for months (or years sometimes), while bugs that players can 'benefit' from are fixed in a week. (And everyone whining about DO IT NOW apparently do not realize even a speedy fix doesnt happen overnight - programming is not a magic button you push and everything it fixed). This has happened every single update/module for years now, so is it any wonder some people are cynical about the whole process?

Maybe things like this would not be nearly as much of an issue if it didnt take 2 years to get a couple items on one character for anyone that doesnt play 12 hours a day every day. I think I have a grand total of ONE epic item on one character - and a few dozen shards/seals/scrolls that dont match up, are none of the useful ones in sequence - that is pretty sad and frustrating when other than the new alchemical weapons there has been no other high level gear other than epics for a long time.

Apparently few remember, or were not around when Dragontouched runes first came out - and were a massive grind, and a massive pain in the keister to get a useful set of armor on even one character. An exploit surfaced around that - you think people that spend months at a time trying to get a single set of useful armor wouldnt take an easy path and then move on to something more fun? (Run Prey 500+ times and come back and say how fun running around massively long corridors jumping like a moron for months on end is fun eh?) Some time after runes were changed and you could see what it was, and suddenly you could get something in a much more reasonable amount of time. A problem solved that should not have been a problem in the first place if the game was not designed where every new thing was a massive, massive grind to get items.

Running something 10 times is one thing, running it 100 times for a single item is simply pain - and quite honestly insulting.

The real question is not what is going on with ...something to be unnamed...but why not make epic shards and seals NOT bound items?

So they sell on the AH for 2 million plat each - people that have things they dont need make money, people that have money but dont have 2 years to grind can buy the ingredients to something they want - like scrolls, like shroud ingredients etc.

Or make the shards unbound, but keep the seals bound - so you still have to run the raids to get the item, and you do not need three separate BTA items and low odds of a scroll to make a single item - which for people with two accounts - makes the whole process x3 as massive and annoying - like when you get one item on the wrong account and sit there looking at it but cant give it to the character that needs it)

Crystal Cove was a better example of how things should work - while easier due to only being around a limited time - you get to pick what you upgrade, from a single source of ingredients basically - you put in the time, you can choose what you get out of it. People enjoy it,(for a while - stupid kobolds) they get things they actually want instead of filling up bags with useless ingredients while searching forever for the few things they need - and everyone is happy.

The fact that 80% of epic items are close to useless as well only adds to the frustration issue.

The Cove and the Shroud are the best examples of a win/win - slow and steady progress, and eventually you get to choose something to upgrade. You run the raid, and you come out with something, as opposed to most quests/epics - where you run it and get zero. No xp, no loot(spending 30 minutes in an epic quest for random trash chest loot is not any sort of benefit at all), no useful ingredients (epic tokens dont count), over and over and over again.

There is a massive amount of frustrated players out there - and years of examples of grindy DT runes, grindy epic loot, grindy random loot - that if changed to more reasonable progressions would reduce a lot of what people have done over the years in this game.

One of the early comments in this thread was the worry that if too many people actually get some stuff they want, they will stop running epics and posting lfms - do be perfectly honest - if someone is not capable of starting their own group to run epics and not die horribly, or has a guild that doesnt run, or cant run epics, and is not able to get anyone on their entire server to trust them enough to come along on epics - clearly they are not ready for epics now are they? Maybe they should be figuring out how to play the game and meeting people who have skill first before worrying about epic gear no? And worrying about what other people that have put the time in get or not also in any hypothetical situation.

[fco-karatekid]

Oh I know I didn't either. But just imagine if everyone started submitting reports for thousands of ladders a day how soon that might be fixed or figured out what's wrong.

Maybe better to bug report ladders that work correctly?

[Chai]

He did very clearly say it was an "EXPLOIT".

Very clear.

Exploit at your own risk.

All they really need to do is publically perma-ban 10 people, and 90% of people who exploited this time will not do it next time.

[Chai]

Nope, I think it should be a permaban once Turbine announces something is an exploit and not to do it.

Turbine interperting things just leads to unequal punishment. Some people getting seven day bans, some no bans, some permabans...no that is not a good situation. Leads to favoritism and too much power in the hands of those making those decisions.

Of course this is not a retroactive thing. It is when people exploit AFTER Turbine announces something is an exploit and not to do it.

So then the whole point becomes to scour the forums to make sure they havent announced it yet when exploiting, because you get off scott free until they label it?

Id love to be a fly on the wall when the rules lawyer tries to work their way out of that one. (comic book guy voice) Well it clearly states on page 127 paragraph 3 that I must be warned that its en exploit before I may receive a ban. Clearly according to your logs, the last time I partook was 20 minutes previous to the first post by a company employee indicating this is a bannable offense.

I think most of the things over the years that people exploited are to the point where we could LOL at anyone who said they didnt know it was an exploit, because it was very clear what they were deciding to take part in was not intended. I am aware of quite a few of them.

Yes there are gray areas, but most of this stuff isnt hard to figure out.

[Alleyna]

Nope, I think it should be a permaban once Turbine announces something is an exploit and not to do it.

Turbine interperting things just leads to unequal punishment. Some people getting seven day bans, some no bans, some permabans...no that is not a good situation. Leads to favoritism and too much power in the hands of those making those decisions.

Of course this is not a retroactive thing. It is when people exploit AFTER Turbine announces something is an exploit and not to do it.

The only issue with this is that Turbine's "official statement" is only on the forums. What percent of the player base reads the forums? Put this announcement on the launcher, in-game world announcement, and/or a note in each character's mailbox (they've done it with the faux newspaper articles to hype up the madness quest chain). Turbine should not just take a stance for the few vocal players in the forums but should tell the entire player base. The best way to do that is in the game itself.

Edit: I do appreciate Turbine taking an official stance/making an official statement, I just think they need to do more than just post it on the forums.

[Vordax]

Nope, I think it should be a permaban once Turbine announces something is an exploit and not to do it.

Turbine interperting things just leads to unequal punishment. Some people getting seven day bans, some no bans, some permabans...no that is not a good situation. Leads to favoritism and too much power in the hands of those making those decisions.

Of course this is not a retroactive thing. It is when people exploit AFTER Turbine announces something is an exploit and not to do it.

Assuming they even read the forums... Maybe they should plaster the load screens with information on this exploit being bannable. I am sure this will cut down on the exploits use.

Vordax

[Postumus]

Not sure what the TR/ completionist was in reference to, but again I ask how it affects me in any way if someone else has the completionist feat without having capped every class?

Ooh ooh ooh Mistah Kottah! Me! Me! Let me answer!

I'm guessing he thinks you'll be all jealous and butt-hurt that someone did something on their toon faster than you and that would undermine and invalidate everything you've ever done in this game.

Oh and because all the new completionists will bork the game and you'll be excluded from LFMs because they'll all read "BYOH, COMPLETIONISTS ONLY, KNOW IT, NEED GUIDE."

/sarcasm

I'm pretty much in the camp of 'it's a game' and cheating at this is like cheating at solitaire.

[djl]

And they should use words with more finality to them. Even if they lack the means or go-ahead from management to punish everyone who abuses it, making an empty threat will still deter many people from participating in exploits, particularly when posted on the main page for everybody to see when they log in.

"Use the exploit and you MAY face punishment if caught" makes most people think "Hey, I might get away with it, so it's worth a shot." If they said "Use the exploit and you WILL face severe punishment if caught" it would come across as much more threatening.

[LeLoric]

We are aware of an issue where players can trade items that are normally restricted. We will be fixing this in the future, but in the meantime, please do not engage in this exploit. Players caught may face disciplinary action.

Also, just a reminder, we do not allow players to explain how exploits are done on our community sites. It's okay to vent frustration within the community guidelines, or discuss this topic in a way that does not provide detail about how an exploit is done, but if you do discuss exploit details or disciplinary action taken against you or others, you may face additional disciplinary action.

Thanks for your cooperation and understanding.

Hopefully something can be done here to stop the exploits. I understand the business decisions of banning large amounts of players but it is really bad for the game if major exploiting goes unpunished. It deters others from starting the game and makes good paying loyal customers who didn't break the rules want to leave.

I remember you yourself Cordovan was pretty vehemently opposed to the exploiting done in shrouds when they were common and would hope you still have that same vigor and can use what you can of it in helping Turbine come to a solution to stop all this exploiting.

[Cyr]

So then the whole point becomes to scour the forums to make sure they havent announced it yet when exploiting, because you get off scott free until they label it?

I think most of the things over the years that people exploited are to the point where we could LOL at anyone who said they didnt know it was an exploit, because it was very clear what they were deciding to take part in was not intended. I am aware of quite a few of them.

Yes there are gray areas, but most of this stuff isnt hard to figure out.

I always think you give someone the benefit of the doubt when it comes to exploits, but once it is made crystal clear by Turbine you hit them with as hard a stick you got.

I think that some things are pretty clear when it comes to exploits, but on the flip side I constantly find things that are inconsistent with Turbine rulings and their explanations on particular exploits/non-exploits.

And if you can't rely upon Turbine you certainly can't rely upon your fellow players who will honestly try and convince you how some standard game mechanic is really an exploit.

So no I don't think it is just clear cut as a rule that people just know what is and is not an exploit. Most do not. That is because an exploit for all intensive purposes can be almost anything Turbine labels it to be based upon their vague description.

[cdr]

If they said "Use the exploit and you WILL face severe punishment if caught" it would come across as much more threatening. If people saw that, they would be much more hesitant in breaking the rules.

Only if it was followed by action.

[Cyr]

Assuming they even read the forums... Maybe they should plaster the load screens with information on this exploit being bannable. I am sure this will cut down on the exploits use.

Vordax

Yes, that would be the step that would be needed before harsh punishment should be handed out.

Top of the Launcher in big red font.

[Gizeh]

But you would indeed have to trade for it. If it's exceedingly rare; it'll be very expensive.

If you could generate the chest that contained the item repeatedly for free, I'd agree completely that it was a travesty.

If a huge amount of easily obtainable plat came into the economy, I'd agree completely that it was a travesty also.

This... I just can't get on board with it being game damaging.

So you're ok with only the players who used the last exploit to get unlimited plat / +3 tomes to get the shards by offering plat and / or unbound +3 tomes while many honest players don't rly have anything to offer for the shards?

[Vordax]

Top of the Launcher in big red font.

Everyone ignores the launcher.. I mean the load screens between every instance. Can't miss dozens of those.

Vordax

[Cyr]

Everyone ignores the launcher.. I mean the load screens between every instance. Can't miss dozens of those.

Vordax

That would work well.

Would be a double incentive for Turbine to push the team to fix this stuff and not let it in in the first place also.

[LeLoric]

That would work well.

Would be a double incentive for Turbine to push the team to fix this stuff and not let it in in the first place also.

Sadly I don't think the store marketers wanna give up their precious advertising space to provide negative advertising for the game.

[djl]

can use what you can of it in helping Turbine come to a solution to stop all this exploiting.

It's simple, really. Don't rush updates and patches when minimal testing has been done, and when people report issues on Lammania, FIX THEM before you make the update live. If they tested stuff properly and weren't in such a hurry to push out updates when they are only half-baked, these exploits wouldn't occur. And like I said in my last post, whether they actually intend to follow through on it or not, Turbine needs to put it out there that anybody who abuses bugs will face harsh punishment against their accounts. Sure, there would be some people who abused them anyway, but many people have said the majority doesn't use the forums and so you can reasonably assume that most people would take the threats at face value and not try to test Turbine's willingness to follow through. My point is that Turbine can only help themselves and the community by taking a firm stance against these shenanigans.

[LeLoric]

It's simple, really. Don't rush updates and patches when minimal testing has been done, and when people report issues on Lammania, FIX THEM before you make the update live. If they tested stuff properly and weren't in such a hurry to push out updates when they are only half-baked, these exploits wouldn't occur. And like I said in my last post, whether they actually intend to follow through on it or not, Turbine needs to put it out there that anybody who abuses bugs will face harsh punishment against their accounts.

While Turbine's QA has been admittedly pretty poor of late catching all exploitable bugs before release is a pipe dream.

[Cyr]

Sadly I don't think the store marketers wanna give up their precious advertising space to provide negative advertising for the game.

It's the old long term profitability over short term strip the house of piping and sell it for scrap metal profits.

My suggestions are always based upon what I think is best for the game long term.

The real harm from exploits comes from them existing for extended periods and from percieved inaction or unfair responses from the company behind the game.

Also the double incentive is to get rid of the embarrassing, but needed warning as fast as possible