Teach SSG a lesson

[Forzah]

Purloin?

Appropriate?

Pilfer!

Larceny?

. . . ugh, I just can't think of the word

It is crucial here that the resource being exploited is free and infinitely available outside the store.

Exploiting this free and infinitely available resource can result in forgoing a sale at the store, but calling forgoing a sale stealing is a logical error. A simple counter example: suppose I actually do steal an item and, as a result, forgo buying the item from the store. If forgoing a sale is stealing, then it would mean I actually stole two items! That is clearly incorrect unless 1 = 2, so forgoing a sale is not stealing.

[karatemack]

Trying to read this thread made my head hurt.

Like so:

I only read this thread at all because you posted here and it showed up in the dev tracker. I want my 2 minutes back.

[Heathir]

Monitoring and archiving actions come with a cost ($ and potentially performance) so it wouldn't shock me if there are limitations, although that is just speculation. I think SSG took the action that seemed the most reasonable from a cost and punishment perspective. Cordovan mentioned on the Wednesday live stream only players that got most of their lifes from this exploit were deleted (paraphrase - hopefully I got the idea right), but that is not the case on Sarlona. So either that was a miscommunication or their assessment approach was wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I am not lobbying to go soft on exploits - not at all. But if SSG's intent was only to delete characters that got most of their progress from this exploit and rollback others, it seems they missed the mark at least on Sarlona.

You can listen to the live stream yourself on that topic if you are interested. That is the only reason I bring it up, SSG's comments on the subject differ from what happened on Sarlona.

Slarden,

When you say that is not what occurred on Sarlona. I assume you mean players who didn't obtain the majority if their lives from an exploit are being deleted? My question is how do you know that? Exploiters in this thread have said they have been using the exploit for years. Are you sure your correct in saying that Cordovan lied? Or is it possible the players your thinking of have been using the exploit more heavily than you believed?

[Heathir]

Also how do I view the devs live stream? I only see alot of players live streams

[slarden]

Here is the link. It's wednesday at noon and you can change the default sort from popular to newest if you don't find it, but it usually shows up near the top under popular.

https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game...ine/videos/all

[slarden]

Slarden,

When you say that is not what occurred on Sarlona. I assume you mean players who didn't obtain the majority if their lives from an exploit are being deleted? My question is how do you know that? Exploiters in this thread have said they have been using the exploit for years. Are you sure your correct in saying that Cordovan lied? Or is it possible the players your thinking of have been using the exploit more heavily than you believed?

Just to clarify, I didn't say Cordovan lied - I don't even think he intended to deceive in any way. I am saying based on the criteria mentioned on that video, it isn't consistent with what I am hearing on Sarlona about deletes. It could be I misunderstood, it could be a simple miscommunication or it could be as you said those people got all their lifes exploiting and I naively believe otherwise. I ran with some of these folks during TR so many times I tend to believe there was significant legitimate earning on those characters.

you can listen starting at 40:54 through about 42:00 to see if you interpret the intent of character deletion the same way I do.

Again, I am not trying to propose lighter penalties or anything like that, just questioning whether characters are being deleted that didn't meet the criteria Cordovan mentioned. Based on some of the Sarlona deletes I think the deletes are happening in more cases than what Cordovan mentioned. That is all I am saying - not making any accusations or anything like that. I am not lobbying for reduced penalties either.

[bartharok]

Just to clarify, I didn't say Cordovan lied - I don't even think he intended to deceive in any way. I am saying based on the criteria mentioned on that video, it isn't consistent with what I am hearing on Sarlona about deletes. It could be I misunderstood, it could be a simple miscommunication or it could be as you said those people got all their lifes exploiting and I naively believe otherwise. I ran with some of these folks during TR so many times I tend to believe there was significant legitimate earning on those characters.

you can listen starting at 40:54 through about 42:00 to see if you interpret the intent of character deletion the same way I do.

Again, I am not trying to propose lighter penalties or anything like that, just questioning whether characters are being deleted that didn't meet the criteria Cordovan mentioned. Based on some of the Sarlona deletes I think the deletes are happening in more cases than what Cordovan mentioned. That is all I am saying - not making any accusations or anything like that. I am not lobbying for reduced penalties either.

It could be that the "most lives" could be interpreted as "more than X times". Which, while not exactly the same thing, would explain the deletions you mentioned.

[Cantor]

Just to clarify, I didn't say Cordovan lied - I don't even think he intended to deceive in any way. I am saying based on the criteria mentioned on that video, it isn't consistent with what I am hearing on Sarlona about deletes. It could be I misunderstood, it could be a simple miscommunication or it could be as you said those people got all their lifes exploiting and I naively believe otherwise. I ran with some of these folks during TR so many times I tend to believe there was significant legitimate earning on those characters.

you can listen starting at 40:54 through about 42:00 to see if you interpret the intent of character deletion the same way I do.

Again, I am not trying to propose lighter penalties or anything like that, just questioning whether characters are being deleted that didn't meet the criteria Cordovan mentioned. Based on some of the Sarlona deletes I think the deletes are happening in more cases than what Cordovan mentioned. That is all I am saying - not making any accusations or anything like that. I am not lobbying for reduced penalties either.

Watched it and it's very limited response.

Deletes in extreme cases and gave as an example: If you made a character just to exploit it will be deleted.

I think you are extrapolating a lot from what he said. He didn't really give a benchmark for characters with legit lives who may have a lot of exploit progress too. I think he gave this example hyperbolically, not as the standard.


What's extreme? 10 epic pasts? seems kinda extreme as a number, but not extreme as a percentage if it's a triple heroic/racial who already had 12 epic pasts for epic completionist. But, if they just made a call like: turned in more than 100 or 200 sagas or something, a character with a small percentage of total progress from this exploit could fall into that category. But it also looks like extreme exploiting to say they turned in over 100 exploit sagas.

Also, it's well established that cheaters in this community tend to minimize what they've done and stir up anti-dev sentiment... so I'd take anything with a grain of salt.

I'm full on anti-cheater, but I think it would have been ok to instead of delete established characters with lots of exploit lives to just wipe all past lives. Let them keep their gear, after scrubbing duped stuff of course.

[lLockehart]

Ive been playing this game since 1 month after release. Nothing has broken the game imo except the rubberband lag around the time of the sands.

What? how about all those things I listed above? And you've been playing for a pretty long time as well. There's always been exploits going about and the most lenient one being the Wolf twf. You don't mean to tell me you didn't knew about it but sure, I guess~

wouldn't know since I played wow for 3 hrs, lotr for maybe a day, Star Wars for a week. I'll take your word for it. What I can say is that most AAA releases like Divinity and Pillars have far more bugs, exploitable bugs, almost gamebreaking bugs on release and for months/years after. Not MMOs so not same thing but my point is that if you play a game for 100s or 1000s of hours and have others doing the same and talking about exploitable bugs you're bound to find em. Wow's playerbases meant they could justify a much larger dev team and hence prolly a much more focus/time on bugfixing and QA etc.

Most AAA releases? dude, neither Pillars nor Divinity 1 or 2 are from triple A companies, what. Plus, it's not like AAA's are much of a shining example with all the blunders they're making recently. What I can tell you is that Devs behind Pillars and the like hastily patch their game, even small Indie companies do, that doesn't add much to the discussion though as it's much easier than a MMO like ours with a truckload of variables. What I can do, is compare it to a borderline AAA company like CD PROJEKT RED which is famous for delaying their games an eternity to clean them and then they still have problems... because they're also pretty huge and full of variables. There was a particular bug with money farming and instead of punishing players, they added a cool easter egg. Of course, it's much easier on a singleplayer but still.
I get it that our company is small but there's almost not been a time where something was not exploitable in our game without any kind of repercussion. Make that what you will.

Again I played for 12 years minus a couple of breaks. My impression is that the game works fine.

We must be playing something else entirely then. But then again, if everything works fine, there's no need to fix the saga exploit, or all the other ones.

Completely disagree with your analysis of the effects of their behavior. To me it was simply cheating and not good for game, for newbies, for the economy etc although of course some aspects/people were positive (like your one allegorical example). Personally I knew about the bug early and never once duped. Not for ethical reasons (I don't care if people cheat) but bc I don't enjoy cheating, and I view it as a game not a grind - if I'm not oooobah that is completely fine, I'll run normal or hard...

To you? you just said the game worked fine and nothing affected you but sure, I guess. Newbies finally having a way with raids since they almost never appear on the LFM, nah, that's bad for them and the "economy"

Not sure how you personally define superlow, I would tend to agree though. I never have problems finding groups but it's not a huge population

I'll tell you how I define super low. Have you tried getting a new player into the game? There's almost no Lfm's going about for them along the levels. My group of 3 friends were one of the only ones who started running EE pugs on Orien when it started, people would always be like, "oh wow, we never see groups going on" yeah neither do us outside of daily grinding. There's also almost no raids going on ever. When you see one posted, it's like you found the holy grail. Sometimes it's so bad you can't even scroll the LFM and we're supposed to be the 2nd most populated one, I think at least. CitW had a bunch of them going on though, good times.

And again your "riddled w exploits" is pure hyperbole, esp. when taken into context about how many there are in most big/complex games. IMO

Pure hyperbole? what, did you not see the ones I listed above, are we even playing the same game? x'D! seriously. I mean, I'm not even sure it's legal to post them here, probably not but I could get a two page list almost but sure, I guess I'm just making them up.

As for the cheaters - all I care about is no false positives AND the game itself. Whatever they do to cheaters I hope in the end it increases the monetary influx to SSG so they can increase the development team. Cheaters have no right to complain. At all. Hey if they had permabanned me for regularly using the "hold the window" repeat quest tactic I woulda been fine with it.

Do you seriously believe that SSG are losing money because of them? When most of them are long term players with active subscription and money already spent on the game? You speak as if players cheated in a PvP game and harassed everyone. And you would have been okay to have your account permabanned for red dooring? Are you serious? You've been here at least since 2010... are you serious? x'D I guess that's why I avoid the forums. Some people are so galactically disconnected it's... a phenomenon really.

But I see your points now, along with HAL's, I guess you're all right, we should start permabanning probably 1/4 of the game so we can make it great again. Can start with me: That time I was trying to farm an epic litany and there were no LFM's... for ages. I decided to try and duo it with a friend - With hard work and some skill, we did it but decided to open an LFM so about 5 regulars joined and I was pretty happy about helping them with RTB's so everyone had a chance at the litany. Soon, we knew each other and it reminded me of when the game started.... but nah, this contributed nothing to the game really.

End game? who needs end game when you have racials to complete. And new mechanics? nah just hand out greensteel 4 with incremental changes, that's sure to shake the meta up am I right? x'D How about half of the trees that are bugged and don't work? nah, forget about them, who uses them anyway, they're perfectly fine, move along. I don't know.. it was sad before but now it's just kind of a merry ride, of a silly flavor.
The common ground is so easy to grasp in these things... and look at where this has brewed, It's hilarious. Awwwhhhh to my friends and lovers - adieu.

[Cantor]

We don't have a bot problem

Why do you think optionals that award xp near the beginning of quests have been regularly disappearing and getting rolled into total xp?

[Seikojin]

For all the chit chat about which characters get deleted: Obvious exploitation is obvious. If you take a character, they have a record. Start time from being created to now, and reincarnations along the way. As well as completions of quests, sagas, etc. All those things are simply tracked to help keep incentives in each life. As you watch characters across the server, you can see how many of them are reincarnating. This gives you a trail as it were.

Now we go from the beginning to now for the server, and you can plot curves on reincarnations. You would see some noise in the beginning, and even during double points or double daily dice weeks, etc. However overall, a smooth curve should exist. And if you find strong deviations, those are the ones to look into to find the exploiters. Tag and track, find their individual pattern, and check for that across the servers...

So, when it comes to finding the exploiters versus those who earn it, it is obvious.

[grandeibra]

What? how about all those things I listed above?

Like the other poster said nothing you listed were gamebreaking. And neither was cheaters abusing the loopholes the bugs opened. I was still always able to play my toons, find groups, finish quests, have fun. Ofc I knew about many of the exploits. Again that rarely even affected my enjoyment of the game (hence not gamebreaking or even close to it). Only super-major lag ever felt gamebreaking to me, and i rarely experience that.

neither Pillars nor Divinity 1 or 2 are from triple A companies

hastily patch their game that doesn't add much to the discussion though as it's much easier than a MMO like ours with a truckload of variables.

You make it sound as if AAA has one single clear definition. It does not. Divinity cost $6.5M, which from what I heard was the most expensive non-MMO Role playing game in history. That's why I used the term and why I used it as an example. (of course it's not as hi budget as the most costly FPS games etc) And the extra complexity of MMO was my point - Divinity was more encapsuled, and still had tons of bugs. Tons. Still does. It's simply a fact of technical development. And it's hardly ever game-breaking in the meaning I put into that word.

I get it that our company is small but there's almost not been a time where something was not exploitable in our game without any kind of repercussion

I agree. Has nothing to do with gamebreaking. I can still enjoy the game.

Newbies finally having a way with raids since they almost never appear on the LFM

hence my point about that aspect of your anecdotal story being positive. But if you don't agree that many of the "get around having to farm gear and xp" cheating is bad for the economy, bad for newbies, bad for SSG sales, bad for future content I don't know what to say. It's a BUSINESS in the end, they gotta have revenue streams, and cheaters getting around that impacts it. That is my only gripe with cheating. In game I could care less if someone who has every past life did it real or cheat, them being in my group makes higher reaper quests doable/fun regardless of how they got there.

Pure hyperbole? what, did you not see the ones I listed above, are we even playing the same game?

Again. Listing the gazillion of exploitable bugs through the lifetime of the game is not hyperbole. They have existed, do exist, and will exist. The hyperbole is you calling them gamebreaking. I still play and enjoy the game. In game most exploitable bugs have either zero or minor impact on my enjoyment of the game. I'd say my most hated bug is the ladder-bug. It sure isn't gamebreaking but it annoys me a little maybe 20 times per day hehe.

Do you seriously believe that SSG are losing money because of them?

Not believe. Know. Have studied enough business and statistics/game theory, and worked with enough tech companies to know how profit is created and what hurts it in broad strokes.

When most of them are long term players with active subscription and money already spent on the game?

my point exactly. I'd agree that likely cheaters are highly correlated with long-time active players who have spent money. HENCE they, some/many of them, would have spent more if they hadn't cheated. Sure some cheaters also spent a total of zero dollars on the game but from a financial point of view it's all about population size and %s who pay and what they pay on avg. No magic there.

And you would have been okay to have your account permabanned for red dooring? ... Some people are so galactically disconnected it's... a phenomenon really.

Yes. And not disconnected. Connected. As in I'm still enjoying the game, still connected, don't enjoy cheating, and when I cheat in life I accept the repercussions and don't cry about it (like some entitled cheaters here on the forums do). But again I do not care that others get more xp in game, that their toons are stronger than mine. Only care about the negative impact on SSGs ability to build more content from having less money to work with.

But I see your points now, along with HAL's, I guess you're all right, we should start permabanning probably 1/4 of the game so we can make it great again.

Where did you get the impression I WANT to ban 25% of the game's pop? I said I don't care about the cheaters. I don't care one way or the other. I choose to play the game I still enjoy, now n then checking the forums. If others want to focus on ways of getting around playing the game for whatever reason (getting strong characters or whatever) i don't care. They don't impact me in game.

End game? who needs end game when you have racials to complete

I don't. I don't view ANYTHING in games as "have to complete". It's enjoyment. Not work. I know many others have different focus and again that's fine. But if they choose to cheat, and cheat massively, they shoudn't pout, whine, or deflect blame when they get hit with the stick - IF they get hit.

Hope to see you in game.

[Cantor]

I'd say my most hated bug is the ladder-bug. It sure isn't gamebreaking but it annoys me a little maybe 20 times per day hehe.

I find it confusing how often people tote out the ladder bug (I know your point is that it's not gamebreaking, but still). Since I learned to jump on ladders I have encountered the ladder bug maybe 5 times in the last few years. 20 times a day? come on, just jump on the ladder, it's faster anyway.

[Chai]

It is crucial here that the resource being exploited is free and infinitely available outside the store.

Exploiting this free and infinitely available resource can result in forgoing a sale at the store, but calling forgoing a sale stealing is a logical error. A simple counter example: suppose I actually do steal an item and, as a result, forgo buying the item from the store. If forgoing a sale is stealing, then it would mean I actually stole two items! That is clearly incorrect unless 1 = 2, so forgoing a sale is not stealing.

All you are showing here is that forgoing a sale and stealing are two different things. This no one disagrees with. Players can choose not to buy the item (forgoing the sale) without stealing the item (exploiting to get what is for sale without paying for it)

What people are disagreeing with is the attempt at lawyering taking something the company has available for sale without paying for it as not stealing, simply due to the fact that the "item" in question is data which is copied rather than a physical item which is lost to the previous owner when stolen. Your use of "forgoing a sale" is merely a smokescreen being used to over complicate the discussion by adding another irrelevant element. The irrelevancy of this element is shown when we remove it from the discussion and analyze the action of taking something the company intends to sell you but not paying for it.

Forgoing a sale = not paying for it, but not acquiring what is being sold.

Stealing = not paying for it, and acquiring what is being sold.

Your statement of "It is crucial here that the resource being exploited is free and infinitely available outside the store" to lawyer it as not stealing is factually incorrect per law in the country the game was created in and currently resides in. In other words your position is woefully out of date by like ~5 decades or so. You are attempting to (as usual) use an old school very literal brick and mortar era definition to word smith that something intangible in the tech era being copied without permission isnt stealing. Not only do the IP copyright laws in the country of origin of the game refute your word lawyering here, but the IP copyright laws in your own country do as well. In fact the copyright laws of your country are in some instances more strict than what we have here in the US, and protect the owner of the IP even more.

[grandeibra]

I find it confusing how often people tote out the ladder bug (I know your point is that it's not gamebreaking, but still). Since I learned to jump on ladders I have encountered the ladder bug maybe 5 times in the last few years. 20 times a day? come on, just jump on the ladder, it's faster anyway.

Haha agreed. I always jump. It's just that I often either mess up and land just at the bottom or semi on-top of group of mobs and get the bug or i get the minor-glitch when jumpin lag type thing that also always puts me in ladder bug time.

And tbh I'd say I underexaggerrated. I get it way more than 20 times if a I play a lot on a wekend-day, but all but maybe 1-2 just take an extra second. The other two get me killed or in panic mode for a bit heh

Btw I dont remember ever getting the bug when i just run to a ladder (maybe bc I pretty much always jump) - I need to check that out :P

[Heathir]

Watched it and it's very limited response.

Deletes in extreme cases and gave as an example: If you made a character just to exploit it will be deleted.

I think you are extrapolating a lot from what he said. He didn't really give a benchmark for characters with legit lives who may have a lot of exploit progress too. I think he gave this example hyperbolically, not as the standard.


What's extreme? 10 epic pasts? seems kinda extreme as a number, but not extreme as a percentage if it's a triple heroic/racial who already had 12 epic pasts for epic completionist. But, if they just made a call like: turned in more than 100 or 200 sagas or something, a character with a small percentage of total progress from this exploit could fall into that category. But it also looks like extreme exploiting to say they turned in over 100 exploit sagas.

Also, it's well established that cheaters in this community tend to minimize what they've done and stir up anti-dev sentiment... so I'd take anything with a grain of salt.

I'm full on anti-cheater, but I think it would have been ok to instead of delete established characters with lots of exploit lives to just wipe all past lives. Let them keep their gear, after scrubbing duped stuff of course.

Everyone has been focused on how many pastlives people exploited, but no one has been considering how many individual times they performed the exploit. That is probably the most defining thing there. How many times did they intentionally exploit, not how many lives the improperly gained.

the level of exploiting shoud be based off the number of times they actually performed the exploit. I can say they had a moment of weakness and used it a few times and would be fine with that equalling a suspension of 30 days to 6 months. But if they used the exploit say 10-15+ times, they are dedicated exploiters and deserve to go.

[Seikojin]

I find it confusing how often people tote out the ladder bug (I know your point is that it's not gamebreaking, but still). Since I learned to jump on ladders I have encountered the ladder bug maybe 5 times in the last few years. 20 times a day? come on, just jump on the ladder, it's faster anyway.

Hearing this makes me want to play Spies.

[Chai]

Everyone has been focused on how many pastlives people exploited, but no one has been considering how many individual times they performed the exploit. That is probably the most defining thing there. How many times did they intentionally exploit, not how many lives the improperly gained.

the level of exploiting shoud be based off the number of times they actually performed the exploit. I can say they had a moment of weakness and used it a few times and would be fine with that equalling a suspension of 30 days to 6 months. But if they used the exploit say 10-15+ times, they are dedicated exploiters and deserve to go.

That would put people in the 1 full EPL range into that category.

I'm fine with it. It also eliminates the "I tripped and fell, landing on the free XP button" excuse if it happened that many times.

[HAL]

Don't get me wrong, I am not lobbying to go soft on exploits - not at all. But if SSG's intent was only to delete characters that got most of their progress from this exploit and rollback others, it seems they missed the mark at least on Sarlona.

Editing this post because you somewhat answered my question already. But I will reinforce what others said. We are talking about players who cheat. Cheaters always have justifications for what they do so that they don't seem like bad guys. No one except an actual insane person actually wants to be viewed as a bad person so of course they aren't going to admit everything they've done. There could have been other exploits involved besides Sagas like duped XP pots, raid bypasses, hearts, boxes, or whatever.

[HAL]

It is crucial here that the resource being exploited is free and infinitely available outside the store.

Exploiting this free and infinitely available resource can result in forgoing a sale at the store, but calling forgoing a sale stealing is a logical error. A simple counter example: suppose I actually do steal an item and, as a result, forgo buying the item from the store. If forgoing a sale is stealing, then it would mean I actually stole two items! That is clearly incorrect unless 1 = 2, so forgoing a sale is not stealing.

This discussion about whether it is stealing or not is ultimately moot. What it really comes down to is that DDO doesn't belong to the cheaters, they have no "right" to do what they want. It belongs to SSG and they make the rules. The cheaters broke the rules and are paying the price. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.