Teach SSG a lesson

[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.

[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.

[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]

I think it would have been ok to instead of delete established characters with lots of exploit lives to just wipe all past lives.

I personally believe that the problem with this idea is that a person who would exploit the sagas probably exploited a lot of other things as well. You mention also scrubbing dupes: how much time is SSG supposed to spend on each cheating character in order to minimize their punishment?

[Jasparion]

I personally believe that the problem with this idea is that a person who would exploit the sagas probably exploited a lot of other things as well. You mention also scrubbing dupes: how much time is SSG supposed to spend on each cheating character in order to minimize their punishment?

I dare say they got 2 birds with one stone with the saga exploit deletions.

Unless people want us to believe it was the one and only time they ever exploited (honest).

I still dont know why they dont scan characters and look for people with thousands of hours of 50% XP pots. Clearly they duped - unless they can show the store purchases.

[PermaBanned]

I still dont know why they dont scan characters and look for people with thousands of hours of 50% XP pots. Clearly they duped - unless they can show the store purchases.

Ignorance is bliss? Perhaps they don't to ask the question, 'cause maybe the answer would be too unpleasant

[HAL]

I still dont know why they dont scan characters and look for people with thousands of hours of 50% XP pots. Clearly they duped - unless they can show the store purchases.

Someone earlier in this thread mentioned doing data analysis to find people who cheated. I'm not sure why the developers don't / haven't done this. Maybe there is something about the way the data is stored that makes this difficult. Given the kind of spaghetti coding I have heard of in DDO, perhaps the data is also badly organized.

What it comes down to is that we don't know anything about what has been done or not done since the developers generally don't talk about it. On the other hand, I personally know of people that have been banned and characters deleted numerous times. So I know that it is untrue that the developers have done nothing over the years.

And we also know that the developers want to make money with this game so it is highly unlikely that they would simply ignore cheating. I'm sure there is much more to the situation that we simply don't know about.

[Singular]

Someone earlier in this thread mentioned doing data analysis to find people who cheated. I'm not sure why the developers don't / haven't done this. Maybe there is something about the way the data is stored that makes this difficult. Given the kind of spaghetti coding I have heard of in DDO, perhaps the data is also badly organized.

What it comes down to is that we don't know anything about what has been done or not done since the developers generally don't talk about it. On the other hand, I personally know of people that have been banned and characters deleted numerous times. So I know that it is untrue that the developers have done nothing over the years.

And we also know that the developers want to make money with this game so it is highly unlikely that they would simply ignore cheating. I'm sure there is much more to the situation that we simply don't know about.

it doesn't seem to me any games do that. They seem to prefer using programs that monitor activity rather than analyzing past activities.

[HAL]

it doesn't seem to me any games do that. They seem to prefer using programs that monitor activity rather than analyzing past activities.

I don't personally know the procedures MMOs use to detect cheating, it sounds like you have some inside knowledge. But clearly in many of the MMOs I have played (not just DDO), certain cheating goes on where nothing is done until much after the fact. If those games are monitoring current activity to detect cheating I don't know why they wouldn't respond to that cheating right away.

[Tilomere]

I don't know why they wouldn't respond to that cheating right away.

It's like using poison. You don't want to kill the one pest you see immediately, or the others will learn and adapt, you want it to take it back to it's nest and kill the entire infestation.

[slarden]

I don't personally know the procedures MMOs use to detect cheating, it sounds like you have some inside knowledge. But clearly in many of the MMOs I have played (not just DDO), certain cheating goes on where nothing is done until much after the fact. If those games are monitoring current activity to detect cheating I don't know why they wouldn't respond to that cheating right away.

It might have been to get an idea of who has been cheating for an extended period. If someone was non-stop exploiting from the time the monitoring started to the time it ended it's fairly safe to assume they've been doing this for a while. If someone just did a few times over the weekend they were maybe just trying it out and didn't deserve character deletion. Total speculation of course and SSG will never tell us so people don't attempt to game the system.