In light of recent bans and my desire to be a legit player, I am seeking official advice on the following buggy scenarios.
@nitocris83 It happens that when loading into a protobello campaign dungeon, one or more players spawn on the wrong side of the door. They then start to run the dungeon while the rest of the team is stuck outside. What are the locked out players expected to do? Should they kill themselves and spawn inside the dunegon to join the run, abandon instance and take a 30 min leaver penalty, or wait at the gate until the run has been soloed by the unfortunate players who were incorrectly loaded in? Does collecting the reward in such an instance constitute a banning offense?
Does private queuing into stronghold siege with fewer than 40 players constitute an exploit?
Am I allowed to play with family members and transfer tradable items from my account to theirs for their benefit? Can we do this back and forth as often as we like?
Comments
People have been banned for false positives and I refuse to take judgment call as advice. They either have rules and clear guidelines or they don't suspend people for their own unacknowledged bugs. Can't have it both ways.
Unless there is an official list of known issues, then release notes and patch notes are where I go for info. These are legally binding documents as are user guides and any documentation required in order to correctly use the software. I am simply asking that the missing info be supplied to me by the manufacturer in order to prevent future damages. If they would rather I take this up with CS and then make the info public, that is their choice but I expect a timely, official response on what is or isn't WAI.
Given the cost of translation and the number of translations supported for EU languages, I'm going to go ahead and say there is a significant playerbase located in EU countries and this means the developers should, at the very least, be aware of the EU standards governing software documentation.
The following should give non professionals some insights as to where I am coming from:
Source: http://www.tcworld.info/e-magazine/translation-and-localization/article/standards-for-software-documentation/
"Why we need standards
Software providers want their products to be usable. Usability is the "extent to which a system, product or service can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use" (ISO/IEC 25064:2013).
Software users consult documentation in three main modes:
Conceptual: to help understand goals, principles and methods involved in completing a process or task
Instruction: to learn how to complete a procedure
Reference: to search for details when something has been forgotten or when something unexpected happens (troubleshooting).
Thus, software providers have an obligation to warn users when the software might create hazardous conditions, and to advise users when incorrect use of the software could result in unsatisfactory results. Software user documentation standards such as ISO/IEC 26514:2008, Systems and software engineering β Requirements for designers and developers of user documentation, and ISO/IEC/IEEE 82079-1 (in revision), Information technology: Information for use of products β Part 1: General requirements and processes, explain how to do this in a consistent and useful way."
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I have worked in the software industry for over 20 years and am completely baffled by the way bugs, documentation, and communication have been handled all the way back to the event known as coalgate.
Let's talk about bad code and there impact to players financially. I play CR a lot and due to the constant instant kills that come out of no where and other issues in CR I spend hundreds of thousands of AD on scrolls. Now if the content was working as intended my scroll usage would be around 5 but instead there are time where I died simply for no reason and have to scroll and when this happens 10-20x in a run that is clearly an issue that should be resolved and since the bad code is causing me to waste AD or real world money should I not be compensated by the company due to this error? I know other companies will try to make up for such mistakes, will PWE/Cryptic do so as well?
Bad code like the ones found in CR have plagued new content upon release resulting in end game players using excessive amounts of scrolls. Going back to the launch of PS4 all dungeons not named Kessell's required scrolls on bosses as using scrolls was the only way to beat dungeons until mod 10 landed. Again, bad code resulting in many scrolls being used that should not have been used by players, but nothing was done to correct this. .
The other issue I want to talk about with bad coding is the AH. The player selling items on the AH were able to deceive others and receive a higher amount of AD from transaction and yet those players walked away freely without any corrective action. There were players abusing Dungeon Master event and earning themselves a Legendary mount which ended selling on PS4 at that time for around 20M AD. Again no corrective action was taken against those players.
My point is ever time there is bad code that has sprouted up players assume said code is part of the game and many know that is not the case, yet these players were able to use it to their advantage without any corrective action against. Than there is the other side where players spend hundreds of thousands of AD or few hundred zen on scrolls due to content not working as intended and yet those player were not properly compensated for using more scroll than what is actually needed to beat the content.
There is a lot of ambiguity for players now have due to recent events and many of us are tip toeing in the game now. There are also many who simply rather not deal and have moved onto other things. Due to the unknown of what will now constitute a corrective action against players or not, many are not really playing as much and simply not running dungeons like they did previously.
There are things I would like to know from company.
1) Why was there no corrective action taken until now? As I pointed out there have been abuse in the game where players were earning AD and yet that is was acceptable, even if one of the abuses earned the player over 10M AD.
2) Recent corrective action against the player base was justified and handled appropriately; however, there has been no compensation back to the players who have wasted a large amount of scrolls in content that has or had bad code
3) Please clarify how you plan to resolve the current bad code in the game to ensure players are not abusing it and to reduce any corrective action needed against your players
In the end, everyone must ask themselves what their goal is... a healthy game experience or the demise of the title. It is easy to complain online and sign petitions but ultimately unhelpful.
Deadπͺ@someonedies
This game has been running without giving users fair disclosure or proper documentation for years. There is never a known issues post and yet players are expected to somehow magically and intuitively know what is a necessary workaround and what is not. Security by obscurity never works. Certainly not in this day and age.
So before I take to more public forums such as linkedin (where I have a 500+ network and pwe is currently searching for a social media manager), I will give @nitocris83 a chance to respond.
@frozenfirevr perhaps you could draw attention to this post too.
Rant: The fact that even customer service isn't able to inform a customer what is and isn't acceptable is shocking to me and telling in and of itself. How can I in good faith put any money into the game when I may be banned on a whim?
It's a HAMSTER game. I've been around since mod 2 and seen many ban waves. I've never been banned. And from what I've seen, false positives get rectified. Honest players have no reason to fear.
And no they will not provide a complete list of bugs. That list will be long with lots of details, most of it not important (again, it's a HAMSTER game). The only people who would care for it are the ultra paranoid (they are too much trouble and not worth keeping as a customer anyway) and people looking for weakness to exploit.
(This is just my own personal understanding)
You aren't gaining any benefit from skipping the entrance (I've personally never experienced that), you still have to kill stuffs and do everything as you should, so shouldn't have any implications.
Why do you feel otherwise? You are being allowed to queue with as many players as you want in Private instances. You should probably be asking if it was intended for the quest to completable with private queue. That is doubtful, but I don't see anybody facing disciplinary action over it.
That shouldn't be an issue as long as you can prove that it doesn't mean anything else.
The CS is usually very reasonable and understanding (even if they sometimes take a while to reply) as long as you're being truthful and respectful.
There is no ultimatum here. Just telling it like it is. The size of the company is irrelevant. The fact that the game is f2p is also irrelevant.
I am not asking for detailed exploits either. They don't need to say "using item zzz in so and so scenarios is an exploit."
They do need to say something like
Known issues:
In some scenarios, item zzz can be trigerred multiple times without depleting. This should not be replicated in a live environment.
All they had to do to prevent the hunt exploit was add the following in the release notes:
Known issue: all party members must go through the door at Eva's or this will result in incorrect behavior of the hunt. Doing so in a live environment is considered an exploit. Logs will be monitored and offenders banned. We are working on a patch and apologize for the inconvenience.
I will be blogging about this because it is an interesting case study of what happens when a company fails to offer proper documentation and why it is so important for companies to hire professionals in this era of purported "zero documentation".
I take issue with a company that actively seeks to game its customers.
Now I know...I shouldn't ascribe malice where human stupidity should suffice. Luckily, implementing proper documentation safeguards against both.
Regardless, not advising the playerbase of a potentially huge issue as a matter of policy is at the very least bad business. The cost of adding my proposed known issue text pales in comparison with the losses suffered from an exploit. Before accounting for the bad PR.
If the dev team would prefer to respond to me privately, I'm sure they have the means.
In the end, I believe we are all after the same thing. A good game with a pleasant experience that continues to grow and make the company money.
As for me, I will continue to play NWO as I see fit; though my money will be invested in other games with content that is engaging and have a well thought out story.
@frozenfirevr out of curiosity, since you seem to acknowledge there could be ambiguity around some game elements, why are you opposed to the notion of publishing "known issues" even for something like the hunt bug? Frankly, this documentation type is a software industry standard and a sure way of saving the company money. Here is a simple math exercise... assume a known issues section of 50 words. Translation cost per language at an excessive 20 dollars per chunk. Multiply times supported languages (5-8?) and number of releases a year. Now compare this with the loss of a single player that puts in 200 dollars annually. Add to that several players that "only" put in 20 dollars annually. Etc. Etc. If for every 1000 players banned they only lose 2% at 50 dollars revenue that is still a lot compared to the cost of writing a few words into the patch notes. And we both know the real dollar values lost in these sort of incidents are much, much higher.