They still had to turn it in at the quest giver, and would therefore see that cooldown before closing his chat window. And if I'm not mistaken they did bans based on extremely large numbers of sparks attained, so if you just did it once or twice and then realized what you were doing you wouldn't have been punished.
Agreed. I know many players that did it once or twice and did not get banned or suspended. I also know players that farmed 500+ sparks and did not get suspended or banned and others that did and some received permanent bans. Even full guilds on our server got banned.
If you've exploited before and been warned previously for exploiting you most likely got permanently banned.
I'm only here to give my 2 cents on the quest sharing episode.
I know a large number of people that got banned some temp some perm. Everyone of them knew what they were doing was an exploit, only after the ban did they start to argue about this and that, and complete mindless it's not our fault drivel.
The only thing I do not understand is I know others who did it and received no ban. Frankly I just don't agree with the way it's been handled everyone of them should have gotten the same punishment. I also think they should have rolled the temp ban characters back to a pre feywild state. It's the differing to no punishments that bother me most.
First thing I said when I heard about it was, "Don't Do it! That is an exploit that is clearly going to result in bans." All I got were snickers and na they won't ban for that. It's kinda like when you are in a group and they want to drop off the map to the next camp fire and you say no, boot from party. Of course this brings up the issue of who are the honest people going to play with when the dishonest ones are all banned? As it is no matter what class I play, it is almost impossible to get a group willing to do any instance 100% legit, and people wonder why I solo and pvp mainly.
I miss non pay 2 win! I would much rather play a good monthly charge based game where everyone is on even footing and skill not the pocket book is the determining factor. If the company wants to make an extra dollar selling cosmetics or something fine but nothing power related should ever be sold for cash it's just cheese.
Rant off! Games seriously boring with nobody to play with!
0
kantazo1Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited August 2013
@ Darkjeff, I know you are passionate, but the bug about the high drop rate was KNOWN by the devs a week before the patch came out, it was KNOWN because the players on the tester shard informed the developers about it, they posted pics about it and the devs did NOT do a thing about it. So your argument Sir is moot.
You're basically arguing that ignorance (in the face of readily available information) is an excuse.
They are knowingly exploiting.
So your implying that that people couldnt tell something was wrong with the nightmare lock boxes... With chat zone Buy key now.... BUy lockboxes... open them.... and the consistant server alerts poping up with people getting nightmares some 2-5 times in a row ...
I'm only here to give my 2 cents on the quest sharing episode.
I know a large number of people that got banned some temp some perm. Everyone of them knew what they were doing was an exploit, only after the ban did they start to argue about this and that, and complete mindless it's not our fault drivel.
The only thing I do not understand is I know others who did it and received no ban. Frankly I just don't agree with the way it's been handled everyone of them should have gotten the same punishment. I also think they should have rolled the temp ban characters back to a pre feywild state. It's the differing to no punishments that bother me most.
First thing I said when I heard about it was, "Don't Do it! That is an exploit that is clearly going to result in bans." All I got were snickers and na they won't ban for that. It's kinda like when you are in a group and they want to drop off the map to the next camp fire and you say no, boot from party. Of course this brings up the issue of who are the honest people going to play with when the dishonest ones are all banned? As it is no matter what class I play, it is almost impossible to get a group willing to do any instance 100% legit, and people wonder why I solo and pvp mainly.
I miss non pay 2 win! I would much rather play a good monthly charge based game where everyone is on even footing and skill not the pocket book is the determining factor. If the company wants to make an extra dollar selling cosmetics or something fine but nothing power related should ever be sold for cash it's just cheese.
Rant off! Games seriously boring with nobody to play with!
Also, this attitude is probably a direct effect of the nightmare boxes. They did absolutely nothing to those people, now people are just saying **** it to exploits and hitting them every chance they get.
So you could recieve multiples of the same quest? lol repeatable or otherwise what quest allows you to have multiples of it at once to complete all at the same time? That's even more obviously exploiting if that is the case.
Guild Master of <Enemy Team>
We are definitely dominating, and we are always about to win.
0
kantazo1Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Also, this attitude is probably a direct effect of the nightmare boxes. They did absolutely nothing to those people, now people are just saying **** it to exploits and hitting them every chance they get.
Exactly the point, how players can differentiate between exploits that are going to make you "lucky" and exploits that are going to get you banned?
So you could recieve multiples of the same quest? lol repeatable or otherwise what quest allows you to have multiples of it at once to complete all at the same time? That's even more obviously exploiting if that is the case.
This whole "how can you NOT realise its an exploit" argument is invalid. You say that about the quest sharing but not about people getting 80 mounts out of 90 boxes...how can you NOT see that that is not intended? flawed logic is flawed.
Wow good point, did you ever think of just not exploiting at all? That's the sure fired way not to get banned...
its actually very valid. Monkey see monkey do. People see others getting away with exploits and in turn do it themselves the next time one pops up expecting no repurcusions.
@ Darkjeff, I know you are passionate, but the bug about the high drop rate was KNOWN by the devs a week before the patch came out, it was KNOWN because the players on the tester shard informed the developers about it, they posted pics about it and the devs did NOT do a thing about it. So your argument Sir is moot.
No, it's not. We can make reasonable inferences but it would not stand as proof.
There's two situations:
1. The information is not public, therefore we cannot conclude intentional use of information an individual may or may not have.
2. The information is public, but the devs did not correct it. Therefore the public could not conclude the new rates were unintentional until a public statement was made - after the fact.
This is a hole that they dug for themselves, creating a Catch-22 where they cannot prove an intent to exploit. They need solid proof because this involves real money. If someone bought $50 worth of Zen for the sake of lockboxes due to publicly available information about the drop rates (from the test server), they can reasonably argue false advertising when those rates are retroactively modified. If someone bought $50 worth of Zen legitimately and innocently opened lockboxes, then they can reasonably argue that their legitimately obtained virtual goods were taken from them. They could very well have noticed all these people winning, and went "Hey! I didn't know it was so easy! I'll go buy some keys myself!" Proof of intent here is tenuous at best.
Note again that this situation is different from the previous ones which did not involve money in this fashion. The previous cases were also more straightforward in proving intent (like bidding to pay negative amounts, or circumventing explicitly listed prerequisites).
0
kantazo1Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Wow good point, did you ever think of just not exploiting at all? That's the sure fired way not to get banned...
I don't do exploits, but a lot of players do, so if Cryptic had handled the first time the issue properly we will not be right now discussing about it.
Seek and ye shall find. Yeshua
0
kantazo1Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited August 2013
@ Darkjeff the information WAS PUBLIC, anyone can access the test shard section in the forum.
No, it's not. We can make reasonable inferences but it would not stand as proof.
There's two situations:
1. The information is not public, therefore we cannot conclude intentional use of information an individual may or may not have.
2. The information is public, but the devs did not correct it. Therefore the public could not conclude the new rates were unintentional until a public statement was made - after the fact.
This is a hole that they dug for themselves, creating a Catch-22 where they cannot prove an intent to exploit. They need solid proof because this involves real money. If someone bought $50 worth of Zen for the sake of lockboxes due to publicly available information about the drop rates (from the test server), they can reasonably argue false advertising when those rates are retroactively modified. If someone bought $50 worth of Zen legitimately and innocently opened lockboxes, then they can reasonably argue that their legitimately obtained virtual goods were taken from them. They could very well have noticed all these people winning, and went "Hey! I didn't know it was so easy! I'll go buy some keys myself!" Proof of intent here is tenuous at best.
Note again that this situation is different from the previous ones which did not involve money in this fashion. The previous cases were also more straightforward in proving intent (like bidding to pay negative amounts, or circumventing explicitly listed prerequisites).
So basicly what your saying is, because real money was paid to PWE in order to execute said exploit they are unable to punish players. That sounds like hush money lol.
If you park in a no-parking zone underneath the no-parking sign, claiming you can't be bothered to read signs isn't going to get you out of a ticket.
Just like claiming you knew nothing of the nightmare box exploit after you got 10-20 mounts from them shouldnt exempt you from punishment even though you didnt know about it. again flawed logic is flawed
0
kantazo1Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Just like claiming you knew nothing of the nightmare box exploit after you got 10-20 mounts from them shouldnt exempt you from punishment even though you didnt know about it. again flawed logic is flawed
So basicly what your saying is, because real money was paid to PWE in order to execute said exploit they are unable to punish players. That sounds like hush money lol.
Hah, pretty much.
That's the thing about all these cash shops in games right now, it's a big legal grey area that the game companies don't want to risk drawing too much attention to. Currently the reason we have Zen (and whatever Blizzard uses, whatever EA Origin uses) and so on is legal - they store "Zen" which is not a currency (legal definition). That lets them do at least two important things - Zen:AD conversions and holding balances in our account - without running into very strict regulations. If they held USD accounts for us instead of Zen, they're suddenly going to have a ton of red tape and restrictions to go through. Not to mention entities like the IRS are all waiting to see if virtual goods get taxed.
Now, the big thing is that the courts are starting to regard virtual goods as items of monetary value. For example, stealing a virtual good makes you guilty of theft. So what happens when a company takes away thousands of dollars worth of virtual goods (by stripping away thousands of goody bag rewards)? Scary government organizations (like the IRS) take an interest.
Just like claiming you knew nothing of the nightmare box exploit after you got 10-20 mounts from them shouldnt exempt you from punishment even though you didnt know about it. again flawed logic is flawed
The only flaw in the logic here is your reading of it. I specifically said "no parking sign" for a reason. The quest restriction is explicitly in the game. The nightmare lockbox drop rates are not.
Pfft, I wish. I still have like 200 lockboxes in my bank storage. If I had a few nightmare mounts I could finally afford to shell out 750k Dil to upgrade my bloody ioun stone.
That's the thing about all these cash shops in games right now, it's a big legal grey area that the game companies don't want to risk drawing too much attention to. Currently the reason we have Zen (and whatever Blizzard uses, whatever EA Origin uses) and so on is legal - they store "Zen" which is not a currency (legal definition). That lets them do at least two important things - Zen:AD conversions and holding balances in our account - without running into very strict regulations. If they held USD accounts for us instead of Zen, they're suddenly going to have a ton of red tape and restrictions to go through. Not to mention entities like the IRS are all waiting to see if virtual goods get taxed.
Now, the big thing is that the courts are starting to regard virtual goods as items of monetary value. For example, stealing a virtual good makes you guilty of theft. So what happens when a company takes away thousands of dollars worth of virtual goods (by stripping away thousands of goody bag rewards)? Scary government organizations (like the IRS) take an interest.
Well the difference in someone taking something from them and them taking said item back is that they can refund the money spent on said item, while the person cant give anything back in return since they gave nothing for it.
The only flaw in the logic here is your reading of it. I specifically said "no parking sign" for a reason. The quest restriction is explicitly in the game. The nightmare lockbox drop rates are not.
Also, you can simply change the words "cant be bothered to read" to "i didnt see it/notice it" and it would apply the same way to nightmare boxes.
Well the difference in someone taking something from them and them taking said item back is that they can refund the money spent on said item, while the person cant give anything back in return since they gave nothing for it.
Except you can't arbitrarily do that. If you sell me a car, you can't just decide to take the car back and refund me the purchase price without my consent, as it's no longer your property.
In this case, you can't hold a lottery (grab bag game) where the participants win a reward, and then just arbitrarily confiscate their winnings and refund their entry by essentially stating "you weren't supposed to win". That's no longer just an issue with virtual goods, but gambling laws.
Also, you can simply change the words "cant be bothered to read" to "i didnt see it/notice it" and it would apply the same way to nightmare boxes.
Well, once again the difference is "explicitly documented in-game" and "infer from observations".
I earlier mentioned a brand new player starting that day. They would have zero way of knowing the drop rates were bugged, maybe even think the notifications were bugged. That's the litmus test here for what we can reasonably assume a particular player knows, given provided information. We can't just assume people are clever enough to know how something undocumented should be.
There's no need for accusatory statements in this thread. Saying that "someone must work for PWE" because they have a differing opinion than yours is unacceptable. Please review RoC, especially the first clause about respect.
ROLL TIDE ROLL
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
Except you can't arbitrarily do that. If you sell me a car, you can't just decide to take the car back and refund me the purchase price without my consent, as it's no longer your property.
In this case, you can't hold a lottery (grab bag game) where the participants win a reward, and then just arbitrarily confiscate the reward and refund their entry by essentially stating "you weren't supposed to win". That's no longer just an issue with virtual goods, but gambling laws.
Well liek you said with the f2p model being more in the governments eye now it may be harder to just do it, but when it comes to in game mechanics not WAI and a rollback happens then none of that should matter. With your car situation companies do recalls on vehicles all the time. Toyota did a HUGE recall on there cars within the last 3 years and had to refund/pay for customers rental cars. The situation was out of their hands and needed to happen for the protection of the consumers and was therefore justified. Also when you buy a car most people finance them at which point the car isnt yours until you completely pay it off anyways, its the banks.
Well, once again the difference is "explicitly documented in-game" and "infer from observations".
I earlier mentioned a brand new player starting that day. They would have zero way of knowing the drop rates were bugged, maybe even think the notifications were bugged. That's the litmus test here for what we can reasonably assume a particular player knows, given provided information. We can't just assume people are clever enough to know how something undocumented should be.
But my argument is that this same logic can be applied to the quest sharing(although not the "new player" part).
It is not my place to defend what amounts to an internal decision by Cryptic. ToS clearly states that PWE/Cryptic has the sole and absolute right to define what is and is not an exploit. Furthermore, lack of action on any given issue does not preclude its definition as an exploit. Not only does PWE/Cryptic have the sole decision on what constitutes an exploit, they also have absolute discretion on any actions to take on the matter, ranging from none at all to a temporary or permanent ban. Actions on any given account are determined solely on a case-by-case basis. They are not bound by any precedent to act in a similar or identical manner on any given violation, now or in the future.
From Terms of Service:
PWE may take any actions and impose any penalties we deem necessary to discourage and punish any violation of these terms or any other illegal or inappropriate conduct, all without prior notice or warning. The determination as to whether a violation has occurred and who is responsible for such act is solely within PWE's discretion, and is based on what we deem best for the community and the Website. By using the Website, you agree you will be bound by PWE's determination as to whether a violation has occurred and any penalty we choose to implement.
By all rights, the above passage should settle the question now and for all time.
In summary: It's their game, their rules to enforce as they see fit, for what they believe is the best interest of the game, whether you, I, or anyone else agrees with it.
It isn't the answer anyone wants to hear but it is what it is. In any event, my statement was made in the effort to curb unnecessary name calling in this thread.
ROLL TIDE ROLL
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
Comments
Agreed. I know many players that did it once or twice and did not get banned or suspended. I also know players that farmed 500+ sparks and did not get suspended or banned and others that did and some received permanent bans. Even full guilds on our server got banned.
If you've exploited before and been warned previously for exploiting you most likely got permanently banned.
I know a large number of people that got banned some temp some perm. Everyone of them knew what they were doing was an exploit, only after the ban did they start to argue about this and that, and complete mindless it's not our fault drivel.
The only thing I do not understand is I know others who did it and received no ban. Frankly I just don't agree with the way it's been handled everyone of them should have gotten the same punishment. I also think they should have rolled the temp ban characters back to a pre feywild state. It's the differing to no punishments that bother me most.
First thing I said when I heard about it was, "Don't Do it! That is an exploit that is clearly going to result in bans." All I got were snickers and na they won't ban for that. It's kinda like when you are in a group and they want to drop off the map to the next camp fire and you say no, boot from party. Of course this brings up the issue of who are the honest people going to play with when the dishonest ones are all banned? As it is no matter what class I play, it is almost impossible to get a group willing to do any instance 100% legit, and people wonder why I solo and pvp mainly.
I miss non pay 2 win! I would much rather play a good monthly charge based game where everyone is on even footing and skill not the pocket book is the determining factor. If the company wants to make an extra dollar selling cosmetics or something fine but nothing power related should ever be sold for cash it's just cheese.
Rant off! Games seriously boring with nobody to play with!
So your implying that that people couldnt tell something was wrong with the nightmare lock boxes... With chat zone Buy key now.... BUy lockboxes... open them.... and the consistant server alerts poping up with people getting nightmares some 2-5 times in a row ...
Also, this attitude is probably a direct effect of the nightmare boxes. They did absolutely nothing to those people, now people are just saying **** it to exploits and hitting them every chance they get.
So you could recieve multiples of the same quest? lol repeatable or otherwise what quest allows you to have multiples of it at once to complete all at the same time? That's even more obviously exploiting if that is the case.
We are definitely dominating, and we are always about to win.
Exactly the point, how players can differentiate between exploits that are going to make you "lucky" and exploits that are going to get you banned?
Wow good point, did you ever think of just not exploiting at all? That's the sure fired way not to get banned...
We are definitely dominating, and we are always about to win.
This whole "how can you NOT realise its an exploit" argument is invalid. You say that about the quest sharing but not about people getting 80 mounts out of 90 boxes...how can you NOT see that that is not intended? flawed logic is flawed.
its actually very valid. Monkey see monkey do. People see others getting away with exploits and in turn do it themselves the next time one pops up expecting no repurcusions.
There's two situations:
1. The information is not public, therefore we cannot conclude intentional use of information an individual may or may not have.
2. The information is public, but the devs did not correct it. Therefore the public could not conclude the new rates were unintentional until a public statement was made - after the fact.
This is a hole that they dug for themselves, creating a Catch-22 where they cannot prove an intent to exploit. They need solid proof because this involves real money. If someone bought $50 worth of Zen for the sake of lockboxes due to publicly available information about the drop rates (from the test server), they can reasonably argue false advertising when those rates are retroactively modified. If someone bought $50 worth of Zen legitimately and innocently opened lockboxes, then they can reasonably argue that their legitimately obtained virtual goods were taken from them. They could very well have noticed all these people winning, and went "Hey! I didn't know it was so easy! I'll go buy some keys myself!" Proof of intent here is tenuous at best.
Note again that this situation is different from the previous ones which did not involve money in this fashion. The previous cases were also more straightforward in proving intent (like bidding to pay negative amounts, or circumventing explicitly listed prerequisites).
I don't do exploits, but a lot of players do, so if Cryptic had handled the first time the issue properly we will not be right now discussing about it.
So basicly what your saying is, because real money was paid to PWE in order to execute said exploit they are unable to punish players. That sounds like hush money lol.
Just like claiming you knew nothing of the nightmare box exploit after you got 10-20 mounts from them shouldnt exempt you from punishment even though you didnt know about it. again flawed logic is flawed
So Darkjeff is one of the "lucky" ones?
hehe, im talking in theory. Im not saying he is one of the "lucky ones"
Hah, pretty much.
That's the thing about all these cash shops in games right now, it's a big legal grey area that the game companies don't want to risk drawing too much attention to. Currently the reason we have Zen (and whatever Blizzard uses, whatever EA Origin uses) and so on is legal - they store "Zen" which is not a currency (legal definition). That lets them do at least two important things - Zen:AD conversions and holding balances in our account - without running into very strict regulations. If they held USD accounts for us instead of Zen, they're suddenly going to have a ton of red tape and restrictions to go through. Not to mention entities like the IRS are all waiting to see if virtual goods get taxed.
Now, the big thing is that the courts are starting to regard virtual goods as items of monetary value. For example, stealing a virtual good makes you guilty of theft. So what happens when a company takes away thousands of dollars worth of virtual goods (by stripping away thousands of goody bag rewards)? Scary government organizations (like the IRS) take an interest.
The only flaw in the logic here is your reading of it. I specifically said "no parking sign" for a reason. The quest restriction is explicitly in the game. The nightmare lockbox drop rates are not.
Pfft, I wish. I still have like 200 lockboxes in my bank storage. If I had a few nightmare mounts I could finally afford to shell out 750k Dil to upgrade my bloody ioun stone.
Actually it's a paraphrased quote from Al Rivera, lead content designer for Star Trek Online.
Centurion maximus92
12th Legion, Romulan Republic
12th Fleet
=\/= ================================ =\/=
Well the difference in someone taking something from them and them taking said item back is that they can refund the money spent on said item, while the person cant give anything back in return since they gave nothing for it.
Also, you can simply change the words "cant be bothered to read" to "i didnt see it/notice it" and it would apply the same way to nightmare boxes.
In this case, you can't hold a lottery (grab bag game) where the participants win a reward, and then just arbitrarily confiscate their winnings and refund their entry by essentially stating "you weren't supposed to win". That's no longer just an issue with virtual goods, but gambling laws.
Well, once again the difference is "explicitly documented in-game" and "infer from observations".
I earlier mentioned a brand new player starting that day. They would have zero way of knowing the drop rates were bugged, maybe even think the notifications were bugged. That's the litmus test here for what we can reasonably assume a particular player knows, given provided information. We can't just assume people are clever enough to know how something undocumented should be.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
Well liek you said with the f2p model being more in the governments eye now it may be harder to just do it, but when it comes to in game mechanics not WAI and a rollback happens then none of that should matter. With your car situation companies do recalls on vehicles all the time. Toyota did a HUGE recall on there cars within the last 3 years and had to refund/pay for customers rental cars. The situation was out of their hands and needed to happen for the protection of the consumers and was therefore justified. Also when you buy a car most people finance them at which point the car isnt yours until you completely pay it off anyways, its the banks.
But my argument is that this same logic can be applied to the quest sharing(although not the "new player" part).
From Terms of Service:
By all rights, the above passage should settle the question now and for all time.
In summary: It's their game, their rules to enforce as they see fit, for what they believe is the best interest of the game, whether you, I, or anyone else agrees with it.
It isn't the answer anyone wants to hear but it is what it is. In any event, my statement was made in the effort to curb unnecessary name calling in this thread.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com