So your solution would be to publicly tell people how to exploit, but also tell them not to do it or risk being banned?
Not in full detail, but yes. Better method, which some games AFAIK have practiced, would be to disable the less frequent component for the time needed to patch - tell everyone about it, and say that this is done due to its enabling an exploit. Also this should be handled with some common sense.
And maybe install - feasibility and monitoring capacity assumed - a system that, upon use of this exploit, sends the wrongdoer an ingame mail, just for the extra benign and moderate touch. Also useful would be to send that message in the appropriate localized language version the player's client uses, in addition to an English one.
First time should - unless it's been done big time - give a probation time, like a full year, during which the ban would be suspended, and added to the ban time of a second violation.
Then what do you do with the people who abuse the exploit and then say "oh, I didn't know you weren't supposed to do it. I didn't read the post saying not to do it." and expect them not to create more issues for being banned, but using ignorance as an excuse? That does not work.
re. ignorance see above. This is, however, a fundamental rule for individual culpability: Ignorance doesn't protect you from punishment. I can't, as a German, just drive my car with 200 km/h on foreign highways. I'll get a heavy fine when caught doing so, no leniency to be expected just because here in Germany I am allowed to do so.
Naming and shaming people goes against nearly every video game policy I've ever heard of as well. It's just not done.
No objection here. You might have seen that I had explained this in a post further up the thread - naming and ahaming will only lead to fugly blamewars and false accusations and counteraccusations... ...just post something like "235 people were banned for 1 week, 95 for four weeks for escessively abusing the Seargent Knox Socks bug even after they were warned.". Not a single name. Just publish that you've done something and what the consequences are.
The next person getting that warning mail will probably be more perceptive.
These principles are true for almost all penal systems worldwide - ignorance doesn't protect you from punishment, and, yes, the government has the obligation to monitor, and observe you red-handed. And regarding the feasibility here: Parse the outbound data stream for certain effects (the rarer component of the exploit activating) and do a detailed context analysis to see if the synergies exist. Collate these data in a chart with the account IDs associated with the events - bingo.
Send the people using that exploit a "speeding ticket" in-game mail - preferrably with an additional tell message informing about sending that mail - like the red flash done by the radar camera, immediate "transgression caught" message - where the offense, and impending consequences are personally explained. This player never makes this happen again after reading that mail? Fine, story ends here. The player now does it regularly and with increasing frequency? 3 day or one week ban. After ban it's done again? one month ban. You should warn of these escalation step consequences in the original mail. Once the fix is there, publish the exploit in some detail and the statistics of the justice dispensed.
Establishing such a system should not be rocket science. And once you've made that work for one exploit, it probably will only have to be modified for future ones.
That would be a measured step, progressive approach, which the player can actively influence by desisting from the offensive behayviour. It wouldn't be overly work-intense (I do hope at least) because quite some part of that would run fully on auto. Only in the moment of deciding on the ban, human decision would be demanded.
The current way of shushing it up leads to small groups of wrongdoers abusing these loopholes they found to their utmost ability while keeping that clandestine knowledge. And profiting from that. And apart from the auto-portal thing (and caturday) no penalties have trickled down to me (though I frankly admit I'm absolutely outside the pipeline for anything like that kind of inside knowledge communications).
By actively ignoring exploits, at least on an official level, these are even more profitable for the exploiters, though the risk might be there that they get penalized. But by keeping that technique withing a close circle of confidantes, the method will be useable for a way longer time - and hence the efforts necessary to make this less risky, e.g. by creating a second strawman account specifically for the use of that thing, are more attractive, as the rewards to be reaped increase with the time it can be used with impunity. This _is_ a real problem in this game, even more so due to the profits' effect - powering up the exploiter, which then again facilitates and strengthens the legitimate earning of whatever it is you desire.
And in effect, the gap between the exploiters and the legitimate F2P players will scissor and widen and widen. with each new exploit used by these people. And they apparently stand good chances that they will get through with it unscathed, if they only either keep it a real dirty little secret, or see to it getting extremely widespread once it leaks out, so Cryptic would have to ban a lot of people to exert punishment, and hence isk too heavy negative impact on their turnover figures...
i make around 7m ad/week by just playing the game thou
do proffesions on alts
run elol for lostmauth arti/kessels for black ice beholder arti
run around iwd HEs collect RP from rewards and sell it
do dragon HEs
do tiamat for the arti/necks/eggs/shards
7m+ ad a week easy.
i can probly make even more than that since i did quit pvping.
Geez... how do you even get that drop rate? I run eLOL twice a day & Kessel's thrice a day since mod 6 was released, and I haven't seen an artifact at all.
I've given up on Tiamat (Temple of AFK), because in the last few attempts, ppl have gone AFK from the very start without ever even attacking Rath Modar.
At the moment, i have my doubts, that they can even track down bug/exploit users.
I mean, look at the problem with the abilities/powers/feats bug - they want us to submit a screenshot to verify the problem?
What is that all about?
If a GM would have the needed tools at hand, he also would just have to look into your account, see that something is not working right, and then correct that problem.
Same with Glory Boosters, if you had one running before the last patch, it was gone with the current patch with the new Glory Boosters.
The old ones just got deleted.
Now go ahead, and try to contact the support about it - let me save you the trouble, they can't or rather won't do anything about it.
No help at all, not even a compensation for them.
But let's just move on to the broken class powers. Same here, no help from the support for at least getting a free respec, so that we can find ourself a working power combination again.
No, we are just left standing in the rain.
And you really believe, they can deal with bug/exploit users?
Really?
Or take a really simple problem.
Goldspammers all around the clock in PE.
They can't even give us anything working against them.
Therefore, how realistic is it, that they can clean up the game from bug/exploit users?
Threads reporting bugs/exploits are just deleted or moved out of sight, but not properly dealt with here too.
A lot of players are actually even trying to help the Devs to clean up this mess, but what do they get in return?
Either the wall of silence, or a warning for bringing the issues to this forums.
Ha ha, i love exploiter's when they close the lines, to rule this game further.
Remember, what history told us, one day the truth will surface!
Make 10K dollars/per toon by just playing the game and i will applaud you, better, post a guide on how to.
u can flip huge amount of cash in ah and before ad per zen rised to cap u could flip huge amount in ad exchange as well and there are also hardcore ppl who plays for 10+hours a day
i agree exploits are problematic here and one of reasons we do not have higher player base but it is way how ppl goes around to hard dungeons like they did when game launched, only way to remove exploits and exploiters from game is easy dungeons
We need (to deal with the well geared real players epic,legendary,mythic bots)-
1)Report bot thread on the forum , no bad mouthing or stuff , players simply report the names of suspected bots , as the names are investigated the devs update the posts with the results of each investigation for example banned, real player etc etc, Aeria games used to do this ( no idea if they do now)
2)Developer prison room that has a mechanism similar to IWD where you cannot log off instantly , small room with no exit and a couple of enemy mobs that bots will autoattack where the devs can log into and teleport suspected bots to in order to try to investigate them and communicate in controlled conditions.
3)If they turn out to be bots ( no communication and continued autoattacking of test mobs) then insta permanent account wide ban with no appeals no matter whether they have ilvl 10 or ilvl 4000.
4)If they are genuine players they will be sent on their way.
If staff are encouraged to log in a couple of times a day for 10 - 20 minutes and go through the bot reporting thread systematically then I'm sure we will see a big decline in real players botting, as for the gold seller site bots no idea what to do there.
...
re. ignorance see above. This is, however, a fundamental rule for individual culpability: Ignorance doesn't protect you from punishment. I can't, as a German, just drive my car with 200 km/h on foreign highways. I'll get a heavy fine when caught doing so, no leniency to be expected just because here in Germany I am allowed to do so.
...
Your argument is invalid, in some cases. You can look up the speeding limit for the other countries, but you cant look up a list of confirmed expoits. While in the first case you have deliberate ignorance, here it is guesswork, plain and simple. BTW ignorance protects you from punishment in most cases, at last in germany.
Go read the forums, there are some ppl who claim, that ELOL set, WoE, negation etc. are buggy and using them is a banable offense. Guess what, it is not. Things like the resonator abuse etc. are clear violations and deserve a ban, some things are in a grey area and some other things are simply OP or buggy.
I like to refer to faithful DCs. There is/ was a post in Mod 5 preview forum by a Dev, that the capstone feat should neither heal for more, than the DCs max HP nor ignore healing depression. It still does. This is a known and confirmed bug, still it would be wrong to ban every faithful DC for 'abusing' it.
PS, I think some ppl should tone down their voices a bit. I read claims, that everyone with BIS gear is either a wallet warrior or an exploiter. I wont be bothered to repeat all the ways to make AD in game and all the ways we had to make AD before, but I know for a fact, that even someone who played for 6 months can, with enough time on his hands and some luck get near BIS gear legit. A friend of mine farms HEs in IWD for hours each day. He earns up to 1,5 million AD/ day atm. No bot, no exploit, just mindblowing stupid grinding. Everyone could do it, but most ppl are not willing to waste their time with this and prefer to call him and his likes cheaters, bc they worked for BIS gear and everyone with bis gear has to be bad.
Your argument is invalid, in some cases. You can look up the speeding limit for the other countries, but you cant look up a list of confirmed expoits. While in the first case you have deliberate ignorance, here it is guesswork, plain and simple. BTW ignorance protects you from punishment in most cases, at last in germany.
Regarding the rest of your post I'm mostly with you - which, however, strengthens my argument for a public and referrable stance on certain things. And in the cases you have quoted: Lostmouth set and Faith capstone - I'm considering it highly probable that these things will eventually be changed, and it should happen sooner rather than later - but not without a replacement (Faithful cap) or as just some toning down (both). And re. Lost set I know of no comment that it were not WAI. A different story would e.g. be the use of a certain skill, which you can deliberately not use without having to respec or regear. Or of a certain off-hand feature boost, which can be switched out for 5k AD, which might even be refunded.
In other cases the reactions from the dev team have been prompt and decisive in the past weeks, and while this has been a good thing to see, AFAIK left the exploit users with the profits they reaped by the use of these, and this IMHO sends a really bad message...
Regarding the rest of your post I'm mostly with you - which, however, strengthens my argument for a public and referrable stance on certain things. And in the cases you have quoted: Lostmouth set and Faith capstone - I'm considering it highly probable that these things will eventually be changed, and it should happen sooner rather than later - but not without a replacement (Faithful cap) or as just some toning down (both). And re. Lost set I know of no comment that it were not WAI. A different story would e.g. be the use of a certain skill, which you can deliberately not use without having to respec or regear. Or of a certain off-hand feature boost, which can be switched out for 5k AD, which might even be refunded.
In other cases the reactions from the dev team have been prompt and decisive in the past weeks, and while this has been a good thing to see, AFAIK left the exploit users with the profits they reaped by the use of these, and this IMHO sends a really bad message...
In another post I said, that the best solution would be, swift action and not reaction by the Devs. If something is not WAI, they should act in days, not months. If they cant fix it asap, they should sent a massage to the players, depending on their language setting in their native language, like 'we inform you, that XY is broken, we concider its use an exploit and a banable act. Until further notice plz...'. Everyone would know what will/could happen, if they do something wong.
Beside some major exploits, most bugs are in a grey area and I dont like the 'but you could have guesses' argument. If something is to good to be true, ppl can use it IMO, but should not complain, if it gets nerfed and they lost their ADs spent. This goes for gear etc. If a skill is overperforming, it is difficult. There is a fine line between OP and exploit. The decision is in PWs hand and they should act or give straight answers/ orders.
Chars: CW, DC, GF, GWF, HR and TR.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
they should sent a massage to the players, depending on their language setting in their native language, like 'we inform you, that XY is broken, we concider its use an exploit and a banable act. Until further notice plz...'. Everyone would know what will/could happen, if they do something wong.
No company ever does this for the same reason we don't permit discussions of exploits on the forums. It advertises the use and abuse of the exploit.
If it is too good to be true then don't do it. It is a very simple rule and you are held accountable to applying that in every single MMO. I have played many MMO's and there is always at least a small handful of people who want it done your way but the company response is always exactly the same: no.
It is quite simply not a good idea and it isn't done for a reason. It's far superior to fix an issue without notice than to ever inform everybody of such an issue lest it will be abused even if it is just because people are curious and want to "see how it works." You will not find a single MMO that treats exploiting the way you want.
No company ever does this for the same reason we don't permit discussions of exploits on the forums. It advertises the use and abuse of the exploit.
If it is too good to be true then don't do it. It is a very simple rule and you are held accountable to applying that in every single MMO. I have played many MMO's and there is always at least a small handful of people who want it done your way but the company response is always exactly the same: no.
It is quite simply not a good idea and it isn't done for a reason. It's far superior to fix an issue without notice than to ever inform everybody of such an issue lest it will be abused even if it is just because people are curious and want to "see how it works." You will not find a single MMO that treats exploiting the way you want.
Then at least try hot-patch the exploits instead of waiting weeks when something is not WAI.
Bugs and exploits in this game take weeks or months to fix and its insane I have never seen another MMO that takes this long to fix simple things. For example the queue system kicking took this long to fix and its still not fully fixed. the elven battle enchant took till mod6 to fix.
Things should not takes months to fix.
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torontodaveMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 992Arc User
- Ban Wave: We banned a bunch of suspected accounts for 1 week. If they infringe again, it will be 1 month. Suspected proceeds have been removed. Contact support if you think we've made an error.
^^ Its that easy. They don't have to disclose anything apart from that to keep me happy.
NW-DSQ39N5SJ - 'To Infinity, and BEYOND!' - Spelljammer Quest. Skyships, Indiana Jones moments NW-DC9R4J5EH - 'The Black Pearl' - Spelljammer! Phlo Riders and Space Orcs
Thanks for all the fish.
With all due respect to OP, there is nothing to be done.
Just wait the normal "estimated" time for bug fixes, which usually is = months.
This is not my first PWE MMO...it's the way the things go. They get fixed....after a confortable ammount of time.
Germany is Germany (I heard in Germany you get "rewarded" for reporting someone who did not clean his dog's remains on the street....)..let's just refrain of mentioning each other's countries to avoid thread lock.
The only thing we can do is simply to report the bug...and wait.
I am not happy that it's the only thing we can do, but some things are like they are (pokerface)
Apathy at it's finest here in Neverwinter! I reported a well known player in a very well known guild who was exploiting a companion bug to one shot Tiamat and other bosses LIVE ON TWITCH. I sent the GMs the names of people involved and a link to the twitch channel which was up and running for days on end. The member of said well known guild discussed in detail the exploit and others they were using during the stream. They blatantly abused the broken companion to the gain of the guild. Others reported the same person with similar clear cut, black and white evidence.
The result? Well I played against that person and guildies last night in a PVP match. What a surprise we were completely destroyed by BIS players who had CHEATED their way into the equipment. Respectable MMOs don't allow this kind of behavior to go unpunished, why Neverwinter?
How is this allowed to happen? It couldn't have been more clear that an exploit had been repeatedly abused to improve a character's gear. Is live video evidence not enough? Do the GMs care? I'm really confused why this type of stuff occurs with no punishment.
- Exploiting ruins the economy
- Exploiting ruins PVP matches
- Exploiting gives honest, paying customers less enthusiasm to spend money
- Exploiting makes legit players feel like playing less
- Exploiting destroys the game
Why do we allow it to happen even with evidence? Can anyone explain it?
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
While many websites do not allow the discussion of exploits on their forums they do allow discussions on how to deal with exploiters and give information on ban waves etc!
Saying they banned X Amount of players is something other MMOs as well as this one do. That is not what I was referring to at all.
I was referring to the less than wise suggestion to tell people about known exploits before they are resolved. That is never done by any MMO company.
Additionally releasing names(including nicknames) violate privacy policies which are actually created to conform to real laws and can not arbitrarily be ignored by an MMO company hence why you will only see X number of players and perhaps statistics based on the banned accounts and never something which could lead to an individual.
Oh my this is getting to look like a sci-fi fairy tale to me. 1 artifact pro month and all the best things from lock boxes.
Artifacts do drop very rarely, i personally only had 1 drop in 2 years time! Some never!
From last friday to last saturday i made 5 runs. 3 eLoL and 2 VT. Got 2 horns and 1 amu. Am i exploiting?
Is luck now exploitin? Its funny: Everything wot dont happens to your self, cant be legit?
If you see someone using exploits/cheats/bugs: Report him. If you got a ban thread: Be more polite in your report textes ^^.
Apathy at it's finest here in Neverwinter! I reported a well known player in a very well known guild who was exploiting a companion bug to one shot Tiamat and other bosses LIVE ON TWITCH. I sent the GMs the names of people involved and a link to the twitch channel which was up and running for days on end. The member of said well known guild discussed in detail the exploit and others they were using during the stream. They blatantly abused the broken companion to the gain of the guild. Others reported the same person with similar clear cut, black and white evidence.
The result? Well I played against that person and guildies last night in a PVP match. What a surprise we were completely destroyed by BIS players who had CHEATED their way into the equipment. Respectable MMOs don't allow this kind of behavior to go unpunished, why Neverwinter?
How is this allowed to happen? It couldn't have been more clear that an exploit had been repeatedly abused to improve a character's gear. Is live video evidence not enough? Do the GMs care? I'm really confused why this type of stuff occurs with no punishment.
- Exploiting ruins the economy
- Exploiting ruins PVP matches
- Exploiting gives honest, paying customers less enthusiasm to spend money
- Exploiting makes legit players feel like playing less
- Exploiting destroys the game
Why do we allow it to happen even with evidence? Can anyone explain it?
I can only second your words mate!
I have reported so many with evidence too, nothing was done by officials, so i stopped doing it, more so cause many of my friends and i had to suffer some kind of unknown ban for reporting.
Of course all of those mass exploiters, who see, that nothing is done, get more strength to continue and the legit player sees himself (my case at this point) as a loser, which we are.
I have now seen in my nearly 2 years in NWO many guilds getting empty, because their fun was ruined and they couldn't keep up with the "competition", this goes especially for PVP.
In my new guild nearly nobody wants to go do PVP DOM, but now GG PVP is also avoided. My GM even tried to give me a glyph as a "bribe" to join them in a PVP match.
I mean is it only me and a handful of people,who see, that something went out of hand, but very rapidly, especially since Mod 6.
I am not a fool, i know, that Cryptic is in trouble in a way, they let things out of hand and now there are so many exploiters out there, that they would find it hard to ban people by thousands or even close big guilds, who carry the torch of Neverwinter in the web.
But when it comes to the paying part you are correct too. I was a regularly customer, sometimes i had to cause my account has troubles and many times i didn't get loot, so had to buy. Now i have stopped and will not do it again until i see some positive changes coming from Cryptic, this goes both for content in PVE and some effort taken against the big exploiters, especially in PVP.
And if one thinks i am alone with this mentality, let me tell you, i have been in 3 guilds since Mod 6 and many many people think like i do!
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Agreed but the only time they have cleaned them up in neverwinter is when they have gone public. Caturday for instance was only dealt with when it became public knowledge. Hell Resonator scandal was a year long and was only dealt with when it went public and everyone and their dog was doing it. Both of these issues were out right stealing money from the pocket of Cryptic/pwe and it was only handled when the exploits got posted publicly on third party sites!
I would be ecstatic if they got fixed quietly before the public knew about it but sadly it has not happened. We the community can only look at the history of the game and how stuff was handled in the past. We look at the previous major exploits and look at what it took to get fixed. All we can do is look at players showing off their banned letters only to be playing a week later. If they had been harsh to start with these issues would not been happening now! The exploiting is so bad the players flaunt it openly! You would think their was a title for exploiting or something!
Every word true
Unfortunately the big exploits only handles when it become public knowledge
Is it good ? Absolutely not .. They need to be fixed and put in live build even at the cost of delaying other annoying bugs before it spam at game zone chat in live build
That's what I think is so wrong with the devs current thinking
Not realize what will cost them another big layoff
The income drops from legit players is mostly because we see that there is no value to the money here ..
No real support to the product when it come to the most annoying thing that legit ppl can experience :
exploiter paradise
It's bigger then all the small medium bugs, the difficulty complains, and the PvP unbalance all combined
And that's why this thinking need to be change , publicly treatment is currently the way to go
Until things will get better
finally The mods decided to keep the most press issue live on forums , it's a start
Next -I hope for official comment from community manager
Then devs will need to announce fighting program against exploit with the legit community
It all can happen
Keep this up and keep the good pressure on
ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited June 2015
Moderator Notice:
I am trying to be nice and give you all a way to voice your disapproval of the length of time that exploits go unresolved and the lack of communication of the punishments.
However...
I have worked 20 hours in the last 30 hours not including commuting time. I do not have time to babysit. If you can't conform to the rules then this thread will be closed. I promise Lew is itching to close this thread so please stop giving me reasons to not defend my decision to try to give you all a thread to voice these concerns.
With that said, note that just because Cryptic does not publicize punishments doesn't mean that they do not punish rule violators. The fact is that many players and bots are banned are every single day. They are simply not broadcast on a regular basis.
I can understand wanting the amount of bans publicized more often but please do not accuse Cryptic of not banning people just because they have not announced them or because people you suspect of exploiting have not been penalized. This is inaccurate slander.
Keep it civil. To each other and to Cryptic. This is not an optional request. I am bending as much as possible to allow you all to voice your concerns regarding how serious you feel about exploitation and Cryptic's actions thus far. If you take that for granted we will go back to fighting the fire by stomping out out completely.
Please do not respond to this notice.
If you wish to comment on this please send myself or a member of the community Team a PM.
the economy adjust itself, even if people had huge amount of AD in their pockets the "legit" players would've sold a CN weapon for almsot 1 mil AD as example, meaning that lets say the ad of that exploiter would've float on the market fairly easy, because like i said, the market is fluid and players are adjusting the item prices
Thats wrong. They broke the market. Before the AD exploits, the AD/ zen ratio was fluctuating. Now it is at 500/1 and it never recovered after that. Furthermore they inflated the prices. While a legit player had to work hard for his ADs, they had/have an infinite ammount for free and are willing to pay much more, than other players, bc they can. Furthermore, they are no monkeys pressing buttons, but players with the highest level of inside knowledge.
Have AD to make AD. Before RP became BOA, if you had 100 millions of AD to spent and you bought RPs, now you would have 1,5 billion AD, if you want to sell the RPs. GMs of power etc. Before Mod 6 available for 5k AD, now 50k AD. Even if you cant be bothered to watch/ predict the market, you can double your 'spare' ADs every double RP weekend by buying stacks of RP and selling them at double RP.
The market does not regulate itself, they own it. The only way things will get back to normal is, if they get bored and stop playing.
There are many things broken, there are exploits, but not everything that is broken is an exploit.
Completely true.
Exploiting is the worst of the worst type of bug abuse. In all seriousness it is not possible to exploit and not know you are doing so.
If you find an item being sold from a shop for 50K AD but being bought by the shop for 100K AD and keep buying and selling as fast as you can click there should be alarms going off in your head saying "The developers probably didn't do this intentionally." If there's not then you are either lying to yourself or have less comprehension of right and wrong than my five year old brother.
Just because a power is doing slightly more damage than intended doesn't make it an exploit. An exploit is something which screams too good to be true. If you find a way to do 1M damage you probably should not continue to use such a method and report it as an exploitable bug because it is "too good to be true."
Comments
Not in full detail, but yes. Better method, which some games AFAIK have practiced, would be to disable the less frequent component for the time needed to patch - tell everyone about it, and say that this is done due to its enabling an exploit. Also this should be handled with some common sense.
And maybe install - feasibility and monitoring capacity assumed - a system that, upon use of this exploit, sends the wrongdoer an ingame mail, just for the extra benign and moderate touch. Also useful would be to send that message in the appropriate localized language version the player's client uses, in addition to an English one.
First time should - unless it's been done big time - give a probation time, like a full year, during which the ban would be suspended, and added to the ban time of a second violation.
re. ignorance see above. This is, however, a fundamental rule for individual culpability: Ignorance doesn't protect you from punishment. I can't, as a German, just drive my car with 200 km/h on foreign highways. I'll get a heavy fine when caught doing so, no leniency to be expected just because here in Germany I am allowed to do so.
No objection here. You might have seen that I had explained this in a post further up the thread - naming and ahaming will only lead to fugly blamewars and false accusations and counteraccusations... ...just post something like "235 people were banned for 1 week, 95 for four weeks for escessively abusing the Seargent Knox Socks bug even after they were warned.". Not a single name. Just publish that you've done something and what the consequences are.
The next person getting that warning mail will probably be more perceptive.
These principles are true for almost all penal systems worldwide - ignorance doesn't protect you from punishment, and, yes, the government has the obligation to monitor, and observe you red-handed. And regarding the feasibility here: Parse the outbound data stream for certain effects (the rarer component of the exploit activating) and do a detailed context analysis to see if the synergies exist. Collate these data in a chart with the account IDs associated with the events - bingo.
Send the people using that exploit a "speeding ticket" in-game mail - preferrably with an additional tell message informing about sending that mail - like the red flash done by the radar camera, immediate "transgression caught" message - where the offense, and impending consequences are personally explained. This player never makes this happen again after reading that mail? Fine, story ends here. The player now does it regularly and with increasing frequency? 3 day or one week ban. After ban it's done again? one month ban. You should warn of these escalation step consequences in the original mail. Once the fix is there, publish the exploit in some detail and the statistics of the justice dispensed.
Establishing such a system should not be rocket science. And once you've made that work for one exploit, it probably will only have to be modified for future ones.
That would be a measured step, progressive approach, which the player can actively influence by desisting from the offensive behayviour. It wouldn't be overly work-intense (I do hope at least) because quite some part of that would run fully on auto. Only in the moment of deciding on the ban, human decision would be demanded.
The current way of shushing it up leads to small groups of wrongdoers abusing these loopholes they found to their utmost ability while keeping that clandestine knowledge. And profiting from that. And apart from the auto-portal thing (and caturday) no penalties have trickled down to me (though I frankly admit I'm absolutely outside the pipeline for anything like that kind of inside knowledge communications).
By actively ignoring exploits, at least on an official level, these are even more profitable for the exploiters, though the risk might be there that they get penalized. But by keeping that technique withing a close circle of confidantes, the method will be useable for a way longer time - and hence the efforts necessary to make this less risky, e.g. by creating a second strawman account specifically for the use of that thing, are more attractive, as the rewards to be reaped increase with the time it can be used with impunity. This _is_ a real problem in this game, even more so due to the profits' effect - powering up the exploiter, which then again facilitates and strengthens the legitimate earning of whatever it is you desire.
And in effect, the gap between the exploiters and the legitimate F2P players will scissor and widen and widen. with each new exploit used by these people. And they apparently stand good chances that they will get through with it unscathed, if they only either keep it a real dirty little secret, or see to it getting extremely widespread once it leaks out, so Cryptic would have to ban a lot of people to exert punishment, and hence isk too heavy negative impact on their turnover figures...
Geez... how do you even get that drop rate? I run eLOL twice a day & Kessel's thrice a day since mod 6 was released, and I haven't seen an artifact at all.
I've given up on Tiamat (Temple of AFK), because in the last few attempts, ppl have gone AFK from the very start without ever even attacking Rath Modar.
I mean, look at the problem with the abilities/powers/feats bug - they want us to submit a screenshot to verify the problem?
What is that all about?
If a GM would have the needed tools at hand, he also would just have to look into your account, see that something is not working right, and then correct that problem.
Same with Glory Boosters, if you had one running before the last patch, it was gone with the current patch with the new Glory Boosters.
The old ones just got deleted.
Now go ahead, and try to contact the support about it - let me save you the trouble, they can't or rather won't do anything about it.
No help at all, not even a compensation for them.
But let's just move on to the broken class powers. Same here, no help from the support for at least getting a free respec, so that we can find ourself a working power combination again.
No, we are just left standing in the rain.
And you really believe, they can deal with bug/exploit users?
Really?
Or take a really simple problem.
Goldspammers all around the clock in PE.
They can't even give us anything working against them.
Therefore, how realistic is it, that they can clean up the game from bug/exploit users?
Threads reporting bugs/exploits are just deleted or moved out of sight, but not properly dealt with here too.
A lot of players are actually even trying to help the Devs to clean up this mess, but what do they get in return?
Either the wall of silence, or a warning for bringing the issues to this forums.
And that is just plain wrong.
u can flip huge amount of cash in ah and before ad per zen rised to cap u could flip huge amount in ad exchange as well and there are also hardcore ppl who plays for 10+hours a day
i agree exploits are problematic here and one of reasons we do not have higher player base but it is way how ppl goes around to hard dungeons like they did when game launched, only way to remove exploits and exploiters from game is easy dungeons
1)Report bot thread on the forum , no bad mouthing or stuff , players simply report the names of suspected bots , as the names are investigated the devs update the posts with the results of each investigation for example banned, real player etc etc, Aeria games used to do this ( no idea if they do now)
2)Developer prison room that has a mechanism similar to IWD where you cannot log off instantly , small room with no exit and a couple of enemy mobs that bots will autoattack where the devs can log into and teleport suspected bots to in order to try to investigate them and communicate in controlled conditions.
3)If they turn out to be bots ( no communication and continued autoattacking of test mobs) then insta permanent account wide ban with no appeals no matter whether they have ilvl 10 or ilvl 4000.
4)If they are genuine players they will be sent on their way.
If staff are encouraged to log in a couple of times a day for 10 - 20 minutes and go through the bot reporting thread systematically then I'm sure we will see a big decline in real players botting, as for the gold seller site bots no idea what to do there.
Hmmm... if about 2 hours a day of grinding is low, then it's too much of a job that I'm not getting paid for. LOL
I'd love to know these channels because somehow, no matter what time I enter, I get into the "Not playing, we're here for the free reward" instance.
Your argument is invalid, in some cases. You can look up the speeding limit for the other countries, but you cant look up a list of confirmed expoits. While in the first case you have deliberate ignorance, here it is guesswork, plain and simple. BTW ignorance protects you from punishment in most cases, at last in germany.
Go read the forums, there are some ppl who claim, that ELOL set, WoE, negation etc. are buggy and using them is a banable offense. Guess what, it is not. Things like the resonator abuse etc. are clear violations and deserve a ban, some things are in a grey area and some other things are simply OP or buggy.
I like to refer to faithful DCs. There is/ was a post in Mod 5 preview forum by a Dev, that the capstone feat should neither heal for more, than the DCs max HP nor ignore healing depression. It still does. This is a known and confirmed bug, still it would be wrong to ban every faithful DC for 'abusing' it.
PS, I think some ppl should tone down their voices a bit. I read claims, that everyone with BIS gear is either a wallet warrior or an exploiter. I wont be bothered to repeat all the ways to make AD in game and all the ways we had to make AD before, but I know for a fact, that even someone who played for 6 months can, with enough time on his hands and some luck get near BIS gear legit. A friend of mine farms HEs in IWD for hours each day. He earns up to 1,5 million AD/ day atm. No bot, no exploit, just mindblowing stupid grinding. Everyone could do it, but most ppl are not willing to waste their time with this and prefer to call him and his likes cheaters, bc they worked for BIS gear and everyone with bis gear has to be bad.
Regarding the rest of your post I'm mostly with you - which, however, strengthens my argument for a public and referrable stance on certain things. And in the cases you have quoted: Lostmouth set and Faith capstone - I'm considering it highly probable that these things will eventually be changed, and it should happen sooner rather than later - but not without a replacement (Faithful cap) or as just some toning down (both). And re. Lost set I know of no comment that it were not WAI. A different story would e.g. be the use of a certain skill, which you can deliberately not use without having to respec or regear. Or of a certain off-hand feature boost, which can be switched out for 5k AD, which might even be refunded.
In other cases the reactions from the dev team have been prompt and decisive in the past weeks, and while this has been a good thing to see, AFAIK left the exploit users with the profits they reaped by the use of these, and this IMHO sends a really bad message...
In another post I said, that the best solution would be, swift action and not reaction by the Devs. If something is not WAI, they should act in days, not months. If they cant fix it asap, they should sent a massage to the players, depending on their language setting in their native language, like 'we inform you, that XY is broken, we concider its use an exploit and a banable act. Until further notice plz...'. Everyone would know what will/could happen, if they do something wong.
Beside some major exploits, most bugs are in a grey area and I dont like the 'but you could have guesses' argument. If something is to good to be true, ppl can use it IMO, but should not complain, if it gets nerfed and they lost their ADs spent. This goes for gear etc. If a skill is overperforming, it is difficult. There is a fine line between OP and exploit. The decision is in PWs hand and they should act or give straight answers/ orders.
No company ever does this for the same reason we don't permit discussions of exploits on the forums. It advertises the use and abuse of the exploit.
If it is too good to be true then don't do it. It is a very simple rule and you are held accountable to applying that in every single MMO. I have played many MMO's and there is always at least a small handful of people who want it done your way but the company response is always exactly the same: no.
It is quite simply not a good idea and it isn't done for a reason. It's far superior to fix an issue without notice than to ever inform everybody of such an issue lest it will be abused even if it is just because people are curious and want to "see how it works." You will not find a single MMO that treats exploiting the way you want.
Then at least try hot-patch the exploits instead of waiting weeks when something is not WAI.
Bugs and exploits in this game take weeks or months to fix and its insane I have never seen another MMO that takes this long to fix simple things. For example the queue system kicking took this long to fix and its still not fully fixed. the elven battle enchant took till mod6 to fix.
Things should not takes months to fix.
Patch Notes:
- Ban Wave: We banned a bunch of suspected accounts for 1 week. If they infringe again, it will be 1 month. Suspected proceeds have been removed. Contact support if you think we've made an error.
^^ Its that easy. They don't have to disclose anything apart from that to keep me happy.
NW-DC9R4J5EH - 'The Black Pearl' - Spelljammer! Phlo Riders and Space Orcs
Thanks for all the fish.
Just wait the normal "estimated" time for bug fixes, which usually is = months.
This is not my first PWE MMO...it's the way the things go. They get fixed....after a confortable ammount of time.
Germany is Germany (I heard in Germany you get "rewarded" for reporting someone who did not clean his dog's remains on the street....)..let's just refrain of mentioning each other's countries to avoid thread lock.
The only thing we can do is simply to report the bug...and wait.
I am not happy that it's the only thing we can do, but some things are like they are (pokerface)
Have fun,
Almondum.
The result? Well I played against that person and guildies last night in a PVP match. What a surprise we were completely destroyed by BIS players who had CHEATED their way into the equipment. Respectable MMOs don't allow this kind of behavior to go unpunished, why Neverwinter?
How is this allowed to happen? It couldn't have been more clear that an exploit had been repeatedly abused to improve a character's gear. Is live video evidence not enough? Do the GMs care? I'm really confused why this type of stuff occurs with no punishment.
- Exploiting ruins the economy
- Exploiting ruins PVP matches
- Exploiting gives honest, paying customers less enthusiasm to spend money
- Exploiting makes legit players feel like playing less
- Exploiting destroys the game
Why do we allow it to happen even with evidence? Can anyone explain it?
Saying they banned X Amount of players is something other MMOs as well as this one do. That is not what I was referring to at all.
I was referring to the less than wise suggestion to tell people about known exploits before they are resolved. That is never done by any MMO company.
Additionally releasing names(including nicknames) violate privacy policies which are actually created to conform to real laws and can not arbitrarily be ignored by an MMO company hence why you will only see X number of players and perhaps statistics based on the banned accounts and never something which could lead to an individual.
From last friday to last saturday i made 5 runs. 3 eLoL and 2 VT. Got 2 horns and 1 amu. Am i exploiting?
Is luck now exploitin? Its funny: Everything wot dont happens to your self, cant be legit?
If you see someone using exploits/cheats/bugs: Report him. If you got a ban thread: Be more polite in your report textes ^^.
I can only second your words mate!
I have reported so many with evidence too, nothing was done by officials, so i stopped doing it, more so cause many of my friends and i had to suffer some kind of unknown ban for reporting.
Of course all of those mass exploiters, who see, that nothing is done, get more strength to continue and the legit player sees himself (my case at this point) as a loser, which we are.
I have now seen in my nearly 2 years in NWO many guilds getting empty, because their fun was ruined and they couldn't keep up with the "competition", this goes especially for PVP.
In my new guild nearly nobody wants to go do PVP DOM, but now GG PVP is also avoided. My GM even tried to give me a glyph as a "bribe" to join them in a PVP match.
I mean is it only me and a handful of people,who see, that something went out of hand, but very rapidly, especially since Mod 6.
I am not a fool, i know, that Cryptic is in trouble in a way, they let things out of hand and now there are so many exploiters out there, that they would find it hard to ban people by thousands or even close big guilds, who carry the torch of Neverwinter in the web.
But when it comes to the paying part you are correct too. I was a regularly customer, sometimes i had to cause my account has troubles and many times i didn't get loot, so had to buy. Now i have stopped and will not do it again until i see some positive changes coming from Cryptic, this goes both for content in PVE and some effort taken against the big exploiters, especially in PVP.
And if one thinks i am alone with this mentality, let me tell you, i have been in 3 guilds since Mod 6 and many many people think like i do!
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Every word true
Unfortunately the big exploits only handles when it become public knowledge
Is it good ? Absolutely not .. They need to be fixed and put in live build even at the cost of delaying other annoying bugs before it spam at game zone chat in live build
That's what I think is so wrong with the devs current thinking
Not realize what will cost them another big layoff
The income drops from legit players is mostly because we see that there is no value to the money here ..
No real support to the product when it come to the most annoying thing that legit ppl can experience :
exploiter paradise
It's bigger then all the small medium bugs, the difficulty complains, and the PvP unbalance all combined
And that's why this thinking need to be change , publicly treatment is currently the way to go
Until things will get better
finally The mods decided to keep the most press issue live on forums , it's a start
Next -I hope for official comment from community manager
Then devs will need to announce fighting program against exploit with the legit community
It all can happen
Keep this up and keep the good pressure on
I am trying to be nice and give you all a way to voice your disapproval of the length of time that exploits go unresolved and the lack of communication of the punishments.
However...
I have worked 20 hours in the last 30 hours not including commuting time. I do not have time to babysit. If you can't conform to the rules then this thread will be closed. I promise Lew is itching to close this thread so please stop giving me reasons to not defend my decision to try to give you all a thread to voice these concerns.
With that said, note that just because Cryptic does not publicize punishments doesn't mean that they do not punish rule violators. The fact is that many players and bots are banned are every single day. They are simply not broadcast on a regular basis.
I can understand wanting the amount of bans publicized more often but please do not accuse Cryptic of not banning people just because they have not announced them or because people you suspect of exploiting have not been penalized. This is inaccurate slander.
Keep it civil. To each other and to Cryptic. This is not an optional request. I am bending as much as possible to allow you all to voice your concerns regarding how serious you feel about exploitation and Cryptic's actions thus far. If you take that for granted we will go back to fighting the fire by stomping out out completely.
If you wish to comment on this please send myself or a member of the community Team a PM.
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?946291-Arp-RI-formula-by-gentlemancrush
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?952241-Tenacity-is-now-broken-as-of-NW-45-20150515a-3-%2806-03-2015%29
There are many things broken, there are exploits, but not everything that is broken is an exploit.
Thats wrong. They broke the market. Before the AD exploits, the AD/ zen ratio was fluctuating. Now it is at 500/1 and it never recovered after that. Furthermore they inflated the prices. While a legit player had to work hard for his ADs, they had/have an infinite ammount for free and are willing to pay much more, than other players, bc they can. Furthermore, they are no monkeys pressing buttons, but players with the highest level of inside knowledge.
Have AD to make AD. Before RP became BOA, if you had 100 millions of AD to spent and you bought RPs, now you would have 1,5 billion AD, if you want to sell the RPs. GMs of power etc. Before Mod 6 available for 5k AD, now 50k AD. Even if you cant be bothered to watch/ predict the market, you can double your 'spare' ADs every double RP weekend by buying stacks of RP and selling them at double RP.
The market does not regulate itself, they own it. The only way things will get back to normal is, if they get bored and stop playing.
Completely true.
Exploiting is the worst of the worst type of bug abuse. In all seriousness it is not possible to exploit and not know you are doing so.
If you find an item being sold from a shop for 50K AD but being bought by the shop for 100K AD and keep buying and selling as fast as you can click there should be alarms going off in your head saying "The developers probably didn't do this intentionally." If there's not then you are either lying to yourself or have less comprehension of right and wrong than my five year old brother.
Just because a power is doing slightly more damage than intended doesn't make it an exploit. An exploit is something which screams too good to be true. If you find a way to do 1M damage you probably should not continue to use such a method and report it as an exploitable bug because it is "too good to be true."