Is praying on many chars per account exploiting

bashteros1234 · December 2015

As my questions says - if a script is used, it's obviously an exploit - but if people are having many chars on their account and are regularily praying, is that seen as "gameplay-exploit".

If that is the case, a clear statement of cryptic would be welcome.

juleadream · December 2015

If they are doing it "manually", then no, not an exploit.

gankdalf · December 2015

I know atleast one playe who got banned that did it manually every day (take like hours)..

taitinhakkaaja · December 2015

No it's not exploit. You surely deserve every AD you get from invoke, it's so boring process.

flowcyto · December 2015

If ya got a script that made, say, loging in and invoking automated, I'd imagine that'd flag you since that's technically overriding a process that players are meant to do manually. The devs didn't put processes or events in the game just so ya could execute them w/ little-to-none of the intended effort.

ejziponken said:
I know atleast one playe who got banned that did it manually every day (take like hours)..

Are ya sure that he was banned for that and not something else, or that he wasn't trying to automate anything? Cause that doesn't sound right.

bashteros1234 · December 2015

@macjae - you're correct, botting and exploiting is not the same.

The reason behind the question was a cryptic invitation to take the next 7 days a timeout and to look for other games. Besides regularily praying on several chars it could of course also be the fact that I fetched starlight parcels on all my alts.

kuarikage · December 2015

They were sure happy to take the 5 dollars per 2 character slots. In my case 65 dollars for a total of 26 character slots. I got free character slots for my $200 dollar package as well as for another package I purchased giving me 5 starting character slots.

Of my 31 slots 28 are currently have characters created and all but 1 are at 70.

My day starts (at a random time) with me making a cup of coffee and doing my first round of prays while collecting my professions because I get the bonus for VIP in game and not out of game! During this time I am watching TV so every day the time it takes me varies greatly. After first round of prayers I do a second prayer cycle! This now gives me a 30 minute timer which I use to do all my professions on the gateway! Again I am watching TV so this can take 30 min to an hour to accomplish. When I am done I know that my pray cycle will be ready to go again and I pray again on all 28 toons giving me the 45 min timer.

This now gives me time to do some playing on my main toon. What I do varies depending on my guilds need for currency. Some times I run Sharandar on multiple toons or just run dragons on my main toon. Sometimes all I will do is pvp! Once the timer is up on my main toon I continue to pray on all 28 toons again getting a 60 minute timer.

Now at the 60 minute timer I usually am exhausted and will have a nap but sometimes I will continue to play the game usually pvping. If I do not take a nap then when the 60 minute timer is up I will pray once the timer is up giving me the 90 minute timer. If I take a nap I will do the prayer after 2-3 hour nap. At which time I start running things with my guild normally pvp! I usually have the hockey game on at this time and it takes me around 3 times as long to pray during this cycle.

Last prayer cycle of the day has the biggest variance. Some times I will do it when the 90 min is up if pvp queues are taking too long. Some days I will wait till all my professions are ready to be collected to get the VIP bonus. I then use the gateway to restart all my professions and collect those that were not ready. This time varies as I again I am watching tv or hockey highlights. On the odd occasion so far 4-6 times since the changes to leadership I do not do this last prayer.

At no time have I used a bot. It is clear in the time it takes me to do this all that it is not a bot. They allow every account to have 50+ characters if you are willing to pay for them.

I am 43 and retired, games is what I do for my hobby to kill the mind numbing boredom! Punishing players for having time is unacceptable. Why allow 50+ characters per account if they are not allowed to be played legit?

If this is not fixed in 24 hours I will be filing a claim with the BBB seeing as PWE is a BBB Accredited Business since 09/10/2014.

kacsanever · December 2015

Two of my guild mates are in the same boat (7 days ban). They can not even open a ticket/login to support. This MUST be solved w/in 24 hours for sure - before XMas.

flowcyto · December 2015

macjae said:
It seems like a lot of people are in that boat. And again, if they're branding collecting starlight parcels on multiple toons (or any other such activity) as "exploiting," that would be imbecilic -- they have tools to hard limit such activities (say, by making it one free parcel per account, or two, or five). If they have some arbitrary secret internal line in the sand that makes it "exploiting" -- like "collecting more than 17 free parcels per day is an exploit" -- that's even worse.

I hate conspiracy theories, but it looks like something akin to that may be what's actually happening.

Hoo boy. That's a diff thing, and quite bad on Cryptic if true- esp around this time of year.

ghoulz66 · December 2015

Well you pay to get all those toons, Then they turn into their own mini-grinds. Why even have em if you can't get any little reward for all the trouble?

It's called an investment. Pay forward to see sunnier days tomorrow.

gankdalf · December 2015

I would say that praying on 50 chars is not what Cryptic had in mind when they created this game. Therefor its a system flaw and exploiting such a flaw with or without a bot could been sen as breaking the TOS agreement. BUT I do not think thats the case here. I think they banning players who has 20+ toons and were collecting the Winter Festival boxes every day. Thats basically the same thing as praying, its a design flaw but a bit more serious than praying since you can get companions and artifacts that cost millions of AD.

But maybe still not that serious in the players eyes and thats why its widely accepted by the playerbase and thats why people are angry and do not even understand why they got a ban. Question is if Cryptic will change their mind about it and let it go or not. I think maybe not since they knew from the start how many would get banned and they still banned them. But who knows, maybe the christmas spirit will change their mind and unban them.

kacsanever · December 2015

@ejziponken
While I could agree w/ you, they simply let them buy extra character slots (company income). I have played MMOs where there was a hard CH slot limit. Here is none. If they don't want it to be done by players, they can and SHALL limit the characters/account can take part of the event. But there is no such limit.
None of us (in our small community) can understand the bans. We are trying to figure out what could happen but can't find anything so far.
Just a side note: during this event having many toons means that you can give more chance to others not for yourself (the most valuable rewards are after 20 openings). Big difference compared to

angelusrhori · December 2015

ejziponken said:
I would say that praying on 50 chars is not what Cryptic had in mind when they created this game. Therefor its a system flaw and exploiting such a flaw with or without a bot could been sen as breaking the TOS agreement. BUT I do not think thats the case here. I think they banning players who has 20+ toons and were collecting the Winter Festival boxes every day. Thats basically the same thing as praying, its a design flaw but a bit more serious than praying since you can get companions and artifacts that cost millions of AD.

But maybe still not that serious in the players eyes and thats why its widely accepted by the playerbase and thats why people are angry and do not even understand why they got a ban. Question is if Cryptic will change their mind about it and let it go or not. I think maybe not since they knew from the start how many would get banned and they still banned them. But who knows, maybe the christmas spirit will change their mind and unban them.

I feel like you might be confused as to what an exploit is.

The thing with the astral resonators that let you claim millions of AD? The Caturday incident? The professions packs and HE claim bugs? Those are exploits, those are CLEARLY unintended and taking advantage of them is definitely against the ToS.

They allow us to buy up to 50 character slots. They allow us to invoke on any character above level 11 six times a day. Neither of these things are against the ToS, so having 50 characters above level 11 that you invoke six times a day is not an exploit in the least. It is not against the ToS unless you are automating the process (which falls under 'botting', which, as others have mentioned, is different from exploiting).

That said, I was banned for a week and I haven't even been invoking the last four days, but I was claiming parcels on more than 20 characters.

gankdalf · December 2015

angelusrhori said:

ejziponken said:
I would say that praying on 50 chars is not what Cryptic had in mind when they created this game. Therefor its a system flaw and exploiting such a flaw with or without a bot could been sen as breaking the TOS agreement. BUT I do not think thats the case here. I think they banning players who has 20+ toons and were collecting the Winter Festival boxes every day. Thats basically the same thing as praying, its a design flaw but a bit more serious than praying since you can get companions and artifacts that cost millions of AD.

But maybe still not that serious in the players eyes and thats why its widely accepted by the playerbase and thats why people are angry and do not even understand why they got a ban. Question is if Cryptic will change their mind about it and let it go or not. I think maybe not since they knew from the start how many would get banned and they still banned them. But who knows, maybe the christmas spirit will change their mind and unban them.
I feel like you might be confused as to what an exploit is.

The thing with the astral resonators that let you claim millions of AD? The Caturday incident? The professions packs and HE claim bugs? Those are exploits, those are CLEARLY unintended and taking advantage of them is definitely against the ToS.

They allow us to buy up to 50 character slots. They allow us to invoke on any character above level 11 six times a day. Neither of these things are against the ToS, so having 50 characters above level 11 that you invoke six times a day is not an exploit in the least. It is not against the ToS unless you are automating the process (which falls under 'botting', which, as others have mentioned, is different from exploiting).

That said, I was banned for a week and I haven't even been invoking the last four days, but I was claiming parcels on more than 20 characters.

Exploit means taking advantage of a bug or a design flaw. This is clearly about taking an advantage of a design flaw. Having 50 toons used for only praying/getting free stuff and not actually doing any gameplay with them is not WAI. Thats taking advantage of a bad game design. Therefor exploiting. Ofc its not as bad as exploiting some other more serious bugs like the resenator. But its still an exploit.

Its not like they were thinking, oh let them have 50 toons so they can pray on each of them everyday and get extra stuff... You can have 50 toons because you might wanna play different classes with different builds etc thats WAI. And gathering the gifts on 20+ toons everyday is just a bit worse than praying but still not as bad as resonator exploit. Also praying on many toons might be to widely used for them to do anything about it at this point and is therefor a "accepted" exploit of the game design. Same as leadership. They didn't ban the leadership users, they changed it by removing the AD.

silverkelt · December 2015

THEN why do they sale more then 10 slots?

Im serious, a game company cant have it both ways! Thats beyond ridiculous.

PUT a cap of the # of toons they want you to do in game activity with.

and PUT a warning against it.

You cant just sit here and have it both ways.. TELL me one reason why they should profit from sale of slots.. but not allow them to be used. Whats the purpose? your not playing all of your toons, they shouldnt even be used as mules according to your logic.

rhoriangelus · December 2015

ejziponken said:

angelusrhori said:

ejziponken said:
I would say that praying on 50 chars is not what Cryptic had in mind when they created this game. Therefor its a system flaw and exploiting such a flaw with or without a bot could been sen as breaking the TOS agreement. BUT I do not think thats the case here. I think they banning players who has 20+ toons and were collecting the Winter Festival boxes every day. Thats basically the same thing as praying, its a design flaw but a bit more serious than praying since you can get companions and artifacts that cost millions of AD.

But maybe still not that serious in the players eyes and thats why its widely accepted by the playerbase and thats why people are angry and do not even understand why they got a ban. Question is if Cryptic will change their mind about it and let it go or not. I think maybe not since they knew from the start how many would get banned and they still banned them. But who knows, maybe the christmas spirit will change their mind and unban them.
I feel like you might be confused as to what an exploit is.

The thing with the astral resonators that let you claim millions of AD? The Caturday incident? The professions packs and HE claim bugs? Those are exploits, those are CLEARLY unintended and taking advantage of them is definitely against the ToS.

They allow us to buy up to 50 character slots. They allow us to invoke on any character above level 11 six times a day. Neither of these things are against the ToS, so having 50 characters above level 11 that you invoke six times a day is not an exploit in the least. It is not against the ToS unless you are automating the process (which falls under 'botting', which, as others have mentioned, is different from exploiting).

That said, I was banned for a week and I haven't even been invoking the last four days, but I was claiming parcels on more than 20 characters.
Exploit means taking advantage of a bug or a design flaw. This is clearly about taking an advantage of a design flaw. Having 50 toons used for only praying/getting free stuff and not actually doing any gameplay with them is not WAI. Thats taking advantage of a bad game design. Therefor exploiting. Ofc its not as bad as exploiting some other more serious bugs like the resenator. But its still an exploit.

Its not like they were thinking, oh let them have 50 toons so they can pray on each of them everyday and get extra stuff... You can have 50 toons because you might wanna play different classes with different builds etc thats WAI. And gathering the gifts on 20+ toons everyday is just a bit worse than praying but still not as bad as resonator exploit. Also praying on many toons might be to widely used for them to do anything about it at this point and is therefor a "accepted" exploit of the game design. Same as leadership. They didn't ban the leadership users, they changed it by removing the AD.

It may not have been intended from the beginning, but it's been in place a LONG time by this point. If they had a problem with it, they'd have implemented something to stop people from doing it - perhaps only letting you invoke on a certain number of characters per account. They haven't. Ergo, at this point, almost three years on, they are complicit in this behavior.

As for the parcels, same thing. This event is exactly as it was last year. If they didn't want people claiming parcels on 50 characters, they should've put a limit on how many could be claimed per account. Letting people claim them on more than 20 characters and then banning them when this was never explained to be a problem is a stupid way of dealing with it.

Is it a stupid design choice? Sure. But this is absolutely not exploiting when they have had PLENTY of time to change how this all works.

I don't normally agree with silverkelt but in this instance they are correct.

kacsanever · December 2015

ejziponken said:

Exploit means taking advantage of a bug or a design flaw. This is clearly about taking an advantage of a design flaw. Having 50 toons used for only praying/getting free stuff and not actually doing any gameplay with them is not WAI. Thats taking advantage of a bad game design. Therefor exploiting. Ofc its not as bad as exploiting some other more serious bugs like the resenator. But its still an exploit.

Its not like they were thinking, oh let them have 50 toons so they can pray on each of them everyday and get extra stuff... You can have 50 toons because you might wanna play different classes with different builds etc.

NWM, Silverkelt already wrote here:)

gankdalf · December 2015

silverkelt said:
THEN why do they sale more then 10 slots?

Im serious, a game company cant have it both ways! Thats beyond ridiculous.

PUT a cap of the # of toons they want you to do in game activity with.

and PUT a warning against it.

You cant just sit here and have it both ways.. TELL me one reason why they should profit from sale of slots.. but not allow them to be used. Whats the purpose? your not playing all of your toons, they shouldnt even be used as mules according to your logic.

Because putting a cap on toons is punishing players that actually enjoy playing multiple toons. I do agree that the cap at 50 toons is way to high for normal use. But they didn't ban people with less than 20 (I think)..

I dont see anyone actually using 50 toons for gameplay. And that is part of the design flaw. And players are exploiting it. They really should fix the problem instead of banning players who is using it. Since its clearly a grey area and people doing it without understanding its a "exploit".

gankdalf · December 2015

rhoriangelus said:

ejziponken said:

angelusrhori said:

ejziponken said:
I would say that praying on 50 chars is not what Cryptic had in mind when they created this game. Therefor its a system flaw and exploiting such a flaw with or without a bot could been sen as breaking the TOS agreement. BUT I do not think thats the case here. I think they banning players who has 20+ toons and were collecting the Winter Festival boxes every day. Thats basically the same thing as praying, its a design flaw but a bit more serious than praying since you can get companions and artifacts that cost millions of AD.

But maybe still not that serious in the players eyes and thats why its widely accepted by the playerbase and thats why people are angry and do not even understand why they got a ban. Question is if Cryptic will change their mind about it and let it go or not. I think maybe not since they knew from the start how many would get banned and they still banned them. But who knows, maybe the christmas spirit will change their mind and unban them.
I feel like you might be confused as to what an exploit is.

The thing with the astral resonators that let you claim millions of AD? The Caturday incident? The professions packs and HE claim bugs? Those are exploits, those are CLEARLY unintended and taking advantage of them is definitely against the ToS.

They allow us to buy up to 50 character slots. They allow us to invoke on any character above level 11 six times a day. Neither of these things are against the ToS, so having 50 characters above level 11 that you invoke six times a day is not an exploit in the least. It is not against the ToS unless you are automating the process (which falls under 'botting', which, as others have mentioned, is different from exploiting).

That said, I was banned for a week and I haven't even been invoking the last four days, but I was claiming parcels on more than 20 characters.
Exploit means taking advantage of a bug or a design flaw. This is clearly about taking an advantage of a design flaw. Having 50 toons used for only praying/getting free stuff and not actually doing any gameplay with them is not WAI. Thats taking advantage of a bad game design. Therefor exploiting. Ofc its not as bad as exploiting some other more serious bugs like the resenator. But its still an exploit.

Its not like they were thinking, oh let them have 50 toons so they can pray on each of them everyday and get extra stuff... You can have 50 toons because you might wanna play different classes with different builds etc thats WAI. And gathering the gifts on 20+ toons everyday is just a bit worse than praying but still not as bad as resonator exploit. Also praying on many toons might be to widely used for them to do anything about it at this point and is therefor a "accepted" exploit of the game design. Same as leadership. They didn't ban the leadership users, they changed it by removing the AD.
It may not have been intended from the beginning, but it's been in place a LONG time by this point. If they had a problem with it, they'd have implemented something to stop people from doing it - perhaps only letting you invoke on a certain number of characters per account. They haven't. Ergo, at this point, almost three years on, they are complicit in this behavior.

As for the parcels, same thing. This event is exactly as it was last year. If they didn't want people claiming parcels on 50 characters, they should've put a limit on how many could be claimed per account. Letting people claim them on more than 20 characters and then banning them when this was never explained to be a problem is a stupid way of dealing with it.

Is it a stupid design choice? Sure. But this is absolutely not exploiting when they have had PLENTY of time to change how this all works.

I don't normally agree with silverkelt but in this instance they are correct.

I dont think they banned people for praying. Like I said, I think thats an acceptabel exploit after 3 years. And I agree with you too. They should NOT ban players for collecting gifts. Its a really bad design flaw and they had time to fix it and did not. So it should be acceptabel. Just like praying. Im just saying that I think the reason behind the recent ban is breaking ToS from Cryptics point of view (that really should change).

ghoulz66 · December 2015

defiantone99 said:
People getting banned for getting more unidentified items than others. Pretty weird.

I had 20 char last year and didn't get a single purple companion. But seriously, the resonator exploiters piled up tons of AD that they could use to max their chars out in a heartbeat. How is someone with a slightly higher chance to get a purple companion or mount going to break the game like the resonators or... caturday?

gankdalf · December 2015

ghoulz66 said:

defiantone99 said:
People getting banned for getting more unidentified items than others. Pretty weird.
I had 20 char last year and didn't get a single purple companion. But seriously, the resonator exploiters piled up tons of AD that they could use to max their chars out in a heartbeat. How is someone with a slightly higher chance to get a purple companion or mount going to break the game like the resonators or... caturday?

I think its about tracking. They can track how many parcels u open on a char everyday. Not sure if they could trace or check who used resonator exploit.

ghoulz66 · December 2015

ejziponken said:

ghoulz66 said:

defiantone99 said:
People getting banned for getting more unidentified items than others. Pretty weird.
I had 20 char last year and didn't get a single purple companion. But seriously, the resonator exploiters piled up tons of AD that they could use to max their chars out in a heartbeat. How is someone with a slightly higher chance to get a purple companion or mount going to break the game like the resonators or... caturday?

I think its about tracking. They can track how many parcels u open on a char everyday. Not sure if they could trace or check who used resonator exploit.

If you can trace parcels being opened I'm sure you can trace a ungodly amount of AD magically flooding someone in a short time span.

urabask · December 2015

kacsanever said:
Two of my guild mates are in the same boat (7 days ban). They can not even open a ticket/login to support. This MUST be solved w/in 24 hours for sure - before XMas.

http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1207160/updates-on-bans-suspensions-december-22-2015

Go to the support page and click on the "can't sign in" icon. Should get on it quick because CS is probably out early tomorrow.

Hope they compensate the people affected by this. Pretty **** move to pull right before Christmas.

Is praying on many chars per account exploiting

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