Time to clean up Neverwinter from exploiters!

matthiasthehun76 · June 2015

Hi!

I know many hate this subject on both side of the fence, but as long their is no solution presented the rotten body will always surface.

Sorry for the harsh words, but exploit deserves no nice words.

Goethe once said: "Am Anfang war die Tat." This can be translated freely as: At the beginning there was the act.

Now this act would be pretty much needed, both PVE and PVP are now full of exploiter masses and they are getting more nasty and on top of it, they know, they can brag about it, cause no ban hammer follows.

I have even read in Zone Chat a guild's recruit message, that openly told recruits, if you don't exploit, you aren't welcome. I mean ouch dear Jesus where have we landed. Admins don't read it or what? Something is pretty wrong here and i know from my grandpa, who was a high ranking officer in the Army, if you ever let such things too loose, it's unbelievably hard to bring order back again.

You know, we have a phrase in Hungary here, which sounds about so: If a bad landlady pushes every dirt under the floor, after a while you can find skeletons in there.

The dirt needs to be cleaned out.

I have told a few times, there are many solutions from the simplest human employee to more sophisticated software solutions.

The software solutions could be done by our Devs here or operated by 3rd party company, it works, trust me! (Sorry can't write detailed description.)

But as a first step a simple in game Admin, with some open eyes would do too. Hell, Trade Channel is full with dirty goods being sold.

This situation goes for PVP too. I am actually happy, that the PVP tournament got postponed, CTA is much much better, than that bleeding corpse of PVP thing would have been.

I know this isn't WoW, but something, maybe in smaller size could be done here too. (WoW banned over 100k accounts in one day!)

I know, that Cryptic doesn't want to mess too much in the still water but they should realize, the more they delay this, the more the game falls apart. Exploiters look down on legit players, PVP is a mess, no comment needed and by the way Zen Shop would operate better, cause exploiters don't buy or they buy only to make more dirty goods.

Thank you!

retep70 · June 2015

profit Hunters gets normal players to stop play and profit Hunters leave to game dead

fluppery · June 2015

matthiasthehun76 wrote: »

If a bad landlady pushes every dirt under the floor, after a while you can find skeletons in there.

It's worse than just skeletons at this point, the ghouls and zombies already crawl the neighborhood.

burkaanc · June 2015

a lot of ppl can make tons of AD in the market, i made some 7 mil from 700k investment with mod5 RP fiasco, and there have been many more opportunities to get a ton of money from market changes, some ppl probably made millions on rust monsters etc.

smulch · June 2015

You can make a lot of AD by playing the game normally.

If your dps was so poor that someone felt the need to say to do more, then it's likely because he didn't want to have to carry so hard.

kahfa · June 2015

matthiasthehun76 wrote: »

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.

and i love how you people dodge the arguments being raised.

as what smulch said, you can go f2p and make AD without exploiting.

You can get t1's by pugging elol/vt/mc or joining guilds that would help you do them. You can even get great equipments if you spend time on the game, maybe not BiS but it's enough for you to enjoy the game. If you want to reach BiS be ready to spend either a lot of money or a lot of time.

quspiv · June 2015

If you can prove that somebody exploited feel free to contact Customer Support and they will investigate. Maybe some players just nolifed since the begining and that's why they have so much BIS items. For example, some epic t1 instances can drop artifacts which can be sold for 1-1.5kk AD. Let say that somebody playing for 2 years got 1 artifact drop per month. (while running several dungeons per day) that itself would gave them min 24kk AD (im not event counting all the Leadership, alts and the 24k AD refile limit per day).

You can add some some luck with lockboxes and playing with the AH for profit and you can easily get enough AD when you spend enough time. It's also important to note that in the past it was a lot easier to farm AD.

Accusing players for exploiting just because they have BIS gear wont be tolerated on these forums, that's why i recommend you to write tickets to Customer Support if you have any doubt about legality of their items.

fluppery · June 2015

kahfa wrote: »

and i love how you people dodge the arguments being raised.

Because your point is moot. The OP stands.

An exploiter can stop a whole instance of players from getting Great Success on Heroic Encounters and Dragons. That is just one example.

Cheaters r gonna cheat and trolls r gonna troll.

matthiasthehun76 · June 2015

quspiv wrote: »

If you can prove that somebody exploited feel free to contact Customer Support and they will investigate. Maybe some players just nolifed since the begining and that's why they have so much BIS items. For example, some epic t1 instances can drop artifacts which can be sold for 1-1.5kk AD. Let say that somebody playing for 2 years got 1 artifact drop per month. (while running several dungeons per day) that itself would gave them min 24kk AD (im not event counting all the Leadership, alts and the 24k AD refile limit per day).

You can add some some luck with lockboxes and playing with the AH for profit and you can easily get enough AD when you spend enough time. It's also important to note that in the past it was a lot easier to farm AD.

Accusing players for exploiting just because they have BIS gear wont be tolerated on these forums, that's why i recommend you to write tickets to Customer Support if you have any doubt about legality of their items.

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!

Lockboxes drop most of the time <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> too, you can't build 1 or more BiS toons on that 1 to a zillion %.

Of course if you talk about the common resonator play, that's something other, but that was also an exploit.

CN and other dungeons in 5-20 mins was surprise surprise also an exploited run.

Shall i go on?...

Coming to CS. I did many times, all they do is zero investigation, i am lucky if i even get an automated response. FACT

What we really need is some action, other games could do it, why not Cryptic?

name0rng · June 2015

keep put this discussion about exploiters and intentional bug abusers up
this policy of no punishment is ruin this game in the long term

Exploiters don't get punished - more exploiters - less legit players - less zen coming in long term
This company and pwe handle poorly their business model

Official comment from devs is must that they are release new program to fight those exploits alongside the legit community

But in the meantime . .. The only thing that I believe will make them really listen is the outcome itself
Don't put zen in game , until u see things changes and the devs and the community manager starting to take those things seriously as they should - zero tolerance

Mod Notice - The rules are quite simple: keep discussions civil and respectful and do not discuss exploit details. The issue is most people have a hard time being civil and avoiding discussions of exploits.

quspiv · June 2015

We could discuss if you'd actually bring any proof, but all you have is speculations. When i used to play Lineage in the past, players would often record enemy clans / allies botting in specific zones and everybody could see on their own eyes who's legit player and who's botter. Though despite the videos it always took NcSoft at least several weeks to ban accounts, because they only did bans in waves not case by case , day by day.

sangrine · June 2015

What do you expect Cryptic to do?
Ban players who spent no money and have high item level?
Before module 5/6, there were numerous ways to earn big AD.

In early module 5, refine points on AH were inexpensive.
Maybe he bought many cheap RP in module 5.
Maybe he saved his module 5 artifacts until 2xRP day in module 6. I did.
Maybe he lied and did spend some money.

It's not impossible to be BiS on one character and not spend money and not cheat/exploit.
BiS on multiple characters and not spend money would be suspicious.

If you want to be rich in Neverwinter, the most important thing to know is how to profit from the AH.
Anticipate future prices and then buy -> hold -> sell
or farm -> hold -> sell

This weekend I am farming brutals. Two weeks ago, I sold old stacks of brutals for big profit.
In 3-6 months, before the next event which drops brutals, I will sell all the brutals which I get this weekend.

Currently, I am selling cruels which were farmed many months ago.
I still have a few things from 2014 summer event which need to be sold before 2015 summer event.
In the past two months, I have been lucky to get two bound coalescent wards from opening coffers.
Invoke/leadership/unified_elements on 4 characters. 3 characters are actually played.

kahfa · June 2015

OPs arguments is that no one can reach BiS without exploiting.

Others said there are ways you can do it like having leadership alts ( legit), playing the market( legit), farming dungeons(legit), pvp farming(legit) and playing/building your toon since beta(legit).

OP responded by telling others that they themselves are exploiters who are scared that their way of income will be stopped and they would be banned.

drkbodhi · June 2015

Yesterday, I made close to 550k AD... by playing SCA. I sold the Companion epic gear that I did not need... that is only found in SCA. When I was finally able to get in game I made about 25k rAD in less that 2 hours. Salvage and quest rewards.

Do I think there re exploiters? Sure

Do I think they need to go away? Sure

Here is the issue, the people are human. Humans will ALWAYS choose the path of lest resistance when it comes to playing games. Especially if they have been beaten down by RL.

Why would they do that? Because they can.

There is a common thought process that flies around my house and I will share it here.

Person 1: "How long are you going to keep doing this?"
Person 2: "As long as I can get away with it."

She told us that she had a friend who has been collecting RP and selling them to her very cheaply, for example... 99 Peridot for 15k AD.

Granted this player has been playing from day 1 and probably had a lot of time invested.

Here is the issue...

When people play at such an elevated state for such a long time.
60 has been the max level for 2+ years and the difficulty level of the game had not increased as high as the gear did.
So these players grew used to the FACT that they were at a "Glass Ceiling".
Add a new Mod that shows them how mortal their "God Toons" actually are and voila.

When you challenge the status quo with a new reality, a harsh reality at that, humans will react to the stimuli. They will not respond, they will react.

As Sir Issac Newton laid out many years ago...

Every action will create and equal and opposite reaction.

Cause and Effect.
Kobayashi Maru... sound familiar?

When you tell people, who are used to winning, that they are done winning... what is the likely response?

drkbodhi · June 2015

My suggestion for a solution.

Stop changing the rules of the game. New areas should have been added, but the rules of the game, and the focus of the game should have remained the same. In Mods 4 and 5 the gear was too OP and too readily available. Mod 6 pops up and every one needs NEW gear because the mobs are 10 times harder than you can imagine.

If it followed the same growth curves, from past Mods, I feel as though this may be worse.

This Mod shook the foundation and players got pissed that they all of a sudden realized that they forgot how to play the game. They needed to find a solution.

They found it. They were able to throw money at it and make it better. I am talking millions of AD or 1000's of RL currency. A lot of the hardcore players had amassed 100's of thousands in Zen... multi-million in AD... unchecked and with nothing to spend it on.

See anything familiar?

For future Mods... keep the rules the same as they are now.

Right now the desire for everyone to be BiS have overcome them... and eventually the same situation MAY happen again.

I feel as though Cryptic will create a massive need for all of that AD, when they release Strongholds.

kahfa · June 2015

suicidalgodot wrote: »

(b) I'm staunchly against the death penalty - and for the same reason I'm against char or acc delets. But extended time bans - IMHO up to 3 months - would be an appropriate measure, in the case of repeated and intentional use of game-disrupting and/or PvP-imbalancing cheats. But some good old common sense should be put to use here...
.

I'm in for char and acc deletions on people who exploit currency/items at such a large scale that it heavily influences the game economy (like the caturday event or the resonator abuse) and for people who exploit them even though they get time bans.
i don't think it should be used on people who use non-WAI gear/enchantments though.

drkbodhi · June 2015

suicidalgodot wrote: »

Name & shame them in the forum - yes. If you do that repeatedly.

Reporting them from the ingame interface? No.

But whether this has any effect, or brings them some punitive action... ...is a completely different question.

And as to the "No name & shame"-rule: This is the one and only option to reliably avoid fugly blamewars escalating. It would, however, be a pleasure to see that exploiting would be treated only with 10% of the consequence the discussion of it does. Though even this makes sense in a way: The chain of arguments would be that threads like this one will bring the message across to so-far honest players that exploiting goes scot-free, which might egive them the ffeling that they can do that without any risk of consequences, so they do it, and that might get them banned - and you and your thread are to be blamed.

Also, there was apparently some 1, 2 or few weeks mass ban when the portal farm bot farming really went out of hand, sometime during Mod 4. Other exploits - as it's been fixed long ago and was mostly harmless I think it's safe to name the CN chest bug as example - were removed very late, and carried no consequences...

So, what I'd opine is:

(a) Some more vigilance and diligence in fixing and penalizing the use of exploits would really be great.
(b) I'm staunchly against the death penalty - and for the same reason I'm against char or acc delets. But extended time bans - IMHO up to 3 months - would be an appropriate measure, in the case of repeated and intentional use of game-disrupting and/or PvP-imbalancing cheats. But some good old common sense should be put to use here...
(c) Publicizing the penalties (without names, but with numbers and the fixed exploit's nicknames) would get the message across to others thinking about exploiting...
(d) Guilds, who exploit on an organized crime level should be dissolved.
and (e) If and when someone is found guilty of exploiting big style, material punishment should be a known consequence (i.e. the ill gotten gains will be deleted...).

+1

The way to end prostitution is to publicly shame the people who solicit the prostitutes. I love the analogy to Organized Crime... Why? Because that is exactly what they are.

When a guild advertises that they only accept exploiters... that should be a sign.

Until there is suitable punishment, i.e.- Loss of some or ALL AD and Zen; Loss of gear; Forfeiture of all PvP matches; Dissolution of organized exploitation.

If there were in-game GMs this would come to an end. I mean GMs that actually PvP, PvE and hang out in PE for extended periods of time. These GM's would be given carte blanche.

First offense... one week ban. From forum and game... total IP ban... of all related accounts.
Second offense... loss of gear and forfeiture of achievements and PvP matches on ALL related accounts.
Third offense... 3 month ban on all related accounts.
Fourth offense... deletion of all related accounts.

As Benjamin Franklin said... and I will paraphrase.

When we impose security during the pursuit of freedom, we will have neither.

Try to figure this post out.

Jesse Ventura once said something, when he was Governor, that speaks wildly about this.

"There is no legislating stupidity."

People are going to do dumb **** because they can...

Complaining about it changes nothing... but your blood pressure and enjoyment of the game.

drkbodhi · June 2015

What would hurt more... loss of the account or removal of all of their gear, on all accounts related to that IP Address?

matthiasthehun76 · June 2015

suicidalgodot wrote: »

Name & shame them in the forum - yes. If you do that repeatedly.

Reporting them from the ingame interface? No.

But whether this has any effect, or brings them some punitive action... ...is a completely different question.

And as to the "No name & shame"-rule: This is the one and only option to reliably avoid fugly blamewars escalating. It would, however, be a pleasure to see that exploiting would be treated only with 10% of the consequence the discussion of it does. Though even this makes sense in a way: The chain of arguments would be that threads like this one will bring the message across to so-far honest players that exploiting goes scot-free, which might give them the feeling that they can do that without any risk of consequences, so they do it, and that might get them banned - and you and your thread are to be blamed.

Also, there was apparently some 1, 2 or few weeks mass ban when the portal farm bot farming really went out of hand, sometime during Mod 4. Other exploits - as it's been fixed long ago and was mostly harmless I think it's safe to name the CN chest bug as example - were removed very late, and carried no consequences...

So, what I'd opine is:

(a) Some more vigilance and diligence in fixing and penalizing the use of exploits would really be great.
(b) I'm staunchly against the death penalty - and for the same reason I'm against char or acc deletes. But extended time bans - IMHO up to 3 months - would be an appropriate measure, in the case of repeated and intentional use of game-disrupting and/or PvP-imbalancing cheats. But some good old common sense should be put to use here...
(c) Publicizing the penalties (without names, but with numbers and the fixed exploit's nicknames) would get the message across to others thinking about exploiting...
(d) Guilds, who exploit on an organized crime level should be dissolved.
and (e) If and when someone is found guilty of exploiting big style, material punishment should be a known consequence (i.e. the ill gotten gains will be deleted...).

Exactly mate!

If exploiters see, that it's me the so called moron fighting against exploiters gets punished, they will become ever more stronger.

Sadly know this is a the case now here in Neverwinter!

I got more short bans and threats from game staff, than a real exploiter, just for making threads like this or writing to Customer Support!

If anybody on this earth tries to tell me, this is normal, then i will admit i am the moron. But not in a decent world is this normal.

I tell an example, i had a guy in PVP harassing me and spitting on me. After few days i had enough, so i wrote to CS. Zero help, automated answer. Few days later the answer came, for me, 1 day ban . LOL Things most have gone crazy in here!

Than i reported a highly know VIP from here, i got a threat for ban also, if i continue to even speak about the guys exploits!

But the best punishment i get for my postings here, is a zero chest. LOL So predictable. Report an exploit and you will get punished.

Maybe i am really a moron as some call me here, but then i like to be the moron and don't want to be such a "nice person" as them.

Nothing new old and dirty trick in RL history too, make the victim look like he was the crook and let the crook be the poor victim.

kreatyve · June 2015

My 2 cents. I only skimmed most of the peoples comments on here. While exploitation is a major problem in the game, a lot of people seem to be going about helping with the problem in the wrong way. Posting publicly about the issue to try to force Cryptic's hand in fixing the issue is not helping matters at all. If anything, it's just making the problem worse. There's a right way, and a wrong way to deal with them. File reports in game. Wait a week. If you still see a problem, start sending PMs to people who can get stuff done. StrumSlinger, Yetweallfalldown, Pandarus, people who are in charge and can make sure that Cryptic is aware of the issue.

Also know that things do take time to be fixed. I can mention at least 2 major exploits right now that Cryptic is very much aware of, but have not yet had the time to fix. When I heard about them, I immediately let Strum know about the issues, he assured me that they were aware and working on the fix. Now I just sit and wait and see what's done. If a couple patches go by, and the issues are still there, I contact Andy again, asking him for an update. I do not EVER post the problem publicly, because that just creates a bigger issue.

matthiasthehun76 · June 2015

kreatyve wrote: »

My 2 cents. I only skimmed most of the peoples comments on here. While exploitation is a major problem in the game, a lot of people seem to be going about helping with the problem in the wrong way. Posting publicly about the issue to try to force Cryptic's hand in fixing the issue is not helping matters at all. If anything, it's just making the problem worse. There's a right way, and a wrong way to deal with them. File reports in game. Wait a week. If you still see a problem, start sending PMs to people who can get stuff done. StrumSlinger, Yetweallfalldown, Pandarus, people who are in charge and can make sure that Cryptic is aware of the issue.

Also know that things do take time to be fixed. I can mention at least 2 major exploits right now that Cryptic is very much aware of, but have not yet had the time to fix. When I heard about them, I immediately let Strum know about the issues, he assured me that they were aware and working on the fix. Now I just sit and wait and see what's done. If a couple patches go by, and the issues are still there, I contact Andy again, asking him for an update. I do not EVER post the problem publicly, because that just creates a bigger issue.

This may work for you mate, but not for me.

unstableviking · June 2015

It is VERY easy for a Item level 2000 toon to make 15k to 16k AD a day by just doing these quest:
Blessings 1000 ad
PvP (Rhix) 4000 ad
PvP (Taskmaster) 4000 ad
Dungeon(Rhix) 3000 ad
Purple item form Dungeon 3 or 4k (depending on loot) salvage

drkbodhi · June 2015

metalldjt wrote: »

.
... i dont see why in normal means he should be banned when it was clearly not his fault that the DC got released with broken stuff at the beginnin of the mod, so the point that i am tryin to say: everyone calls everyone an exploiter but you can end up being called one at some point and get a ban unjustified.
so to cut the problem to the ROOT just focus on FIXING what is broken , not involving players.

there are tons of broken stuff in the game, but if anyone discovers in their casual play something not wai, he will end up being called an exploiter.

This guy gets it...

name0rng · June 2015

kreatyve wrote: »

My 2 cents. I only skimmed most of the peoples comments on here. While exploitation is a major problem in the game, a lot of people seem to be going about helping with the problem in the wrong way. Posting publicly about the issue to try to force Cryptic's hand in fixing the issue is not helping matters at all. If anything, it's just making the problem worse. There's a right way, and a wrong way to deal with them. File reports in game. Wait a week. If you still see a problem, start sending PMs to people who can get stuff done. StrumSlinger, Yetweallfalldown, Pandarus, people who are in charge and can make sure that Cryptic is aware of the issue.

Also know that things do take time to be fixed. I can mention at least 2 major exploits right now that Cryptic is very much aware of, but have not yet had the time to fix. When I heard about them, I immediately let Strum know about the issues, he assured me that they were aware and working on the fix. Now I just sit and wait and see what's done. If a couple patches go by, and the issues are still there, I contact Andy again, asking him for an update. I do not EVER post the problem publicly, because that just creates a bigger issue.

Disagree totally
Do u realize it is naive approach
currently there is not even official comment on how the devs plan to fight those exploits
U said is yourself - huge exploits u reported ... And weeks pass and still no fix
Aka - it is not treated , not in their first priority .. And that's bad .. Why ? Because they believe like u that keep it quiet won't hurt so much because not lot of ppl know about it .. This is so wrong , it doesn't matter how much know about it .. It is matter how it affect this in game economy that affect real life money incoming to this game

So yes .. The answer is yes .. Make it public .. There will be couple of days of more exploiters users, but at least hotfix will get pushed up to the next patch
And that is the better way
See the sword bug .. When it really got public it got fixed in 2 weeks ... Still slow as hell and for that I have other things to say .. But at least it's not months ...

kreatyve · June 2015

name0rng wrote: »

Disagree totally
Do u realize it is naive approach
currently there is not even official comment on how the devs plan to fight those exploits
U said is yourself - huge exploits u reported ... And weeks pass and still no fix
Aka - it is not treated , not in their first priority .. And that's bad .. Why ? Because they believe like u that keep it quiet won't hurt so much because not lot of ppl know about it .. This is so wrong , it doesn't matter how much know about it .. It is matter how it affect this in game economy that affect real life money incoming to this game

So yes .. The answer is yes .. Make it public .. There will be couple of days of more exploiters users, but at least hotfix will get pushed up to the next patch
And that is the better way
See the sword bug .. When it really got public it got fixed in 2 weeks ... Still slow as hell and for that I have other things to say .. But at least it's not months ...

I guess we shall have to agree to disagree on this. The devs don't mention what they are doing to fix exploits because the devs don't mention exploits period. If they do, it's not until after they are sure the exploit has been fixed.

Do you know how much work goes into coding a game like this? Do you know how many millions upon millions of lines of code are in a game this large? It takes time to fix things. Sometimes fixing an exploit could create an even bigger one. Unless you have worked as a game developer on a major MMO, you don't generally realize this. Comments like "oh, it's an easy fix, the devs just don't care" are naive and incorrect.

I can also tell you that there have been a great many exploits that I have seen fixed, with not a single word about them in the patch notes or any mention of them from the devs. If it wasn't made public, the fix is generally not even mentioned, again because of policy, the devs do not mention exploits.

There's only been 1 patch since I talked to Andy about 1 of the exploits, and no patches since I talked to him about the 2nd one. The first one has not been mentioned publicly and will probably not be mentioned in the patch notes when it gets fixed. The 2nd one has been mentioned publicly and I fully expect to see something mentioning it when it's fixed, but won't be surprised if there's no mention of it.

suicidalgodot · June 2015

kreatyve wrote: »

[...] Posting publicly about the issue to try to force Cryptic's hand in fixing the issue is not helping matters at all. If anything, it's just making the problem worse. There's a right way, and a wrong way to deal with them. File reports in game. Wait a week. If you still see a problem, start sending PMs to people who can get stuff done.[...]

"Look the other way and hope it'll disappear" is not a working problem solver either. As we could, maybe can, and most probably will see again in this game. Also it would really help if somewhere, someone could be named responsible for that job.

kreatyve wrote: »

[...] When I heard about them, I immediately let Strum know about the issues, he assured me that they were aware and working on the fix. [...]

A different way would be to (a) publicize (maybe above a certain impact threshold) that certain things are an exploit and use of these will be viewed as a ToS violation, and (b) publicize the action taken. Without names, but numbers.

...because, among other factors, my trust in and Cryptic's track record regarding "working on a problem" isn't really... ...erm, yeah.

drkbodhi · June 2015

At this point, examples may need to be made.

Anything would be better than nothing, at this point.

kreatyve · June 2015

suicidalgodot wrote: »

A different way would be to (a) publicize (maybe above a certain impact threshold) that certain things are an exploit and use of these will be viewed as a ToS violation, and (b) publicize the action taken. Without names, but numbers.

...because, among other factors, my trust in and Cryptic's track record regarding "working on a problem" isn't really... ...erm, yeah.

So your solution would be to publicly tell people how to exploit, but also tell them not to do it or risk being banned? 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. Naming and shaming people goes against nearly every video game policy I've ever heard of as well. It's just not done.