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EP speaks on this weeks exploit
stephendangelo
Member Posts: 3 Arc User
The development team became aware of a potential leveling exploit on Wednesday morning this week. After initial investigations, we decided to shut down access to the maps that were being used for this power-leveling to perform a deeper investigation.
The investigation uncovered several different bugs in the game that were combining to allow players to level at approximately 17x the rate that players were leveling anywhere else in the game. This was definitely not intended behavior. Fixes for the various bugs went live with the update on Thursday morning, and we opened up the blocked maps.
During the investigation, we pulled data on every players behavior, and then we zeroed in on the players who were gaining levels at unreasonable rates. All of these players were on the maps under investigation. We found that quite a few players dabbled in these maps, but it was really a very small number of players who decided to take advantage of the bugs in excess. In fact, in the end there were around 300 characters (spanning around 250 accounts) that crossed the line from being efficient into taking significant advantage of the bugs. 300 is a very small number from the hundreds of thousands of characters playing.
This raises the question of what an exploit is. Ill loosely define an exploit is any unintended behavior in the game that a player can use to gain significant advantage over others. How does a player know something is unintended? That is definitely open to interpretation and was a huge focus of the discussion in the dev team. In this case, we feel that the difference in leveling speed between playing other content in the game and playing the content that was singled out this week was so large that it is reasonable for players to think this is too good to be something the dev team intended to happen. We find exploits regularly, but it is uncommon to find one that was used to achieve enough of an advantage to require taking action.
Once deciding that there was an exploit, the question is whether action is required or not, which means looking at who dabbled and who took advantage? This was done with an intensive data analysis. In the end, we decided that the vast majority of players were being fairly reasonable in their use of the maps to level, but there was a space in the data between players who gained up to 10 specialization points using the exploit, and those who gained more than 10 specialization points. I decided to make this the cut-off line and anyone who got more than 10 points on those maps had the excess points removed from their characters. For example, a character earning 15 points, 12 of which were on the exploitable maps, would lose 2 specialization points, and a character earning 60 points all of which were on exploitable maps would lose 50 points.
I have looked into the claim that some players were not using the exploit maps, but so far every claim I have come across has not held up under data pulls. If anyone still thinks they lost specialization points when they should not have should please file a CS ticket. CS tickets get a tracking number that can ensure we take care of everyone with a concern.
Im certain that at least some of the players feel they were acting in the right. That errors the dev team makes should be fair game. There are likely some others who feel that I drew the line in the wrong place, either too high or too low. It is challenging to walk the line between protecting the player base that wants the game to be fair, and allowing players to be efficient and game the game. In this case, a judgment was made and the line was drawn in order to protect the integrity of the game for the hundreds of thousands of players who did not and cannot do this going forward. Reviewing the data further, I still feel it was a good place to draw it.
Our communication on this issue was apparently unclear. Ill finish up this afternoon by apologizing for not being more clear about what happened. We normally do not post about actions taken to correct exploits, and I did not expect this correction to require more than a simple post. I was mistaken and I hope this clarifies what happened for those that want a more complete story.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Stephen DAngelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
The investigation uncovered several different bugs in the game that were combining to allow players to level at approximately 17x the rate that players were leveling anywhere else in the game. This was definitely not intended behavior. Fixes for the various bugs went live with the update on Thursday morning, and we opened up the blocked maps.
During the investigation, we pulled data on every players behavior, and then we zeroed in on the players who were gaining levels at unreasonable rates. All of these players were on the maps under investigation. We found that quite a few players dabbled in these maps, but it was really a very small number of players who decided to take advantage of the bugs in excess. In fact, in the end there were around 300 characters (spanning around 250 accounts) that crossed the line from being efficient into taking significant advantage of the bugs. 300 is a very small number from the hundreds of thousands of characters playing.
This raises the question of what an exploit is. Ill loosely define an exploit is any unintended behavior in the game that a player can use to gain significant advantage over others. How does a player know something is unintended? That is definitely open to interpretation and was a huge focus of the discussion in the dev team. In this case, we feel that the difference in leveling speed between playing other content in the game and playing the content that was singled out this week was so large that it is reasonable for players to think this is too good to be something the dev team intended to happen. We find exploits regularly, but it is uncommon to find one that was used to achieve enough of an advantage to require taking action.
Once deciding that there was an exploit, the question is whether action is required or not, which means looking at who dabbled and who took advantage? This was done with an intensive data analysis. In the end, we decided that the vast majority of players were being fairly reasonable in their use of the maps to level, but there was a space in the data between players who gained up to 10 specialization points using the exploit, and those who gained more than 10 specialization points. I decided to make this the cut-off line and anyone who got more than 10 points on those maps had the excess points removed from their characters. For example, a character earning 15 points, 12 of which were on the exploitable maps, would lose 2 specialization points, and a character earning 60 points all of which were on exploitable maps would lose 50 points.
I have looked into the claim that some players were not using the exploit maps, but so far every claim I have come across has not held up under data pulls. If anyone still thinks they lost specialization points when they should not have should please file a CS ticket. CS tickets get a tracking number that can ensure we take care of everyone with a concern.
Im certain that at least some of the players feel they were acting in the right. That errors the dev team makes should be fair game. There are likely some others who feel that I drew the line in the wrong place, either too high or too low. It is challenging to walk the line between protecting the player base that wants the game to be fair, and allowing players to be efficient and game the game. In this case, a judgment was made and the line was drawn in order to protect the integrity of the game for the hundreds of thousands of players who did not and cannot do this going forward. Reviewing the data further, I still feel it was a good place to draw it.
Our communication on this issue was apparently unclear. Ill finish up this afternoon by apologizing for not being more clear about what happened. We normally do not post about actions taken to correct exploits, and I did not expect this correction to require more than a simple post. I was mistaken and I hope this clarifies what happened for those that want a more complete story.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Stephen DAngelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
Post edited by stephendangelo on
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Comments
Sorry could not help it
Sarah Knightly - Co-leader; Frontier Explorers - U.S.S. Witchblade
Rias Gremory - Leader; Frontier Marauders - I.K.S. B'ullwinkle
Don't forget though, he broke his little ship.
Sooooooo what about all the dill-foundry exploits? Never cared to talk about those haven't you? And those ones were abused widely.........
p.s. I haven't even set as little as a nacelle into Tau Dewa since ages....
No one cares if cheaters quit.
Guess the massive dill-foundry exploits weren't worth mentioning then..................?!
Were're talking Only Tau Dewa patrols? Or all patrols?
Details, we copious details about the subject. Which maps are considered exploitable.
I seriously think the dev team needs to pay more attention to reality in which players are. Of course people will want to level fast.
The question is which players will want to do that... The ones that are willing to spend hundreds of hours doing the grind, to get to the max level?
These are people that, most certainly, were the most loyal and most devoted of the fans. The min-maxers, the people that want and will work to be the best.
The situation was still handled poorly and I still don't agree with the decision of rolling back the points, because of bug caused by developers incompetence. ( personally, I wasn't affected, the question over here is - what is right, and what is not. If the word "exploit" can be slapped freely on everything, it's the most insecure and unstable element )
Kadir beneath Mo Moteh. Kiteo, his eyes closed. Chenza at court, the court of silence. Darmok on the ocean.
Shaka, when the walls fell.
You actually believe the people leaving are cheaters?
If you had read the OP. Cryptic had identified and gone after the 250 or so Players that according to them cheated. The rest that are leaving? Not cheaters.
Now sit down and let the adults talk.
Communication is essential with online games..between players, between developers, and between those two groups. Chaos ensues when those lines of communication fail.
So you say 300 chars (250 accounts) were exploiting to a serious extent. Why then does it look like far more than that have had spec points pulled (ie. they were exploiting)?
Whoever posted under the 'Q' account the the other day needs to be spanked and spanked hard. This has been my biggest issue and it now has to be taken as company gospel. Blanket accusation of exploiting to cover your hides for your mistake is unprofessional and stinks of "saving face" in front of your superiors.
Please see the light on this. You are alienating your playerbase.
Cheers!
On behalf of many players who did not exploit powerlevel to max specialization, thanks.
Yes you are correct I and most others tried it at least once, most of us could tell it was bugged or not WAI so didn't keep doing it like the 300 who lost spec points. It was a good call and fair.
CRUISERS NEED A 206% HULL BUFF
However, that said I do think you guys need to improve your communications with the players. Half the problem with this mess and a few others with this expansion is the lack of communication and consequently it has resulted in much aggravation.
Some is still justified, xp gains are horrendously low and still don't reflect the difficulty settings properly. Also the upgrade system costs are too prohibitive for many players, I still believe this needs addressing.
But my main point from all this is for everyone's sake, be straight and honest with us and keep talking to us, because like I've said that's half the problem.
I have to say this communication has gone a long way in my book to well restoring some misgivings I was having on feedback since myself was completely blind to this didn't know about it till the threads on map shutdown came out so it was like huh? then WTF then sp lost seeing various threads and then this response to me the case is closed and as stated will be treated and investigated on a case by case basis. someone previously said you'll lose players because of this to me you'll gain 10x what you loose in respect and integrity.
Rob
^ Seconded.
I do believe that your entire QA and beta test system needs a serious overhaul and improvement. Because like someone else above posted you've lost a portion of the player base over this mistake, many of them loyal customers over a school boy error that should never have occurred.
You nerfed XP for your PWE owners to try and get us to buy XP boosters....which you ALSO nerfed by 66% XP for the same 200 zen.
Stop trying to bull**** us.
To my knowledge everyone who exploited that one were perma banned, since it was akin to theft.
Lol, correct, I just copied it mindlessly.
Kadir beneath Mo Moteh. Kiteo, his eyes closed. Chenza at court, the court of silence. Darmok on the ocean.
Shaka, when the walls fell.
Yeah, many of those folks either saw everything stripped, saw temp bans, perm bans, or even had zombie ninja monkeys come to their homes in the middle of the night to slap them around with rotten banana peels...
Did write a CS ticket about it yesterday already, tracking number: 141023-000646