They could also do a proper QC by addressing each thread and post: A) Working as Intended - Under Review - C) Solved - D) Known Issue - Work In Progress
they dont really need to expand the testers... just address the issues that does come up will solve a lot of issues.
The reality is that people who did not exploit were also affected, despite D'Angelo's previous position being that there were not.
D'Angelo took the wrong position, and unintentionally mislead people in his communication that their data was factual, and that despite accusations of players that they were wrongly affected, took no action before now.
He made a mistake. He made a bad judgment call. He proved to the playerbase that their data was flawed. If their data is flawed, then they call their methods of collecting said data into question.
If you have a questionable method of gathering this kind of information, then all information will be questioned.
This is a clean slate for all players affected -- both the guilty and the innocent.
restoring the guilty their ill-gotten points is hardly what I would call a "clean slate"
I hope this is a step in the right direction. As a skeptic (taught by Tuvok) I must wonder why an apology is made a day after a LTS offer. Most intriguing. :rolleyes: However, thank you for the public apology.
restoring the guilty their ill-gotten points is hardly what I would call a "clean slate"
It depends on how the guilty are determined. The guilty were determined by the same flawed system that designated innocent people as guilty and penalized them as such. Even those 300 people's guilt are now suspect because of that fact.
I would rather 300 guilty people have their specialization points restored if only one person was wrongly penalized as exploiting.
This apology reeks of a stale aftertaste of, well, you get the hint... right?
To be more specific, not only the EP's careful wording suggests that most players affected were exploiters of this 'exploit' that is not so clear to me, but the action that is in effect is as lazy as the action that got us into this mess in the first place.
If you think this situation has gone the best it could, then you can take your snot-nosed population, form a line behind me, and kiss my butt. (Had to say that.)
Ok, anyways, to be brutally honest, where it all went wrong at first is when all you guys ignored Tribble reports about this 'exploit' at the beginning. Then, after release, you all pulled off an all out witch hunt (Salem style) Then, because of your super secret service rules on chatting about exploits, people like myself were not sure if this was an obvious exploit, or something you did in the past on purpose and suddenly decided to cry 'exploit'. And now you all are releasing all the innocents and accused axe murderers out of the prison.
restoring the guilty their ill-gotten points is hardly what I would call a "clean slate"
Ironically, you seem to get yourself entangled in *precisely* the same mistake Cryptic made: trying to separate the exploiters from those of good will. And you can't, because we're not mind readers: we don't know what people knew upfront, who was totally informed, and who was pretty much clueless.
So, instead of repeating the same mistake, Cryptic wisely decided not to burn their fingers on yet another round of possible unjust punishments. Please, don't invite them to err in this manner again!
If it was an exploit, it of course means that some people got to use it without negative consequences for them, but the closure of the exploit means no one else can use it.
I guess that has to be weighted with people losing specializations points without even exploiting.
Still, a very unsatisfying result, and it does not actually address the concerns of players that levelling / gaining specializations takes too long and advanced/elite difficulty are not sufficiently rewarded for the effort they require.
I can certainly sympathize with the last point - if enemies have 5 times as many hit points, you kinda would expect 5 times the reward. How long it takes too level - sure I like to level fast, because I am a lazy guy and all, but I can get that practically 60 new levels should take a bit of time to complete.
I hope the next time such an exploit happens, you will be able to fine-tune the reaction better to ensure that people learn that exploiting will come back to them and they won't win in the long term, without negatively affecting others. Maybe it would be better if there was a reward for reporting exploits (but not exploiters!) to the development team.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I would like to thank the players who took the time to report problems with the Specialization Point removal last Thursday through the Customer Service ticket system. It really helped in being able to track and take care of everyone.
In the process of reviewing each persons ticket, we did indeed find that there were a few customers who did not take advantage of the power-leveling bug and yet had Specialization Points removed. There were also a few who managed to use the bug and were not penalized.
After considering the situation, we have decided that rather than doing another round of corrections a week after the problem event, that we will restore the points to all characters that had them removed. As of the time of this posting, all characters should have had their missing points restored.
I sincerely apologize on behalf of the Star Trek Online team for both the original bugs and the error of penalizing some customers incorrectly.
Stephen DAngelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
Ok.
Bugs I can handle. As with any release from Cryptic we know it will take weeks to to slowly fix and locate the many unintended consequences that a full release sometimes has.
No amount of testing on Tribble can account for everything on the live servers.
I respect that you take ownership for the poor way the release and your response was handled.
Thank you.
But I have two questions:
1.) How do you plan to restore the player base. The queues sir are a fraction of what they once were.
2.) How will you entice players to return when the key issues of difficulty and grind remain unchanged?
8 friends of mine (4 paying customers of yours) have left the game in the past 2 weeks. A good chunk of our fleet is starting RIFTS this weekend as a place to have fun with our friends.
For those of us who's 3 years of effort was once 'elite' is now after DR 'junk' - do you think the changes were appropriate to your vision of success for Cryptic?
To be more specific, not only the EP's careful wording suggests that most players affected were exploiters of this 'exploit' that is not so clear to me, but the action that is in effect is as lazy as the action that got us into this mess in the first place.
If you think this situation has gone the best it could, then you can take your snot-nosed population, form a line behind me, and kiss my butt. (Had to say that.)
Ok, anyways, to be brutally honest, where it all went wrong at first is when all you guys ignored Tribble reports about this 'exploit' at the beginning. Then, after release, you all pulled off an all out witch hunt (Salem style) Then, because of your super secret service rules on chatting about exploits, people like myself were not sure if this was an obvious exploit, or something you did in the past on purpose and suddenly decided to cry 'exploit'. And now you all are releasing all the innocents and accused axe murderers out of the prison.
Oh good lord...
Hyperbole much...?
SO WHAT.. they got their points back.
How does that in any way affect your own personal climb toward level 60??
You'll still get there if you play the game long enough.
:rolleyes:
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Booooooo. People cheat and you let them get away with it? You were better off the first time. There are rules for a reason. But no, the people who tried to be honest get nothing for having some integrity. Booooooo.
No amount of testing on Tribble can account for everything on the live servers.
I'm trying to be positive, really I am. This was a good step by Cryptic in my opinion. The thing that bothers me with this statement though is that some things like this *are* pointed out on Tribble but get released anyways.
This is great news for the players who didn't take advantage of the situation but were still punished. I am very happy for them. Those people who truly did take advantage should not be rewarded for it though.
When I first saw that the "exploit" was fixed and those who used it lost their points I was impressed that a company was actually willing to do this to keep players equal. Unfortunately it wasn't long and people were saying that they were unfairly punished which is even worse than not punishing the guilty.
Bottom line the guilty should be punished but never at the expense of the innocent. Considering the solution was to give everyone back their points regardless of whether or not they deserved them there is only one way to truly be fair to all. Restore the "exploit" so that those who wish to use it can. As it stands now the guilty have been rewarded, the unjustly punished have rightfully had their points restored, and those who knew of the "exploit" but chose to follow the rules are pretty much being punished for it.
What kind of a message is that to send to your players?
It depends on how the guilty are determined. The guilty were determined by the same flawed system that designated innocent people as guilty and penalized them as such. Even those 300 people's guilt are now suspect because of that fact.
I would rather 300 guilty people have their specialization points restored if only one person was wrongly penalized as exploiting.
Explain how only 300 were "identified" as exploiters, but thousands(?) got points yanked by the anti-exploiter script?
My thought is that "manual review" determined the exploiters, but the script caught up more than expected...
If it were me, I'd still be planning on slapping down the 300, but this time it would be done manually and double-checked by the same methodology that identified that total in the first place, not what some funky script determined.
On that note, thank you Mr. D'angelo, your honesty in admitting severe error in script action and prompt resolution is accepted, however, be careful of the precedent this sets if the exploiting goes unaddressed...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
It's never easy to issue a very public apology, so for that good job. Now would you mind looking into the dead queues? It would be nice to be able to pug again.
How does that in any way affect your own personal climb toward level 60??
You'll still get there if you play the game long enough.
:rolleyes:
Does it look like I care about level 60? I care about the quality of the game and management more than I care about slogging to level 60. And what has happened was mistake after mistake after mistake. Starting with Tribble and ending here. For now.
Thank you very much I can not express how much this restores MY goodwill to continue playing STO and spending money on it . I STRONGLY feel this whole situation was handled in very poor taste and both sides share some blame . I hope and think this will go a long way to putting this whole mess behind us. THankyou . I did partake some in Japori but didnt losse any points Because I didnt OVER use it I did use it to level to continue doing new episodes . Because the REAL problem that spawned this whole mess ,That being, fix the advanced Ques. They are obviously Not working as intended and should be the elite versions. I am avoiding them due to the fact that I dont want to be called an exploiter for playing an aspect of the game that isnt working as intended .Now that I know how strongly you all feel about that. And until the rewards are restored to their former settings I will never do them. Just for the record, is the dyson groung battle zone exploiting because I can make 30,000 dill in there in an hr, or are the rewards as is so people will actually play in there?
I'm trying to be positive, really I am. This was a good step by Cryptic in my opinion. The thing that bothers me with this statement though is that some things like this *are* pointed out on Tribble but get released anyways.
And something they'll need to address, sooner rather than later. The problem isn't possible exploits, though (relatively very rare), but the lack of listening to feedback from Tribble in general, causing much frustration with the playerbase. If Specgate should have taught them anything, then I hope it will be that ignoring feedback can really come back to haunt them. And I hope, along the lines bluegeek suggested earlier, that they will, at some point, allow for more time between Tribble release, and going live, so as to have a window left where major issues reported can still be taken care of.
Explain how only 300 were "identified" as exploiters, but thousands(?) got points yanked by the anti-exploiter script?
I can't. I do not have access to the tools and methods Cryptic used, nor do I have a hard copy of the data used to penalize players.
Honestly, even those 300 players have their guilt questioned. If thousands were incorrectly targeted despite D'Angelo first saying all the data was accurate, then even those 300 are the result of a flawed system and should be exonerated.
Yes, it sucks cheaters got away with it. But we should turn our attention to Cryptic and our expectations for a better system of identifying exploiters instead.
Either everything gets tossed out the window, or nothing does.
Thank you for recognizing your mistake and taking responsiblity for it. Admittedly my faith in the development team has been severly shaken, more so do to the lack of communication and silenceing since the executive producers statement seven days ago. Unfortunately, it appears to me that it took all seven days of the players voicing their discontent at being wrongfully cheated of our time to get results from a team that didnt want to recant their decision. Which in turn tells me you had no intention of returning the points lost to those of us whom had played no part in the Tau Dewa exploit.
While I am happy my hard work was not wasted and my points have been returned, I still find myself reluctant to return to my usual spending habits in your game. I believe further reassurance will be needed for me personally to continue to invest in the game rather than spending elsewhere. I believe the best way to accomplish this is to actually listen to your playerbase and from there simply take the most talked about issues, ACTIVELY respond to them here. I do realize that the forumites are only a "minority" of players but I personally read the forums alot even though I very rarely post (been here since 2010). They give me an idea of the general "health" of the game, what the most pressing issues are, and what direction the game is heading. Just a little FYI.
Explain how only 300 were "identified" as exploiters, but thousands(?) got points yanked by the anti-exploiter script?
My thought is that "manual review" determined the exploiters, but the script caught up more than expected...
If it were me, I'd still be planning on slapping down the 300, but this time it would be done manually and double-checked by the same methodology that identified that total in the first place, not what some funky script determined.
On that note, thank you Mr. D'angelo, your honesty in admitting severe error in script action and prompt resolution is accepted, however, be careful of the precedent this sets if the exploiting goes unaddressed...
It wasnt exploiting. Iam sick of people calling it that, it wasnt working as intended but it was not exploiting. Just like them breaking some thing like the power trays and getting our buts kick all over the game isnt exploiting by them just not working as intended and unfortunate
He can't. Far as I am able to interpret things, I never got the impression anyone beyond the 300 were ever affected.
(Hmm, '300', sounds like a good title for a movie... oh wait)
I personally know 2 players who had it happen to them and have seen maybe 25 people on the forums "claim" the same but I am only inclined to believe half of them.
It wasnt exploiting. Iam sick of people calling it that, it wasnt working as intended but it was not exploiting. Just like them breaking some thing like the power trays and getting our buts kick all over the game isnt exploiting by them just not working as intended and unfortunate
Taking advantage of something that you knew wasn't 'working as intended' is the very definition of an exploit. And the only thing this decision does is further stratify the game into those who use exploits (and are rewarded for it they throw enough of a tantrum) and those who don't. Terrible decision setting terrible precedent.
Explain how only 300 were "identified" as exploiters, but thousands(?) got points yanked by the anti-exploiter script?
My thought is that "manual review" determined the exploiters, but the script caught up more than expected...
If it were me, I'd still be planning on slapping down the 300, but this time it would be done manually and double-checked by the same methodology that identified that total in the first place, not what some funky script determined.
On that note, thank you Mr. D'angelo, your honesty in admitting severe error in script action and prompt resolution is accepted, however, be careful of the precedent this sets if the exploiting goes unaddressed...
I do agree, the point is valid.
Even in the case of player-supported testing, the developers chose to ignore the issue creating the problem in the first place. The entire event sullied an otherwise decent launch (content wise), and caused an exodus of players.
Given something back that now was validly earned will not be enough to restore the fun lost in the game
I would like to thank the players who took the time to report problems with the Specialization Point removal last Thursday through the Customer Service ticket system. It really helped in being able to track and take care of everyone.
In the process of reviewing each persons ticket, we did indeed find that there were a few customers who did not take advantage of the power-leveling bug and yet had Specialization Points removed. There were also a few who managed to use the bug and were not penalized.
After considering the situation, we have decided that rather than doing another round of corrections a week after the problem event, that we will restore the points to all characters that had them removed. As of the time of this posting, all characters should have had their missing points restored.
I sincerely apologize on behalf of the Star Trek Online team for both the original bugs and the error of penalizing some customers incorrectly.
Stephen DAngelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
So...the exploiters get their points back, too?
Well, pity you couldn't just ban them or something, but (although I personally was not affected by this), thank you for taking care of this and being fair with people.
He can't. Far as I am able to interpret things, I never got the impression anyone beyond the 300 ever were affected.
(Hmm, '300', sounds like a good Title for a movie... oh wait)
From my interpretation there were 300 gross violators. Like beyond all doubt, those 300 people were doing something wrong and they knew it.
Everything else was a scale from those 300. Various levels of guilt and innocence. He used the term "reasonable" use of the exploitation in his previous post. Which tells me there was some leeway over what a person could be expected to do finding an exploit.
He also said in his previous post that he was watching for the CS tickets regarding false positives, and penalizations for no wrongdoing, but that the data he pulled does not match the descriptions of those complaints.
However, since this post we discover all of that data was flawed. And that he was wrong. That there were wrongly penalized accounts.
If just one bit of his previous post is either misinformation, a falsification, or an outright lie, then all of his post should be considered suspect.
Including his claims of those 300 people.
Were they guilty? Probably. But we can't say with absolute certainty.
Comments
They could also do a proper QC by addressing each thread and post: A) Working as Intended -
they dont really need to expand the testers... just address the issues that does come up will solve a lot of issues.
You sir, are a person of real integrity . I agree 100% with your sentiment.
restoring the guilty their ill-gotten points is hardly what I would call a "clean slate"
It depends on how the guilty are determined. The guilty were determined by the same flawed system that designated innocent people as guilty and penalized them as such. Even those 300 people's guilt are now suspect because of that fact.
I would rather 300 guilty people have their specialization points restored if only one person was wrongly penalized as exploiting.
To be more specific, not only the EP's careful wording suggests that most players affected were exploiters of this 'exploit' that is not so clear to me, but the action that is in effect is as lazy as the action that got us into this mess in the first place.
If you think this situation has gone the best it could, then you can take your snot-nosed population, form a line behind me, and kiss my butt. (Had to say that.)
Ok, anyways, to be brutally honest, where it all went wrong at first is when all you guys ignored Tribble reports about this 'exploit' at the beginning. Then, after release, you all pulled off an all out witch hunt (Salem style) Then, because of your super secret service rules on chatting about exploits, people like myself were not sure if this was an obvious exploit, or something you did in the past on purpose and suddenly decided to cry 'exploit'. And now you all are releasing all the innocents and accused axe murderers out of the prison.
Ironically, you seem to get yourself entangled in *precisely* the same mistake Cryptic made: trying to separate the exploiters from those of good will. And you can't, because we're not mind readers: we don't know what people knew upfront, who was totally informed, and who was pretty much clueless.
So, instead of repeating the same mistake, Cryptic wisely decided not to burn their fingers on yet another round of possible unjust punishments. Please, don't invite them to err in this manner again!
I guess that has to be weighted with people losing specializations points without even exploiting.
Still, a very unsatisfying result, and it does not actually address the concerns of players that levelling / gaining specializations takes too long and advanced/elite difficulty are not sufficiently rewarded for the effort they require.
I can certainly sympathize with the last point - if enemies have 5 times as many hit points, you kinda would expect 5 times the reward. How long it takes too level - sure I like to level fast, because I am a lazy guy and all, but I can get that practically 60 new levels should take a bit of time to complete.
I hope the next time such an exploit happens, you will be able to fine-tune the reaction better to ensure that people learn that exploiting will come back to them and they won't win in the long term, without negatively affecting others. Maybe it would be better if there was a reward for reporting exploits (but not exploiters!) to the development team.
Ok.
Bugs I can handle. As with any release from Cryptic we know it will take weeks to to slowly fix and locate the many unintended consequences that a full release sometimes has.
No amount of testing on Tribble can account for everything on the live servers.
I respect that you take ownership for the poor way the release and your response was handled.
Thank you.
But I have two questions:
1.) How do you plan to restore the player base. The queues sir are a fraction of what they once were.
2.) How will you entice players to return when the key issues of difficulty and grind remain unchanged?
8 friends of mine (4 paying customers of yours) have left the game in the past 2 weeks. A good chunk of our fleet is starting RIFTS this weekend as a place to have fun with our friends.
For those of us who's 3 years of effort was once 'elite' is now after DR 'junk' - do you think the changes were appropriate to your vision of success for Cryptic?
My Two Bits
Admiral Thrax
Oh good lord...
Hyperbole much...?
SO WHAT.. they got their points back.
How does that in any way affect your own personal climb toward level 60??
You'll still get there if you play the game long enough.
:rolleyes:
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
I'm trying to be positive, really I am. This was a good step by Cryptic in my opinion. The thing that bothers me with this statement though is that some things like this *are* pointed out on Tribble but get released anyways.
When I first saw that the "exploit" was fixed and those who used it lost their points I was impressed that a company was actually willing to do this to keep players equal. Unfortunately it wasn't long and people were saying that they were unfairly punished which is even worse than not punishing the guilty.
Bottom line the guilty should be punished but never at the expense of the innocent. Considering the solution was to give everyone back their points regardless of whether or not they deserved them there is only one way to truly be fair to all. Restore the "exploit" so that those who wish to use it can. As it stands now the guilty have been rewarded, the unjustly punished have rightfully had their points restored, and those who knew of the "exploit" but chose to follow the rules are pretty much being punished for it.
What kind of a message is that to send to your players?
This is a legitimate criticism.
Explain how only 300 were "identified" as exploiters, but thousands(?) got points yanked by the anti-exploiter script?
My thought is that "manual review" determined the exploiters, but the script caught up more than expected...
If it were me, I'd still be planning on slapping down the 300, but this time it would be done manually and double-checked by the same methodology that identified that total in the first place, not what some funky script determined.
On that note, thank you Mr. D'angelo, your honesty in admitting severe error in script action and prompt resolution is accepted, however, be careful of the precedent this sets if the exploiting goes unaddressed...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Does it look like I care about level 60? I care about the quality of the game and management more than I care about slogging to level 60. And what has happened was mistake after mistake after mistake. Starting with Tribble and ending here. For now.
And something they'll need to address, sooner rather than later. The problem isn't possible exploits, though (relatively very rare), but the lack of listening to feedback from Tribble in general, causing much frustration with the playerbase. If Specgate should have taught them anything, then I hope it will be that ignoring feedback can really come back to haunt them. And I hope, along the lines bluegeek suggested earlier, that they will, at some point, allow for more time between Tribble release, and going live, so as to have a window left where major issues reported can still be taken care of.
I can't. I do not have access to the tools and methods Cryptic used, nor do I have a hard copy of the data used to penalize players.
Honestly, even those 300 players have their guilt questioned. If thousands were incorrectly targeted despite D'Angelo first saying all the data was accurate, then even those 300 are the result of a flawed system and should be exonerated.
Yes, it sucks cheaters got away with it. But we should turn our attention to Cryptic and our expectations for a better system of identifying exploiters instead.
Either everything gets tossed out the window, or nothing does.
Thank you for recognizing your mistake and taking responsiblity for it. Admittedly my faith in the development team has been severly shaken, more so do to the lack of communication and silenceing since the executive producers statement seven days ago. Unfortunately, it appears to me that it took all seven days of the players voicing their discontent at being wrongfully cheated of our time to get results from a team that didnt want to recant their decision. Which in turn tells me you had no intention of returning the points lost to those of us whom had played no part in the Tau Dewa exploit.
While I am happy my hard work was not wasted and my points have been returned, I still find myself reluctant to return to my usual spending habits in your game. I believe further reassurance will be needed for me personally to continue to invest in the game rather than spending elsewhere. I believe the best way to accomplish this is to actually listen to your playerbase and from there simply take the most talked about issues, ACTIVELY respond to them here. I do realize that the forumites are only a "minority" of players but I personally read the forums alot even though I very rarely post (been here since 2010). They give me an idea of the general "health" of the game, what the most pressing issues are, and what direction the game is heading. Just a little FYI.
Again thanks for listening/reading
Explain how you came to your "THOUSANDS" number.
It wasnt exploiting. Iam sick of people calling it that, it wasnt working as intended but it was not exploiting. Just like them breaking some thing like the power trays and getting our buts kick all over the game isnt exploiting by them just not working as intended and unfortunate
I do hope that you keep up with this kind of attitude. I recommend that you read gulberat's posts, especially his ten points of communication.
He can't. Far as I am able to interpret things, I never got the impression anyone beyond the 300 were ever affected.
(Hmm, '300', sounds like a good title for a movie... oh wait)
I personally know 2 players who had it happen to them and have seen maybe 25 people on the forums "claim" the same but I am only inclined to believe half of them.
Taking advantage of something that you knew wasn't 'working as intended' is the very definition of an exploit. And the only thing this decision does is further stratify the game into those who use exploits (and are rewarded for it they throw enough of a tantrum) and those who don't. Terrible decision setting terrible precedent.
I do agree, the point is valid.
Even in the case of player-supported testing, the developers chose to ignore the issue creating the problem in the first place. The entire event sullied an otherwise decent launch (content wise), and caused an exodus of players.
Given something back that now was validly earned will not be enough to restore the fun lost in the game
So...the exploiters get their points back, too?
Well, pity you couldn't just ban them or something, but (although I personally was not affected by this), thank you for taking care of this and being fair with people.
From my interpretation there were 300 gross violators. Like beyond all doubt, those 300 people were doing something wrong and they knew it.
Everything else was a scale from those 300. Various levels of guilt and innocence. He used the term "reasonable" use of the exploitation in his previous post. Which tells me there was some leeway over what a person could be expected to do finding an exploit.
He also said in his previous post that he was watching for the CS tickets regarding false positives, and penalizations for no wrongdoing, but that the data he pulled does not match the descriptions of those complaints.
However, since this post we discover all of that data was flawed. And that he was wrong. That there were wrongly penalized accounts.
If just one bit of his previous post is either misinformation, a falsification, or an outright lie, then all of his post should be considered suspect.
Including his claims of those 300 people.
Were they guilty? Probably. But we can't say with absolute certainty.