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EP speaks on this week’s exploit

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  • edited October 2014
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  • sernonserculionsernonserculion Member Posts: 749 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Really?

    The majority of players honestly thought that when Cryptic released a new expansion with 10 new levels and a bunch of new content that what they intended was for people to power level through all 10 plus 50 skill points in a matter of hours by running one piece of old, pre-expansion content over and over again?

    Really?

    Don't be precious. A minority of players discovered an 'unintended feature' (read: bug) that allowed them to render the intended challenge of all that leveling trivial and a minority of those players chose to take advantage (i.e. exploit) it. A minority of those got caught and had what they gained by it taken away.

    That's very easy to believe. It happens in games all the time.

    You should really stop speaking for others, you clearly don't know, or have dealt with in person. But that in part, is what the OP did as well. So there is always that. Same perspective, or lack thereof.

    Personally I soloed all the content, and ran out of it in a matter of day(s) before starting to join teams. If there had been some meat to this so-called expansion, this could at least in part have been avoided. It was however released in such an anorectic state, there was nothing left to do, even when taking your time and listening to everything Neelix had to say.

    So between replaying Neelix, do the nerfed PvE queues, or do the patrols, the patrols seemed the least of the available evils. The keyword here being AVAILABLE. I would have done the patrols again in the same situation, ad infinitum, with every knowledge of all of this, for without a choice, you take the road before you. This "addition" is as narrow a road you can get, and still pretend it is somehow passsable.
  • banatinebanatine Member Posts: 250 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Really?

    The majority of players honestly thought that when Cryptic released a new expansion with 10 new levels and a bunch of new content that what they intended was for people to power level through all 10 plus 50 skill points in a matter of hours by running one piece of old, pre-expansion content over and over again?

    Really?

    No, i expected that when the new content went live with 10 new levels, that i would be able to progress through those missions exactly as i did with all the previous story missions. i.e. WITHOUT having to stop between each and every one and grind the same patrols over and over again for 1-2 hours.

    At the very least, the average player probably expected to gain those new 10 levels exactly as fast as they had gained the last 10.

    Remember when you always used to see 100+ playing Conduit Elite or Crystalline Catastrophe Elite pre-DR? were we all supposed to assume that it must have been broken, otherwise why would there be so many people there? Of course not, it was simply the Dominant Strategy. So why, on this of all occasions, where the playeres supposed to magically 'know' that THIS was wrong, and not just a shift in said strategy to account for the near empty Queues?
    Real Temporal Operative: Purchased the Special Temporal Agent pack before it was even officially announced!
  • leviathan99#2867 leviathan99 Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Really?

    The majority of players honestly thought that when Cryptic released a new expansion with 10 new levels and a bunch of new content that what they intended was for people to power level through all 10 plus 50 skill points in a matter of hours by running one piece of old, pre-expansion content over and over again?

    Really?

    Don't be precious. A minority of players discovered an 'unintended feature' (read: bug) that allowed them to render the intended challenge of all that leveling trivial and a minority of those players chose to take advantage (i.e. exploit) it. A minority of those got caught and had what they gained by it taken away.

    That's very easy to believe. It happens in games all the time.

    Those weren't the only players who got reverted. People who never set foot in Tau Dewa got reverted.

    Apparently playing on Elite and doing too much DPS was grounds for reversion because it would appear that they defined exploiting simply as SP received per hour, not taking into account that some players do enough DPS even in new content to advance at a faster rate... and, for that matter, that Cryptic sells progress in the form of SP boosters.

    Meaning that if you were performing at the upper end of what they considered the "right" leveling speed and used SP boosters that pushed you over, they took back the SP that you paid real money for.
  • leviathan99#2867 leviathan99 Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    So, your response to, "D'Angelo would have to be maniacally evil and/or insane to do that of which you are accusing him" is essentially, "Yes, he's an evil maniac and the rest of the company are all covering for him"?

    What you define as "evil maniac", apparently, I define as "not particularly evil but disappointingly typical."
  • meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,594 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Those weren't the only players who got reverted. People who never set foot in Tau Dewa got reverted.

    Apparently playing on Elite and doing too much DPS was grounds for reversion because it would appear that they defined exploiting simply as SP received per hour, not taking into account that some players do enough DPS even in new content to advance at a faster rate... and, for that matter, that Cryptic sells progress in the form of SP boosters.

    Meaning that if you were performing at the upper end of what they considered the "right" leveling speed and used SP boosters that pushed you over, they took back the SP that you paid real money for.

    ^^ Well said!

    I do only ~22k. That is probably still considerably more than the average casual player. And I was grinding the TRIBBLE out the 'Shutdown' mission (old Cardasssian storyline mission at DS9). And I hardly took a break (in hindsight, seems I should have idled more).
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  • leviathan99#2867 leviathan99 Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    ummax wrote: »
    It probably over time will cause more harm then good because its over with and in the scheme of life the universe and everything is actually pretty minor considering and really there is a point at which any normal person would let go.. its just a game .. pixels that one day will be deleted because in the end of it all we are just renting them for as long as they decide to let us rent them for and nothing more.

    I think it's at least a small failure for Cryptic every time people remember all of this.

    I think they could (and should, as a business selling services) do better.
  • meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,594 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    The majority of players honestly thought that when Cryptic released a new expansion with 10 new levels and a bunch of new content that what they intended was for people to power level through all 10 plus 50 skill points in a matter of hours...

    When I joined STO, several years ago, the average time for 'good' player was to go from 1-50 in a few days. My 1.5 weeks was considered slow. So, riddle me this then, why should going from 50-60, in several days, suddenly be deemed a horrible exploit?!
    by running one piece of old, pre-expansion content over and over again?.

    Ironically, your gripe here is *precisely* one of the motives which probably irked the Devs: peeps weren't doing the shiny new DR content! Thanks for that little insight into your psyche! It illustrates things very well.
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  • rogerthomsonrogerthomson Member Posts: 97 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    ummax wrote: »
    - yes their booboo
    - maybe or maybe not because like with cryptic we just have the word of the players and lets face it players have nothing to loose from doing this or saying this other then their own credibility if they are wrong which I guess they aren't too worried about in the long run so really they can make up anything they want :)



    - this is not true i was not called a cheater and they did not call the entire playerbase cheater they called 250 people cheaters --

    so you have 1 out of 3 points valid.




    - never heard this one before someone made this up along the line some players I guess...

    When in the history of online gaming has a company actually gone into detail about the exploit or even verbalized its presence - this is pretty common and in terms of their actions they have made a decision and are not about to back peddle on it ever. Players have a choice wait for support to work which probably will take a couple weeks or just ignore it and move on. All the sabre rattling in the world will not change what has happened.

    It probably over time will cause more harm then good because its over with and in the scheme of life the universe and everything is actually pretty minor considering and really there is a point at which any normal person would let go.. its just a game .. pixels that one day will be deleted because in the end of it all we are just renting them for as long as they decide to let us rent them for and nothing more.

    None of your points are valid, please try again. You'r dismissed.
  • harryhausenharryhausen Member Posts: 148 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    meimeitoo wrote: »
    When I joined STO, several years ago, the average time for 'good' player was to go from 1-50 in a few days. My 1.5 weeks was considered slow. So, riddle me this then, why should going from 50-60, in several days, suddenly be deemed a horrible exploit?!

    WoW has an expansion coming out in a few weeks. Do you really think that if a week or two into it, they discover that people are leveling to the new leveling cap at vastly faster than the intended speed solely by running one of the old battlegrounds over and over again, without setting foot in the expansion content, that they'll respond any differently than Cryptic did?

    The fact that Cryptic intended people to advance through the new levels using the new content isn't a 'window into my psyche', its a painfully obvious fact to anyone who thinks about it for a few seconds.

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  • oneofexploitoneofexploit Member Posts: 54 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    The fact that Cryptic intended people to advance through the new levels using the new content isn't a 'window into my psyche', its a painfully obvious fact to anyone who thinks about it for a few seconds.

    They should of made actual good content in the first place and we wouldn't be hearing about this ;)
  • guilli88guilli88 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    WoW has an expansion coming out in a few weeks. Do you really think that if a week or two into it, they discover that people are leveling to the new leveling cap at vastly faster than the intended speed solely by running one of the old battlegrounds over and over again, without setting foot in the expansion content, that they'll respond any differently than Cryptic did?

    The fact that Cryptic intended people to advance through the new levels using the new content isn't a 'window into my psyche', its a painfully obvious fact to anyone who thinks about it for a few seconds.

    lol. Blizzard, the develiopers for WoW, will hotfix anything that shouldn't be within a day. Secondly, they wont remove xp or any item unless it was a vastly oversight that was missed during testing. And they actually do extensive beta test.

    sig

    http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5451/om71.jpg

    It is a peculiar phenomenon that we can imagine events that defy the laws of the universe.
  • ussinterceptussintercept Member Posts: 627 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    WoW has an expansion coming out in a few weeks. Do you really think that if a week or two into it, they discover that people are leveling to the new leveling cap at vastly faster than the intended speed solely by running one of the old battlegrounds over and over again, without setting foot in the expansion content, that they'll respond any differently than Cryptic did?

    The fact that Cryptic intended people to advance through the new levels using the new content isn't a 'window into my psyche', its a painfully obvious fact to anyone who thinks about it for a few seconds.

    Again..Failure of Logic. WoW has a Insta-Level to Level Cap pay mechanic now....So you can definitely hit level cap with a push of a button.
  • rogerthomsonrogerthomson Member Posts: 97 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Some people used xp boosterpacks while leveling bought with real money. This money is not given back after skill en spec points were taken away by Cryptic.
  • potencethe1stpotencethe1st Member Posts: 257 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Some people used xp boosterpacks while leveling bought with real money. This money is not given back after skill en spec points were taken away by Cryptic.

    That's called fraud cryptic.

    Alas they aren't paying attention. Maybe they will when they are paying a class action lawsuit.

    Oh and before fanboinwhiteknightsychophantasskissingtroglodytes respond: Eula's and tos rarely ever hold up in court.
  • meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,594 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    The fact that Cryptic intended people to advance through the new levels using the new content isn't a 'window into my psyche', its a painfully obvious fact to anyone who thinks about it for a few seconds.

    LOL. And do you realize the irony of what you're saying here?! You can't even play half the new storyline until you leveled up enough! :P (What genius at Cryptic thought of that brilliant idea?!) So, grinding in-between became not only a choice, but a necessity even.

    As for myself, realizing the new DR would be considerably tougher, as advertised, I decided to level up to 60 first, and take the DR mission from there. (And, irony upon irony, half of those story missions are doing mindless patrols to begin with)
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  • guilli88guilli88 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Digital fraud in Europe is quite a bad thing for a company to do... We are a lot less forgiving than the US. We don't need to file law-suits, we just have to report i to the EU commission anti-fraud department. Said department is in Brussels, which is 40 mins away from me.

    sig

    http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5451/om71.jpg

    It is a peculiar phenomenon that we can imagine events that defy the laws of the universe.
  • meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,594 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    guilli88 wrote: »
    Digital fraud in Europe is quite a bad thing for a company to do... We are a lot less forgiving than the US. We don't need to file law-suits, we just have to report i to the EU commission anti-fraud department. Said department is in Brussels, which is 40 mins away from me.

    I wouldn't pursue that angle, if I were you. We have no evidence (or reason) to believe Cryptic didn't deduct the surplus booster-XP gained from the alleged undue leveling. Legal action, in cases like this, is almost certain fail. Sorry to say, but sadly it's true.

    Best just to try and convince them some people had no intent to cheat, and could not have reasonably known their XP loot tables were faulty. That course of action also has a very low succes-rate; but legal action is futile, guaranteed.
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  • harryhausenharryhausen Member Posts: 148 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    meimeitoo wrote: »
    As for myself, realizing the new DR would be considerably tougher, as advertised, I decided to level up to 60 first, and take the DR mission from there.

    Right, and Cryptic didn't want people to do that. So they took away the ability to do that, and took the people who had done that and skipped the most of the new content and set them back so that they'd have a need to do the new content. Which is perfectly within their rights. If you don't like what they did or how they did it, as always, you're within your rights to play, or not play the game going forward.

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  • decroniadecronia Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Again..Failure of Logic. WoW has a Insta-Level to Level Cap pay mechanic now....So you can definitely hit level cap with a push of a button.

    The new expansion will be level 100 cap. What they offer is the abilit to boost a character to level 90, which given levels would be 50 here. Therefore it will not be level cap. From what I read of it, though I haven't lokked that closely at it for a while, it is for one character only, and they are looking at allowing it for more depending on how well it works out for the players.


    Also when this game finally gets a lot more levels to it I think you will find that PWE wil make cryptic sell a full level cap boost.
    WoW has an expansion coming out in a few weeks. Do you really think that if a week or two into it, they discover that people are leveling to the new leveling cap at vastly faster than the intended speed solely by running one of the old battlegrounds over and over again, without setting foot in the expansion content, that they'll respond any differently than Cryptic did?

    Yes as that is an intended function of the BGs, and had been for quite sometime now. I know people who have levelled only through the BGs once they had the level to enter them. They didn't step out of them until they hit level cap.

    However if they new about a bug the was reported to them during testing that levelled people faster it wouldn't make it to the live game as they actually test properly and listen to such bug reports. If it did they wouldn't remove levels from people as it was their mess up that it maade it through. Does that make WoW buig free? Nope it would be impossible for somtheing to beug free but atleast they try to get them sorted.

    Guess what? Cryptic was notified of this during testing and it made it live. Instead of growing a a pair and holding up their hands to accept resposability for this mistake they blamed everyone else. After reading the OP I swear the EP would have tried to blame my dead catsif he thought someone would buy it.

    Now if Blizzard new of a bug that wasw helping people level up faster through BGs than expansion content and that a large portion of their playerbase couldn't log on. Then which do you think they would focus on fixing first and as fast as possible? It wouldn't be the levelling thing it as it has been with Cryptic. Again they also would n't pass the buck like the EP here did.
  • oneofexploitoneofexploit Member Posts: 54 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Kinda of funny how cryptic and the EP response are making Blizzard look like saints.
  • potencethe1stpotencethe1st Member Posts: 257 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Thanks Stephen for this perfect example of how not to talk to your customers:

    Dismissive of concerns, refusal to acknowledge responsibility, blaming the customer, fracturing of community by labeling players as exploiters, unleashing a condescending rant about how a small group of people are affected by a rollback before code has even been tested and feedback from customer service could have more than 1 day of tickets.


    How this guy got to be an EP alludes me, nepotism has to be the only explanation for a blunder of this magnitude.


    But thanks for the example of "how to never ever talk to customers" it's goin to be a hilarious at my work.
  • potencethe1stpotencethe1st Member Posts: 257 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Thanks Stephen for this perfect example of how not to talk to your customers:

    Dismissive of concerns, refusal to acknowledge responsibility, blaming the customer, fracturing of community by labeling players as exploiters, unleashing a condescending rant about how a small group of people are affected by a rollback before code has even been tested and feedback from customer service could have more than 1 day of tickets.


    How this guy got to be an EP alludes me, nepotism has to be the only explanation for a blunder of this magnitude.


    But thanks for the example of "how to never ever talk to customers" it's goin to be a hilarious at my work.

    Ff14 has an update today, thanks for the motivation to stop playing sto or I wouldn't have given it a 2nd thought.


    You call me an exploiter?

    Well you're a ****.
  • harryhausenharryhausen Member Posts: 148 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    decronia wrote: »
    If it did they wouldn't remove levels from people as it was their mess up that it maade it through.

    Blizzard has not only removed items from characters that were gained from boss kills resulting from exploits, they've suspended, and even banned some players for using those exploits. Cryptic was actually fairly merciful in this regard as only 250 players lost only some (not all) of their progress. No one was suspended or banned from the game. Back in the early days of Burning Crusade, for example, an entire guild got banned for farming bosses using a bug in an elevator in a raid instance to reset them, giving them multiple kills in a week. Another got gear stripped away after defeating a raid end boss because they exploited a bugged mechanic.

    As I said in another post, people find 'unintended features' (i.e. bugs) in online games all the time, and have to choose whether to take advantage of (i.e. exploit) them. Depending on the game developer, though, this can have sometimes extreme negative consequences. No developer, however, just winks at it and says, "Oh well...our bad for letting that get through testing..."

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  • decroniadecronia Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Blizzard has not only removed items from characters that were gained from boss kills resulting from exploits, they've suspended, and even banned some players for using those exploits. Cryptic was actually fairly merciful in this regard as only 250 players lost only some (not all) of their progress. No one was suspended or banned from the game. Back in the early days of Burning Crusade, for example, an entire guild got banned for farming bosses using a bug in an elevator in a raid instance to reset them, giving them multiple kills in a week. Another got gear stripped away after defeating a raid end boss because they exploited a bugged mechanic."

    Yes they have, but those are things that were not found and reported, or found and not reported during testing, the worst case being certain people finding and exploit duuring testing and keeping quite hoping it will go live and then to exploit it there. Generaly due to the worlds firsts. However here it was reported in testing and was still allowed to go live. I see how you have avoided that.

    How many were banned during the great plague in WoW? A bug that caused a lot of problems for players when found it could be used as a griefing tool? None that I remember hearing about.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident Let's not forget the stab and BS roof "exploit" that was fixed but no one lost hte HPs they earn't while doing it.

    There have also been cases where Blizzard ballsed up and a bug made it live and they have allowed people to keep levels or items gained. There is even one player who got a legendary item that was never meant to go live let alone be available to players and he got to keep it as the devs themselves said it was their fault. He was the only one to ever get that item.
  • guilli88guilli88 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Blizzard has not only removed items from characters that were gained from boss kills resulting from exploits, they've suspended, and even banned some players for using those exploits. Cryptic was actually fairly merciful in this regard as only 250 players lost only some (not all) of their progress. No one was suspended or banned from the game. Back in the early days of Burning Crusade, for example, an entire guild got banned for farming bosses using a bug in an elevator in a raid instance to reset them, giving them multiple kills in a week. Another got gear stripped away after defeating a raid end boss because they exploited a bugged mechanic.

    As I said in another post, people find 'unintended features' (i.e. bugs) in online games all the time, and have to choose whether to take advantage of (i.e. exploit) them. Depending on the game developer, though, this can have sometimes extreme negative consequences. No developer, however, just winks at it and says, "Oh well...our bad for letting that get through testing..."


    I lost some points, so I'm supposably one of those 250 people. Would you kindly tell me how I exploited?

    I went to tau dewa at lvl 60 because I read on the forums the npc's are a bit easier there and levelling xp is nice and relaxing. I put the difficulty on elite, I then did the patrols on my own. I did this for hours, with voyager episodes on my second screen.

    I then get labelled as a cheater and punished by the developers.



    If I heard in WoW that levelling is nice in some battelground or dungeon, I would not get punished, even if levelling there was uninteded to be so fast. Blizzard would just fix the problem and let us be.

    Exploiting is using game mechanics in an unintended way, how is putting a patrol on elite unintended?????????

    sig

    http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5451/om71.jpg

    It is a peculiar phenomenon that we can imagine events that defy the laws of the universe.
  • meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,594 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Right, and Cryptic didn't want people to do that. So they took away the ability to do that, and took the people who had done that and skipped the most of the new content and set them back so that they'd have a need to do the new content.

    So, finally the truth is out! They didn't want me to bypass the DR content!

    But, erm, to drill down to the bedrock of the case at hand, playing the missions of my choice is hardly 'exploitative behavior', now is it?!

    I win.
    3lsZz0w.jpg
  • shpoksshpoks Member Posts: 6,967 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Right, and Cryptic didn't want people to do that. So they took away the ability to do that, and took the people who had done that and skipped the most of the new content and set them back so that they'd have a need to do the new content. Which is perfectly within their rights. If you don't like what they did or how they did it, as always, you're within your rights to play, or not play the game going forward.

    Why is it always black or white with some of you people? Do you actually think you said something smart by telling players to either suck it up or leave the game?
    No doubt some people explotied, no doubt many people overreact with hyperboles on the forum, however there is a good number of people with very valid complaints and important feedback. Some of them got hit by the rollback out of the blue, without even comming near Tau Dewa and Japori, is that ok? Shut up or walk, eh?

    By your logic displayed here, Cryptic should have locked all other content except DR for every level 50 char in the game, because it's what they want us to play. And by Kahless' beard we must play exactly how, what and when they tell us to, even though there are other venues of gameplay in the game. Because Geko knows what's more fun for me than I do myself. :rolleyes:
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  • bortensbortens Member Posts: 146 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Blizzard has not only removed items from characters that were gained from boss kills resulting from exploits, they've suspended, and even banned some players for using those exploits. Cryptic was actually fairly merciful in this regard as only 250 players lost only some (not all) of their progress. No one was suspended or banned from the game. Back in the early days of Burning Crusade, for example, an entire guild got banned for farming bosses using a bug in an elevator in a raid instance to reset them, giving them multiple kills in a week. Another got gear stripped away after defeating a raid end boss because they exploited a bugged mechanic.

    As I said in another post, people find 'unintended features' (i.e. bugs) in online games all the time, and have to choose whether to take advantage of (i.e. exploit) them. Depending on the game developer, though, this can have sometimes extreme negative consequences. No developer, however, just winks at it and says, "Oh well...our bad for letting that get through testing..."

    they just winked and called it usual tribble whining though,
    since it was a known and reported bug.
    until they retaliated on us for their own incompetence.

    they even had to use metrics to detect a flaw in their workflow, they really didnt realize.
    show me a wow example of that magnitude, go!
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • oneofexploitoneofexploit Member Posts: 54 Arc User
    edited October 2014
    Im grinding japori on normal in protest. Never going back to the Delta Quadrant again. Played the horribly tedious and boring story episodes just to get them out of the way.

    So I guess from using the doff system, and Japori grinding to level, I'm an exploiter.
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