Don't ban people who exploit.

Take their stuff away sure but I hate the idea of being punished for a developers mistake.

Cheaters no remorse, but people using bugs to their advantage? That shouldn't be ban worthy. Just take away anything they got from abusing the bug.

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Dolyem

@worddog New World is a terrible example of how to handle a game being exploited. The game wasnt even properly polished for its release, and then every time they tried to fix some bugs, theyd simultaneously create even more than there were. When it comes to duping on MMO's, especially early release, it needs to be completely prevented in order to nurture a player driven economy. So if you make it clear that exploiting bugs for personal gain is a bannable offence, it definitely sends a message. And as @Noaani said, the devs on the New World team werent really actively doing anything that made a difference as far as vanning exploiters goes. I remember reporting fishing bots that were obvious to anyone even glancing at them and they never received a ban or even a kick.

insomnia

worddog wrote: »

insomnia wrote: »

Summpwner wrote: »

I don't understand how this is even a point of discussion...

Because some people cheat/exploit games. I guess OP wants to be able to do it, without getting punished

worddog wrote: »

Liniker wrote: »

worddog wrote: »

Btw exploiters are literally your best QA team and they do it for free.

stop with this bullshit.... you opened this thread so you know that the shitty exploiters like yourself have Absolutely NO intention at All to report the exploits and bugs they find

you want to abuse bugs and gain advantage without the fear of being banned - and you have the audacity of saying you do QA for free? lmao...

I'm glad Steven hates cheaters and exploiters - and you will get your ass banned in Ashes.

If you're fine with assuming things about strangers on the internet I guess there isn't any way to argue with you.

You assumed I use exploits in MMO's. I do not. When a game has massive issues with exploits I simply stop playing that game because it isn't fun. I quit New World after the duplication exploits ruined the economy.

If people do not try to exploit the game during the Alpha and Beta, you will have massive issues on launch. People who have experience exploiting games will be the best for the job.

From how toxic your post is, I doubt you actually care about anything I've said...

worddog wrote: »

akabear wrote: »

Exploiters pretty much decimated NW. Do not want to see again! Happy to see those that exploit penalized up to banned! Set the ground rules and expectations up front, and just perhaps there will be less that take advantage

Do you not realize banning the exploiters didn't fix anything right? The moment those duplication exploits were found, that server's economy died. They never recovered. You need exploiters to figure out all the problems that the developers overlook, and you need them to do it before launch.

yes BEFORE launch. A big difference
That isn't the only reason New World died. Now you are just talking BS. The game had so many issues.

And do YOU realise there is a huge difference between exploing in a testing phase, and in the released game. I recall there were people in APoC that did try to cheat etc. But it was to find the issues and they did report them, if i remember correctly. Again, a difference. Part of testing can be to "break the game". Find bugs and exploits

I have no idea why people think the average player can find ANY of these exploits. Who do you think finds exploits? Exploiters.

It is crazy to me that people think the average player just randomly encountering an exploit will someone reveal every exploit in the game before launch.

If you do not have experience in exploiting games, I am sorry but you are genuinely not useful when it comes to discovering and reporting these issues.

Not only do you have to find the exploit, you need to be able to reproduce it, and understand why and how it works.

People complain about exploiters, but it's purely an emotional response.

How do you deal with exploiters? By hiring exploiters.

Criminals do bad things, but sometimes they can get their charges dropped because they can actually help stop more crime by working with the feds.

I'm sorry but your average Joe will simply never be able to do what exploiters can do, so if exploiters are stigmatized why on earth would they fix your game in alpha?

If you choose to make exploiters your enemy, they will sit on all the exploits and abuse them on launch, this has happened in a few games I've seen through development.

The real issue is the exploits, not the exploiters. And that is literally just an objective fact. If we ignore the exploits and focus on exploiters the only thing that suffers is the game. Exploiters can always get a new account and quickly get ahead through their exploits.

Fix the pipe, don't put duct tape on the leak.

They are called testers. And there are people that stumble upon bugs/exploits and report them. I found one in New World. Not a huge thing. You could remove the weight on some materials on you, if i remember correctly. After i thought it had happened, i did a couple of test to see if it was really going on. Then i reported it. You seem to not be able to seperate people who don't report it and do it for personal gain, and those that actualy report exploits/bugs. You are on your own. No one agrees with you, because it's a ridiculous idea. There is a difference between using an exploit on purpose, and by accident.

Noaani

worddog wrote: »

The only thing I care about is minimizing the damage exploits cause as much as possible. To do that, you have to first know what exploits exist, this is where exploiters are the best for the job.

I mean, your logic here is faulty.

You previously said that it is not regular players that are finding exploits, it is exploiters.

If what you want is a game where the damage from exploits is minimized, then surely you dont want those exploiters in the game.

I mean, if a game has no exploiters, no one will find the exploits.

As such, in order to minimize the damage of the NEXT exploit, you ban all exploiters of the current exploit.

I mean, we all want a game where exploits do the last amount of damage as possible. That is why we dont want exploiters, they are the ones that deal damage to a game when they find exploits. Getting rid of them now means they cant do that damage in the future - even if they have already done some now.

akabear

@worddog are you basing NW issues from experience or from what you have ascertained online.

I put in over 1,200hrs in NW, and did not experience a great deal of impact from exploiters as you have suggested occurred. There were a few days of market place down time on a few occassions which was annoying at the time but not a game killer.

worddog2

akabear wrote: »

@worddog are you basing NW issues from experience or from what you have ascertained online.

I put in over 1,200hrs in NW, and did not experience a great deal of impact from exploiters as you have suggested occurred. There were a few days of market place down time on a few occassions which was annoying at the time but not a game killer.

My only experience is the server I played on specifically so it's possible other servers had different experiences. I also heard from a couple other ones that they had a similar experience to mine.

Did you follow the end game markets or were you playing a more relaxed playstyle? I'm sure most players would not have noticed the issue, as it only pertained to the highest level of play.

The problem was that some of the best and most important items in the game were being duplicated and sold on the market for much cheaper than usual. For a brief time this destroyed the late game economy. Crafters were genuinely useless as a market. After they banned the players that were duping items, they said that the duplication bug was fixed. It was not fixed. People continued to dupe high level items and the only people selling high level items on the market were exploiters, not actual crafters. I left about a month or two after the duping started. The game just felt really stupid at that point from an economic perspective.

I do plan to try the game again once fresh start servers come online in November though. Hopefully it's good enough now to tide me over while I wait for alpha-2.

Aerlana

worddog wrote: »

I think abusing a bug after reporting it is totally fine. It sucks that it exists but if you have to exploit to beat other exploiters than that is just the meta.

Yeah but no.

Because, if exploiters are banned, you don't have to beat them because they don't have account anymore.

With a strict rule of ban, those who reports AND dont exploit it are those who don't lose their account, the meta becomes "keeping my account usable and not losing my 10, 100, 1000 hours of gameplay already done"

Now, i admit the ban at the first exploit is maybe not the best way, but the penalty should be big enough to have people understand a big "no" ... like, "you exploited it 4 hours, managed to collect around 1k gold ? ok, lets set your current gold amount at -1k (so you lose the gold made during hours, gold you had before and... 1k more) and if caught again ? character(s) deleted. Caught a third time ? there the account deletion

If not ban, any really hard punishment is the only way to go with bug exploiter in game with persistant systems.

Exploiters are people who find bugs and chose to use them. some people, here on forum are able to find them, but because like you, they want a game with low exploit damage, they will help to find them during alpha/beta, But also AFTER the game release.

If you want a game with low exploit damage, use your knowledge to find exploitable bugs to report them, but don't use it. the simple fact you use it increase the damages from this exploit...

worddog2

Aerlana wrote: »

worddog wrote: »

I think abusing a bug after reporting it is totally fine. It sucks that it exists but if you have to exploit to beat other exploiters than that is just the meta.

Yeah but no.

Because, if exploiters are banned, you don't have to beat them because they don't have account anymore.

With a strict rule of ban, those who reports AND dont exploit it are those who don't lose their account, the meta becomes "keeping my account usable and not losing my 10, 100, 1000 hours of gameplay already done"

Now, i admit the ban at the first exploit is maybe not the best way, but the penalty should be big enough to have people understand a big "no" ... like, "you exploited it 4 hours, managed to collect around 1k gold ? ok, lets set your current gold amount at -1k (so you lose the gold made during hours, gold you had before and... 1k more) and if caught again ? character(s) deleted. Caught a third time ? there the account deletion

If not ban, any really hard punishment is the only way to go with bug exploiter in game with persistant systems.

Exploiters are people who find bugs and chose to use them. some people, here on forum are able to find them, but because like you, they want a game with low exploit damage, they will help to find them during alpha/beta, But also AFTER the game release.

If you want a game with low exploit damage, use your knowledge to find exploitable bugs to report them, but don't use it. the simple fact you use it increase the damages from this exploit...

The idea of banning exploiters just doesn't work though. There will always be more exploiters as long as the exploit exists.

If exploiters are water, than exploits are the river, you need to damn the river, not try to scoop up all the water, more water will always be coming.

Mag7spy

Then you also ban those exploiters and people will start to realize do i want to lose 500+ hours of gameplay and no longer be competitive in the scene. Leading to less people using the exploit.

Effectively what you want is new world where you get a slap on the risk for exploiting so people do it since they know they won't be punished.

Litterial 101 if no punishment exist more people do it. I don't understand how you actually have the logic backwards, it sounds like you want to exploit.

worddog2

Mag7spy wrote: »

Then you also ban those exploiters and people will start to realize do i want to lose 500+ hours of gameplay and no longer be competitive in the scene. Leading to less people using the exploit.

Effectively what you want is new world where you get a slap on the risk for exploiting so people do it since they know they won't be punished.

Litterial 101 if no punishment exist more people do it. I don't understand how you actually have the logic backwards, it sounds like you want to exploit.

If you want to rely on banning exploiters instead of fixing exploits, you'll end up playing a game where exploits are the meta.

If you want to ban exploiters, you will have more difficulty in detecting exploits.

By allowing exploiters to exist, you create a metal detector for exploits. Instead of only the top guilds knowing secret exploits that they can use for their own gain, random players can show the world these exploits and the developers can more easily fix them.

The reason you don't understand what I'm saying is because you don't understand that more people exploiting actually leads to less exploits. Once you fix all the exploits it doesn't matter if the exploiters are banned or not, they have nothing to exploit.

Aerlana

worddog wrote: »

The idea of banning exploiters just doesn't work though. There will always be more exploiters as long as the exploit exists.

If exploiters are water, than exploits are the river, you need to damn the river, not try to scoop up all the water, more water will always be coming.

it seems you consider there is choice between ban exploiters and fix the bugs.

But no, you can do both at same time. no one here says "no problem with exploitable bugs, exploiters are problem"

The topic is not "should the biggest bugs be fixed asap or no ?" but "should exploiter be banned or no ?"

Answer is "Yes" on both.

You mistake is imagine that a mmorpg can reach the "no bug" ... totally impossible, there will be bugs.
Players have to report bugs if they love the game and want it to continue to live long days. Devs have to fix those bug asap. And Game Masters have to ban people who don't care about the game future and exploit it.

Edit : also, you do another mistake : only exploiters are efficient to find bugs. it is false, exploiters is people efficient to find bug and who decide to get benefits from them. There are people that know really well how to find bugs... and prefer to report it, without fucking up the game economy thru exploit.

Mag7spy

worddog wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Then you also ban those exploiters and people will start to realize do i want to lose 500+ hours of gameplay and no longer be competitive in the scene. Leading to less people using the exploit.

Effectively what you want is new world where you get a slap on the risk for exploiting so people do it since they know they won't be punished.

Litterial 101 if no punishment exist more people do it. I don't understand how you actually have the logic backwards, it sounds like you want to exploit.

If you want to rely on banning exploiters instead of fixing exploits, you'll end up playing a game where exploits are the meta.

If you want to ban exploiters, you will have more difficulty in detecting exploits.

By allowing exploiters to exist, you create a metal detector for exploits. Instead of only the top guilds knowing secret exploits that they can use for their own gain, random players can show the world these exploits and the developers can more easily fix them.

The reason you don't understand what I'm saying is because you don't understand that more people exploiting actually leads to less exploits. Once you fix all the exploits it doesn't matter if the exploiters are banned or not, they have nothing to exploit.

Why is your way of thinking so backwards, it literarily feels like you want to defend exploiters deep down.

Why would they not be fixing exploits when they are found, you suggesting they are banning and not fixing is really weird that is a red flag.

If someone is exploiting their systems are going to find it out by people gaining and doing weird things and accounts should be flagged.

No more people exploiting leads to bigger issues and people quitting the game as it shows the devs don't care or have made a potentially game with a bunch of issues. Less people exploiting is just less people exploiting which means less people that will be banned.

I don't understand how your logic could be so bad unless you actually are salty about not having exploited yourself in games. The fact you want everyone to exploit is honestly one of the most foolish things i've ever heard. Any person that played new world would be laughing their ass off wondering if you are trolling.

SongRune

worddog wrote: »

If exploiters are water, than exploits are the river, you need to damn the river, not try to scoop up all the water, more water will always be coming.

If you don't want water damage, you need to do both.
If you don't want a toxic community, you need to do both.

worddog wrote: »

If you want to rely on banning exploiters instead of fixing exploits, you'll end up playing a game where exploits are the meta.

Why would you ever do that? You do both. No one here has ever suggested banning exploiters and then not fixing the exploits, because that would be stupid. You fix the exploit, then review the server logs, find the list of people who did X thing Y times during Z period, and feed it to "banhammer.pl".

worddog wrote: »

If you want to ban exploiters, you will have more difficulty in detecting exploits.

By allowing exploiters to exist, you create a metal detector for exploits. Instead of only the top guilds knowing secret exploits that they can use for their own gain, random players can show the world these exploits and the developers can more easily fix them.

Here's an interesting philosophical question: If an exploit exists, and no-one exploits it, does it matter? Hint: The answer is 'no'. But if someone is exploiting it, then you have the 'help detecting exploits' you wanted.

The more important thing to realize is this: You don't need exploiters to find exploits. Normal non-abusive players will do so. I understand you may not know many programmers, QA professionals, or even professional security consultants. Take it from one of those people who knows a lot more of those people: A lot of them are not toxic cheaters. You don't need toxic cheaters to have the expertise, or even interest, to break or exploit systems. Plenty of people with the skillsets in question will celebrate their cool find, report it and move on.

worddog wrote: »

The reason you don't understand what I'm saying is because you don't understand that more people exploiting actually leads to less exploits. Once you fix all the exploits it doesn't matter if the exploiters are banned or not, they have nothing to exploit.

The real problem is that 'more people exploiting' makes damage control more difficult, creates negative gameplay experiences for more players, and fosters a toxic community by creating mindsets similar to the ones you have described earlier in this thread. "Letting exploiters stick around" isn't free. What you are suggesting is a good idea if "keeping exploiters around" is free. The problem is, it has a lot of relatively steep costs, and no-one wants to pay them.

Sure there will always be more exploiters, but you don't have to tolerate the community type that develops in games where cheating is encouraged. You don't have to tolerate the extra GM and developer (cleanup) time involved in dealing with incidents that are exploited by 5000 players instead of 500. You don't have to broadcast to the world "exploiters here aren't punished".

Exploiters are a type of person that should not be welcome in any game. They provide no benefit (including testing) that is not available from better sources (all the random programmers, QA professionals, and security consultants that like to play video games in their downtime, and are invested in creating a good experience for themselves and for others), they cause concrete, measurable harm to a game community, and they increase developer costs. They're not worth the harm they cause, and they never will be.

GrilledCheeseMojito

worddog wrote: »

By allowing exploiters to exist, you create a metal detector for exploits. Instead of only the top guilds knowing secret exploits that they can use for their own gain, random players can show the world these exploits and the developers can more easily fix them.

Except you don't need said random players to exploit the bug in order to find it. This problem has been solved for over 20 years in a different MMO - Kingdom of Loathing. They will mercilessly perma-ban anyone who performs a serious exploit...but at the same time, there is always a prominent "Report Bug" button throughout their UI, and if you do find something legitimately damaging, you get awarded a special weapon that is both very functional and can be shown off to whoever you want. Heck, they even have a "Bigger bugfinder blade" if you find something horrendous enough to cause major damage to the game, like item duping exploits that would ruin the economy.

It's just the same as in the real security world. If you allow for responsible disclosure, you listen to your reporter, and you offer those who find your bugs either a reward, recognition, or both, while still banning any exploiters you detect, this will create a healthy environment for everyone. To my knowledge, there haven't been any major economic bugs in fifteen years in the game due to the effectiveness of this policy.

There are plenty of people who will poke around your game, find problems, and let you know, because that's something those people find fun. Or you have people like me, who break every piece of technology they interact with in new and exciting ways. You don't have to take the damage to your game's culture that letting exploiters run wild would create when there are so many easier ways to get the bug reports you need.

Hinotori

GrilledCheeseMojito wrote: »

Kingdom of Loathing.

An adventurer is you my friend.

worddog2

GrilledCheeseMojito wrote: »

worddog wrote: »

By allowing exploiters to exist, you create a metal detector for exploits. Instead of only the top guilds knowing secret exploits that they can use for their own gain, random players can show the world these exploits and the developers can more easily fix them.

Except you don't need said random players to exploit the bug in order to find it. This problem has been solved for over 20 years in a different MMO - Kingdom of Loathing. They will mercilessly perma-ban anyone who performs a serious exploit...but at the same time, there is always a prominent "Report Bug" button throughout their UI, and if you do find something legitimately damaging, you get awarded a special weapon that is both very functional and can be shown off to whoever you want. Heck, they even have a "Bigger bugfinder blade" if you find something horrendous enough to cause major damage to the game, like item duping exploits that would ruin the economy.

It's just the same as in the real security world. If you allow for responsible disclosure, you listen to your reporter, and you offer those who find your bugs either a reward, recognition, or both, while still banning any exploiters you detect, this will create a healthy environment for everyone. To my knowledge, there haven't been any major economic bugs in fifteen years in the game due to the effectiveness of this policy.

There are plenty of people who will poke around your game, find problems, and let you know, because that's something those people find fun. Or you have people like me, who break every piece of technology they interact with in new and exciting ways. You don't have to take the damage to your game's culture that letting exploiters run wild would create when there are so many easier ways to get the bug reports you need.

I've never heard of that game but that sounds pretty good. I'm only taking about my experience with games I've played, and QA teams I've seen. QA tends to be really low on the priority list for a lot of studios.

If they actually have a real QA team that isn't just saying they've fixed stuff when they haven't, then that'd be good.

My main point is I don't want a game with massive game breaking bugs and exploits. I don't care if people exploit, I want the exploits to not exist in the first place. If someone kills my family I don't care if they go to jail, I want my family back.

novercalis

my only issue is - I found a bug/exploit - I get banned when i report it cause I accidently found it.
Sometimes I wasnt even sure I found it, so I try to repeat it to confirm how it happens - then state in my report HOW TO REPLICATE... then I get fucking banned...

WoW, EQ, Ragnarok, Runes of magic all have banned for these type of actions...

Edit - the fucked up part - other times when I found them, I report it on FORUMS on a alt account - Solution solved very quickly, community major upset with me but im not banned lol...

blul

Sathrago wrote: »

Someone labeled an exploiter is someone who intentionally uses a bug or mechanic in order to expedite an advantage that was not intended to a large degree. An example of an exploiter vs someone being smart about how they play the game.

An exploiter finds out how to bug specific mobs into a wall or terrain objects making them unable to attack but still killable and or lootable. They then proceed to do this over and over to gain an advantage.

A player being smart might find out that a certain area has a higher spawn rate of mobs so they farm that location because it's optimal.

Both examples provide an advantage to the player, only one requires playing the game not as intended.

idk about making them unable to attack, but wallstucking mobs shouldnt be banable at all. in the case of being able to wallstuck anything in any video game it is just badly made. thats all. and if you can make these mobs unable to attack, you as an experienced mmorpg dev messed up completely since that is a known thing in lots of games. also, how would you as a player know if anything is a bug or just not well coded? if i e.g. craft 50x sissors but only put in 5x metal instead of 50x metal for the first time and idk better, how is it exploiting? im just selling packs of 50x sissors over and over again and technically break the sissor economy without actually knowing it.
it's a thin line between exploiting and unknowingly do stuff which isnt really intended.
i suggest keeping an updated list of known bugs and communicate them as not allowed to being used until they are fixed. first people who "used" a bug and "exploited" them could not know it wasnt an intended feature. you cant implicate that every player knows everything abotu a game, what should be possible and for gods sake not how bugs look like. not everybody is a video game veteran.
also, has anyone ever heard of unsual gameplay patterns? it is possible to trac those down and give them a short ban of 24h to take a look into it, maybe contact the player and talk with him about that. work of technical team and the GM team.
it sickens me how many people got banned in video games for minor stuff. just state rules clearly and with clearly im not talking about "dont exploit/use bugs in our game pls" hurr durr.

insomnia

I'm starting to wonder if OP is just trolling, considering another topic he made

worddog2

insomnia wrote: »

I'm starting to wonder if OP is just trolling, considering another topic he made

Did I make a post saying to ban exploiters? Why would I be trolling

superhero6785

It's not so simple to just "take away" what the exploiter gained through the exploit. If someone finds a gold dupe, then goes to the auction house and buys up tons of stuff with no regard for price (because he has unlimited gold) it's nearly impossible to follow that trail of transactions across dozens, or even hundreds, of players to undo the damage. By telling exploiters "it's our fault and you won't be punished", you're opening the door for everyone to take advantage of every exploit they can knowing full well they'll probably come out ahead even if they do get stuff taken away. And the economy as a whole goes into chaos.

No. You have to let them know if they are caught they will be banned. You could even offer "bounties for bugs" to encourage people to report the bugs/exploits and move on rather than abuse them.

Child Item