Why were exploiters not simply permanently banned?

At first I was really excited to read that Steven and his team at Intrepid were coming down hard on the exploiting players from the last little bit of testing. However, when I actually read the 'punishment' i was incredibly disappointed. I guess my whole issue comes down to a pretty simple maxim: If you're willing to exploit in an alpha 1, you have no interest in helping create a good game.

Players who are willing to do these kind of things aren't interested in helping a game or community form, they're interested in gaining their own personal power for the purpose of ruining the experience of other players and stroking their egos. These players need to be sent flying into the sun, thanks but no thanks.

I'm also super disappointed that what Intrepid and Steven consider punishment basically comes down to removing the ill-gotten gains and in some (rare?) cases, character deletion. When someone robs a bank, it's not much of a warning if all they have to do is return the stolen money. As far as character deletions go, this is an Alpha where there are already plans for a wipe within the next couple weeks anyways, so this doesn't feel much more impactful than returning the stolen cash.

I've heard some individuals say a couple things that I think are off base: 1.) Some of the players stream, so setting and example for their audience is a good thing. And 2.) These accounts are now flagged, which means they'll be watched more carefully in the future.

Well, as to 1.) It's actually setting a really bad precedent for players who exploit the game and show exploits to their community to be handled softly. Also, a slap on the wrist sends the opposite message that Intrepid and the team seems to want to send.

For 2.) Why on earth would you just create more work for your team by having to keep track of the kind of players who don't have an issue with exploiting the game in an Alpha. As said above, doing this shows a complete and utter lack of interest in helping to create a quality game and quality experience.

MMOs aren't new, bugs in MMOs aren't new, everyone who do this knew what they were doing and understood that they were screwing over everyone else, they simply didn't care. Get rid of them imo and don't look back. I myself would go as far as banning the accounts, blacklisting the CC's and personal information (surface level) from the cards to make sure that if they want to play the game a couple years from now they have to jump through a ton of RL hoops. But maybe that's just me and my MMO PTSD that runs back to UO.

Anyways, hope everyone has a good weekend, a solid testing period and then a Happy Thanksgiving.

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Comments

GrayingGamer

These are exactly the kinds of people you want around during testing, whether they're honest or not. They'll still help find all the ridiculous nonsense now, rather than when you have a retail game with 1000 times more people playing, when exploitation can do serious damage.

Caeryl

Yeah, it's an Alpha. The whole point is to exploit every single aspect you can, to try to break things when it has zero lasting impact, to log and report how exactly those problems and exploits occur so they can be fixed.

Call them exploiters and maybe they are, but them doing that has been more beneficial to the future health of the game than all the people just playing it like an early access game.

Wrennardx

GrayingGamer wrote: »

These are exactly the kinds of people you want around during testing, whether they're honest or not. They'll still help find all the ridiculous nonsense now, rather than when you have a retail game with 1000 times more people playing, when exploitation can do serious damage.

I 100% disagree, you want people who report the exploits imo, not the ones who find them and use them to screw over the entire in-game economy.

Wrennardx

Caeryl wrote: »

Yeah, it's an Alpha. The whole point is to exploit every single aspect you can, to try to break things when it has zero lasting impact, to log and report how exactly those problems and exploits occur so they can be fixed.

Call them exploiters and maybe they are, but them doing that has been more beneficial to the future health of the game than all the people just playing it like an early access game.

You think the point of an alpha is to exploit every aspect? Finding the exploit(s) is the point, not finding them and then destroying the entire in-game economy (which makes it almost impossible to track any other economic issues that might arise from regular game play). There are plenty of players that discovered the dupe, reported it and then stopped using it. None of those players were punished, cause that wasn't what the punishment was for. I'm not sure you're understanding what happened and why it happened. But, to be clear, there is no 'debate' about if these players exploited my friend, it's not disputed, what is disputed is what the punishment for exploiting is.

kadimir

It depends, I think there was some exploitation that didn't go punished, maybe set the wrong tone - this was quite clearly massively exploited to the point that it took extra development resources just to undo some of the damages they did to our testing environment. I think setting a firm expectation is important for a number of reasons - 1.) because maybe those exploiters didn't take the test as seriously as the Devs are and 2.) like it or not, people are treating this as PLAYING THE GAME. As soon as your game builds a reputation and pattern of behavior that blatantly exploiting/cheating goes unpunished - you'll build up a bad reputation just to save the players you plan on permabanning when they do the same thing live. Then we all lose - reputation is going to be next to impossible to repair, look at how many people bring up new world, or the race to world first for wow "exploit early, exploit often". You might think it's just testing, but the reality is, a ton of the hype is coming from people "playing" the alpha - and a lot of opinions by people outside of the game and inside of the test are being formed. You don't get a 2nd chance with most of the potential market, and you don't get to negotiate what is "just a test" with someone clicking over onto a stream watching some broken PvP with decked out full legendary players destroying the streamer they are watching while the streamer complains about the cheaters that just killed them.

Needless to say, Steven fired a warning shot to show intrepid isn't going to let it take root in it's game - I'd say that's a lot more than they deserve but I certainly would not expect mercy next time.

Wrennardx

kadimir wrote: »

It depends, I think there was some exploitation that didn't go punished, maybe set the wrong tone - this was quite clearly massively exploited to the point that it took extra development resources just to undo some of the damages they did to our testing environment. I think setting a firm expectation is important for a number of reasons - 1.) because maybe those exploiters didn't take the test as seriously as the Devs are and 2.) like it or not, people are treating this as PLAYING THE GAME. As soon as your game builds a reputation and pattern of behavior that blatantly exploiting/cheating goes unpunished - you'll build up a bad reputation just to save the players you plan on permabanning when they do the same thing live. Then we all lose - reputation is going to be next to impossible to repair, look at how many people bring up new world, or the race to world first for wow "exploit early, exploit often". You might think it's just testing, but the reality is, a ton of the hype is coming from people "playing" the alpha - and a lot of opinions by people outside of the game and inside of the test are being formed. You don't get a 2nd chance with most of the potential market, and you don't get to negotiate what is "just a test" with someone clicking over onto a stream watching some broken PvP with decked out full legendary players destroying the streamer they are watching while the streamer complains about the cheaters that just killed them.

Needless to say, Steven fired a warning shot to show intrepid isn't going to let it take root in it's game - I'd say that's a lot more than they deserve but I certainly would not expect mercy next time.

I agree with pretty much your whole post, except where you think that Steven fired a warning shot so it won't take root. I think the slap on the wrist and no actual punishment makes it much more likely that this stuff continues (more likely than if they'd dropped the hammer on them). None of this is new, people who are exploiting know exactly what they are doing and should be treated as such.

Azherae

It's fine currently because Intrepid doesn't have a strong reason to care about the status of the economy at this stage.

While it's true that a lot of the 'easier' exploits would be found anyway, removing the players altogether has the chance, however small, to create false positives and drama whereas keeping that sort of 'get ahead no matter what' player around helps with other things.

Messing with them is better than removing them. Maybe this stance should change in Phase 2, but for now, it's probably not worth prioritizing.

I might just be biased because I've responded exactly the same way as Intrepid in similar situations. Devs are honestly more inspired to find ways to track or mess with these players than to spend their time 'perfecting things so that they don't have to deal with drama'.

Caeryl

Wrennardx wrote: »

Caeryl wrote: »

Yeah, it's an Alpha. The whole point is to exploit every single aspect you can, to try to break things when it has zero lasting impact, to log and report how exactly those problems and exploits occur so they can be fixed.

Call them exploiters and maybe they are, but them doing that has been more beneficial to the future health of the game than all the people just playing it like an early access game.

You think the point of an alpha is to exploit every aspect? Finding the exploit(s) is the point, not finding them and then destroying the entire in-game economy (which makes it almost impossible to track any other economic issues that might arise from regular game play). There are plenty of players that discovered the dupe, reported it and then stopped using it. None of those players were punished, cause that wasn't what the punishment was for. I'm not sure you're understanding what happened and why it happened. But, to be clear, there is no 'debate' about if these players exploited my friend, it's not disputed, what is disputed is what the punishment for exploiting is.

And it's still the point to do these things, because it's a testing phase. There's no lasting harm done, because it's a testing phase.

There is no economy at work or balance to fret over yet. It's all up in the air. If this was after launch, I'd agree to hit the players with a ban, but it isn't. This is specifically, explicitly a temporary phase of the game where it's intended for the community to do these things. Too much in this case? Yeah, sure, but there's no harm done and the bug is now sufficiently known, the process able to be rechecked and corrected to fix it and prevent it happening in the future. All in all, this was a positive for progress toward the actual game.

Aszkalon

Wrennardx wrote: »

Why were exploiters not simply permanently banned ?

I can imagine 2 Reasons.

First : Sir Steven is a merciful God. He forgives at least one or maybe even several Offenses before smiting us Mortals down with his mighty Hammer.

Second : These People are actually helpful. And there is no pain or harm done by acknowledging that. These People "HELP" finding the Exploits. Helping to find Solutions to prevent the finished Game to be exploited in the way that were used during the Alpha to exploit the Game.

Taleof2Cities

Caeryl wrote: »

And it's still the point to do these things, because it's a testing phase. There's no lasting harm done, because it's a testing phase.

Exactly this.

Someone seems to think we’re playing a finished product with completed and robust economy features.

BlessedCRS

I don’t see the reason of permanent banning of someone playing a game when it’s the alpha the whole point is to fix and find bugs. Exploiting or not the game is not really meant to be fully enjoyable yet this is not the full release. Nothing matters in this alpha but finding bugs and issues and even our accounts will be wiped starting phase two. So who actually cares if someone is exploiting a bug right now as long as it’s being dealt with in the upcoming phases and full release.

Lodrig

Caeryl wrote: »

And it's still the point to do these things, because it's a testing phase. There's no lasting harm done, because it's a testing phase.

There is no economy at work or balance to fret over yet. It's all up in the air. If this was after launch, I'd agree to hit the players with a ban, but it isn't. This is specifically, explicitly a temporary phase of the game where it's intended for the community to do these things. Too much in this case? Yeah, sure, but there's no harm done and the bug is now sufficiently known, the process able to be rechecked and corrected to fix it and prevent it happening in the future. All in all, this was a positive for progress toward the actual game.

This is moronic. A ton of Dev time was wasted DOING the reverting, a ton of data on the building of nodes and economy was tainted. Stevens time at applying disipline was a waste. How you can't see that ACTUALLY exploiting en mass is DAMAGING to the testing and in no way a good thing and in no way the same as a bug report, is mind boggling. Please go think about the nonsense you have said and reflect on it.

Wrennardx

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Caeryl wrote: »

And it's still the point to do these things, because it's a testing phase. There's no lasting harm done, because it's a testing phase.

Exactly this.

Someone seems to think we’re playing a finished product with completed and robust economy features.

Ugh, these are both just made up positions guys. You can find a bug without exploiting it. It's crazy to be giving these kind of players cover, they obviously don't care at all about helping to create a good game. The bug was reported by tons of players wouldn't didn't actively use it, because actively using it caused a myriad of other problems that spread through the entire game, making other information gathering almost useless.

C'mon.

Wrennardx

Lodrig wrote: »

Caeryl wrote: »

And it's still the point to do these things, because it's a testing phase. There's no lasting harm done, because it's a testing phase.

There is no economy at work or balance to fret over yet. It's all up in the air. If this was after launch, I'd agree to hit the players with a ban, but it isn't. This is specifically, explicitly a temporary phase of the game where it's intended for the community to do these things. Too much in this case? Yeah, sure, but there's no harm done and the bug is now sufficiently known, the process able to be rechecked and corrected to fix it and prevent it happening in the future. All in all, this was a positive for progress toward the actual game.

This is moronic. A ton of Dev time was wasted DOING the reverting, a ton of data on the building of nodes and economy was tainted. Stevens time at applying disipline was a waste. How you can't see that ACTUALLY exploiting en mass is DAMAGING to the testing and in no way a good thing and in no way the same as a bug report, is mind boggling. Please go think about the nonsense you have said and reflect on it.

Thank you, this was my whole point. The fact that so many people don't see this is crazy. There were plenty of people who found the dupe and then reported it without trying to gain an advantage and bricking the whole freaking economy.

Arya_Yeshe

people are SUPPOSED to find exploits

Wrennardx

BlessedCRS wrote: »

I don’t see the reason of permanent banning of someone playing a game when it’s the alpha the whole point is to fix and find bugs. Exploiting or not the game is not really meant to be fully enjoyable yet this is not the full release. Nothing matters in this alpha but finding bugs and issues and even our accounts will be wiped starting phase two. So who actually cares if someone is exploiting a bug right now as long as it’s being dealt with in the upcoming phases and full release.

To be clear, no one has an issue with finding bugs. No one. The issue is when the person finds the bug and then exploits it which ruins a ton of other acicularly features of the game and makes information gathering on all other other subsystems nearly useless.

If you really thought that 'nothing matters in the alpha but finding bugs and issues..." you would hate this kind of stuff, because it makes everything else harder.

Wrennardx

Aszkalon wrote: »

Wrennardx wrote: »

Why were exploiters not simply permanently banned ?

I can imagine 2 Reasons.

First : Sir Steven is a merciful God. He forgives at least one or maybe even several Offenses before smiting us Mortals down with his mighty Hammer.

Second : These People are actually helpful. And there is no pain or harm done by acknowledging that. These People "HELP" finding the Exploits. Helping to find Solutions to prevent the finished Game to be exploited in the way that were used during the Alpha to exploit the Game.

These people aren't helpful. The people who find the bugs and then report them, while not using them and ruining other aspects of the Alpha are helpful. What exploiting these bugs did was break other aspects of the Alpha while making it so that Steven and his team needed to waste time repairing the entire system which they broke, rather than just fixing a bug.

No one thinks that bug finding/reporting is bad, it's the exploitation for personal and guild power that is the problem. I'm surprised you can't see that.

Wrennardx

Azherae wrote: »

It's fine currently because Intrepid doesn't have a strong reason to care about the status of the economy at this stage.

While it's true that a lot of the 'easier' exploits would be found anyway, removing the players altogether has the chance, however small, to create false positives and drama whereas keeping that sort of 'get ahead no matter what' player around helps with other things.

Messing with them is better than removing them. Maybe this stance should change in Phase 2, but for now, it's probably not worth prioritizing.

I might just be biased because I've responded exactly the same way as Intrepid in similar situations. Devs are honestly more inspired to find ways to track or mess with these players than to spend their time 'perfecting things so that they don't have to deal with drama'.

I understand your theme here, but if 'tracking' them and 'using' them was the goal, you wouldn't warn them at all. You'd just let them get away with it and then burn them later. I also think that you're way off when it comes to "not mattering" because that actually makes this worse.

The fact that these players did this in an Alpha that wasn't permanent shows how much they just don't care about the game going forward. They were willing to brick the whole freaking economy (there is one) and ruin the entire node progression for a little boost to their egos.

Keep in mind, the reason for initial node testing is to see how things are balanced, to see if the progress is possible or if the numbers are tuned too high. Now, after the exploit, all the data is useless, they don't have any idea how the numbers look now. Sure, maybe it's not the end of the world, but it's wasted time again and again.

Azherae

Wrennardx wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

It's fine currently because Intrepid doesn't have a strong reason to care about the status of the economy at this stage.

While it's true that a lot of the 'easier' exploits would be found anyway, removing the players altogether has the chance, however small, to create false positives and drama whereas keeping that sort of 'get ahead no matter what' player around helps with other things.

Messing with them is better than removing them. Maybe this stance should change in Phase 2, but for now, it's probably not worth prioritizing.

I might just be biased because I've responded exactly the same way as Intrepid in similar situations. Devs are honestly more inspired to find ways to track or mess with these players than to spend their time 'perfecting things so that they don't have to deal with drama'.

I understand your theme here, but if 'tracking' them and 'using' them was the goal, you wouldn't warn them at all. You'd just let them get away with it and then burn them later. I also think that you're way off when it comes to "not mattering" because that actually makes this worse.

The fact that these players did this in an Alpha that wasn't permanent shows how much they just don't care about the game going forward. They were willing to brick the whole freaking economy (there is one) and ruin the entire node progression for a little boost to their egos.

Keep in mind, the reason for initial node testing is to see how things are balanced, to see if the progress is possible or if the numbers are tuned too high. Now, after the exploit, all the data is useless, they don't have any idea how the numbers look now. Sure, maybe it's not the end of the world, but it's wasted time again and again.

I might have a biased perspective due to being part of the Pre Phase 1 test group.

For various reasons, I don't believe node progression balance is being tested at this time, in any capacity, nor any economic incentives. I have reasons to believe that when they say they want tests of Nodes and such, it is the most basic version of the testing: "Does the Node get exp when it's supposed to get exp under all conditions?".

I'm also very very picky/arrogant about economy stuff. The Ashes of Creation economy in Phase 1 is a placeholder. It serves no longterm purpose and the thing it is testing is not meaningfully affected by this to the point where banning the exploiters is worth doing.

Wrennardx

Azherae wrote: »

Wrennardx wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

It's fine currently because Intrepid doesn't have a strong reason to care about the status of the economy at this stage.

While it's true that a lot of the 'easier' exploits would be found anyway, removing the players altogether has the chance, however small, to create false positives and drama whereas keeping that sort of 'get ahead no matter what' player around helps with other things.

Messing with them is better than removing them. Maybe this stance should change in Phase 2, but for now, it's probably not worth prioritizing.

I might just be biased because I've responded exactly the same way as Intrepid in similar situations. Devs are honestly more inspired to find ways to track or mess with these players than to spend their time 'perfecting things so that they don't have to deal with drama'.

I understand your theme here, but if 'tracking' them and 'using' them was the goal, you wouldn't warn them at all. You'd just let them get away with it and then burn them later. I also think that you're way off when it comes to "not mattering" because that actually makes this worse.

The fact that these players did this in an Alpha that wasn't permanent shows how much they just don't care about the game going forward. They were willing to brick the whole freaking economy (there is one) and ruin the entire node progression for a little boost to their egos.

Keep in mind, the reason for initial node testing is to see how things are balanced, to see if the progress is possible or if the numbers are tuned too high. Now, after the exploit, all the data is useless, they don't have any idea how the numbers look now. Sure, maybe it's not the end of the world, but it's wasted time again and again.

I might have a biased perspective due to being part of the Pre Phase 1 test group.

For various reasons, I don't believe node progression balance is being tested at this time, in any capacity, nor any economic incentives. I have reasons to believe that when they say they want tests of Nodes and such, it is the most basic version of the testing: "Does the Node get exp when it's supposed to get exp under all conditions?".

I'm also very very picky/arrogant about economy stuff. The Ashes of Creation economy in Phase 1 is a placeholder. It serves no longterm purpose and the thing it is testing is not meaningfully affected by this to the point where banning the exploiters is worth doing.

Ok, if we go with your way of thinking here, isn't this the best[/i] time to ban these players as doing so gets rid of them before they can cause actual problems?

I'll say again, if a player was willing to do this right now then they'll have no problem doing it in the future. What this 'punishment' might actually have done is get them to behave in the pre-launch parts of the development and then go back to exploiting once the game opens up and they can get lost in the shuffle. Either way, I haven't heard a convincing argument as to why these guys should be kept around.

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