Why were exploiters not simply permanently banned?

Wrennardx

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.

Wrennardx

Noaani wrote: »

Wrennardx wrote: »

The data was gathered by tons of players who didn't exploit the bug

I'm confused.

I was asked if I thought Intrepid were gathering data, I said yes, on some specific things, and you come back saying that it was players gathering data.

Which data are you talking about, data that Intrepid is gathering, or data that players are gathering?

[

I can't believe I have to spell this out, but obviously both are happening at the same time. You seem to be stuck on this idea that because the game isn't finished no useful information can be gained, you said it a bunch of times. I guess I would ask then, what's the point of the testing? Do you think they're only interested in server stability (despite all the recent patch changes that have altered fundamental systems within the game)?

The theme that is very prevalent here is that because the game is not finished exploiting bugs don't matter. I would disagree as it's showing a very real problem in the community that is forming and creating problems where they don't need to be.

However, after doing more reading and speaking to some people on the server which seems to have exploited the most, the genuine fear is that almost the whole server woulda been banned. All of a sudden, the push back makes a lot more sense, this isn't a philosophical disagreement anymore, in a lot of cases it's just self-preservation. Steven decided to slap them on the wrist and wag his finger at the exploiters, I think in the end it'll be something that the game development cycle will suffer from. Bummer.