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.
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.
Wrennardx wrote: » 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.
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.
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.
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'.
Azherae wrote: » Wrennardx wrote: » 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. Because the issue here is about how you 'prove' that they did it on purpose. MMORPGs are very complex, and people don't always pay a lot of attention. Bluntly put, some people are sometimes literally 'not even intelligent/attentive' enough to understand that what they are doing is not intentional to the game's design. Sometimes they are testing if it will happen every time. Sometimes you have to test if it happens to just you for some reason so you have to call someone else to also attempt the same exploit. Simply 'gathering all the data on the conditions of the bug for your bug report' can take long. Is this the most likely reason people did this? Nah. But the banhammer is a heavy tier penalty for something that must be carefully weighed. And when you write 'punishment scripts' or similar for these things, it's more work to make them accurate when you have additional parameters to 'make sure you don't hit anyone you didn't mean to'. And yes, this is true even when the same data being checked for item removal is the one being checked to see who exploited. I don't know all the details internally, I'm guessing based on my own experiences with this. I don't expect to convince you either, but I figured I'd elaborate on my 'argument' for no ban.
Wrennardx wrote: » Azherae wrote: » Wrennardx wrote: » 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. Because the issue here is about how you 'prove' that they did it on purpose. MMORPGs are very complex, and people don't always pay a lot of attention. Bluntly put, some people are sometimes literally 'not even intelligent/attentive' enough to understand that what they are doing is not intentional to the game's design. Sometimes they are testing if it will happen every time. Sometimes you have to test if it happens to just you for some reason so you have to call someone else to also attempt the same exploit. Simply 'gathering all the data on the conditions of the bug for your bug report' can take long. Is this the most likely reason people did this? Nah. But the banhammer is a heavy tier penalty for something that must be carefully weighed. And when you write 'punishment scripts' or similar for these things, it's more work to make them accurate when you have additional parameters to 'make sure you don't hit anyone you didn't mean to'. And yes, this is true even when the same data being checked for item removal is the one being checked to see who exploited. I don't know all the details internally, I'm guessing based on my own experiences with this. I don't expect to convince you either, but I figured I'd elaborate on my 'argument' for no ban. I'm going to guess you don't really know how the bug went down or what the actual issue is/was. It wasn't a matter of something being done a couple times, it was done thousands and thousands of times by some of the biggest players and guilds on the servers. While I would completely sympathize with someone who did it a couple times on accident, the evidence in this case is staggering. Plenty of YT vids on how wide and over the top the stuff was. The prevailing attitude there now is "Oh, well we weren't taking it seriously anymore anyways, there was a wipe coming so we didn't really care.".
Lodrig wrote: » A ton of Dev time was wasted DOING the reverting, a ton of data on the building of nodes and economy was tainted.
Noaani wrote: » Lodrig wrote: » A ton of Dev time was wasted DOING the reverting, a ton of data on the building of nodes and economy was tainted. Was it? The notion that there won't be any exploits or bugs when the game goes live is fanciful, so having some data on node progression gone wrong this early may well be beneficial- you and I don't know. Same with developer time reverting things. That is useful experience that they may not have received until after the game goes live. Again, you and I have no idea about any of this. We don't know how useful it was, wendont know if or when Intrepid saw the issue before it was logged, we don't know if Intrepud arenputting data from this to use in detecting exploits once the game goes live. Since you and I don't know these things, all we can do is either trust Intrepid to do what they think is best, or not trust Intrepid. If we don't trust Intrepid, we should have no expectation that this game will amount to anything.
Wrennardx wrote: » The issue is pretty simple, if someone found the bug, then exploited it or didn't report it (or reported it and then continued to exploit it) they don't have any interest in helping make a quality game. In that situation, I say show them the door.
Caeryl wrote: » You and OP are both horribly hung up on something that does not matter at this point of the development cycle outside of doing a great job showcasing an error in need of fixing. It's not moronic to know that this testing phase is specifically for finding these bugs, and the only harm was the weapons still existing, which was fixed via a character KO. The total wipe is less than a month away, there was nothing done that would justify a flat out ban for a testing phase, and Phase 1 is about stability, not the placeholder game economy. I can't imagine being so hostile toward testers, the volunteer Q&A, finding bugs and blasting them to the extreme. Woo they got ahead for a day, and now those characters don't exist and the bug is being corrected. What benefit is there to banning players at this stage who did what this testing phase is for?
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.
Lodrig wrote: » Caeryl wrote: » You and OP are both horribly hung up on something that does not matter at this point of the development cycle outside of doing a great job showcasing an error in need of fixing. It's not moronic to know that this testing phase is specifically for finding these bugs, and the only harm was the weapons still existing, which was fixed via a character KO. The total wipe is less than a month away, there was nothing done that would justify a flat out ban for a testing phase, and Phase 1 is about stability, not the placeholder game economy. I can't imagine being so hostile toward testers, the volunteer Q&A, finding bugs and blasting them to the extreme. Woo they got ahead for a day, and now those characters don't exist and the bug is being corrected. What benefit is there to banning players at this stage who did what this testing phase is for? I said nothing about if the crime warented a BAN or not, I'm perfectly fine with the level of punishment doled out. Just because I am disagreeing with YOU dose not make me in agreement with the OP. I'm simply pointing out your view that their was no DAMAGE to the testing by the mass duping is a facilely moronic position to hold EVEN IF the economy is a placeholder, because Developer time is being wasted in disiplinary actions both in reverting the dupes and deleting characters. None of that was nessary to finding OR fixing the bug.
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.
Arya_Yeshe wrote: » people are SUPPOSED to find exploits
Noaani wrote: » Wrennardx wrote: » The issue is pretty simple, if someone found the bug, then exploited it or didn't report it (or reported it and then continued to exploit it) they don't have any interest in helping make a quality game. In that situation, I say show them the door. While I understand why you may have thst position, it is not a great one to have. First, literally all that matters is that the bug doesn't make it to live. Everything else is meaningless. Second, with how early we are in the testing cycle, you and I are in no position to say whether thise thst found the bugs were going to report them or not. The notion of not exploring a bug when found is how you end up with games thst are full of bugs. You want your testers thst find bugs tonpick and prod at them, to get as much information on them as possible, and then to report thst information. Third, even if the intent was to never report this bug, people capable of finding rhem are still exponentially more valuable as testers than people that think, for example, an ewrly alpha test has an economy that needs to be considered. If developers know the people that find these bugs, they can easily just check up on those people periodically to observe what new bugs they have found. There is no specific need for them to be reported in order for Intrepid to be made aware of them. Banning people that have shown you that they are good at finding bugs, at a point in development where you want to find bugs, is bad for the game. People that think banning these people is the right thing to do clearly don't have any interest in making a quality game - they are clearly ok with testers (and by extention Intrepid) finding fewer bugs.
Wrennardx wrote: » The issue isn't finding the bug, or even testing it and then reporting it. It's the continued use afterwards (players used it thousands of times) that's the issue.
Noaani wrote: » Wrennardx wrote: » The issue isn't finding the bug, or even testing it and then reporting it. It's the continued use afterwards (players used it thousands of times) that's the issue. Why is that an issue? The economy isn't important at this stage. No one is testing anything important with the economy at this stage. The most valuable testing done so far is load testing on the server, followed by finding this bug. The fact that they "exploited" it is meaningless. It is meaningless because they stood to gain nothing, and others stood to lose nothing - because the economy doesn't matter. You may well be right that these are not people you want in your game. However, they are EXACTLY the people you want in your test. Again, the people you don't want in your test are the people that treat it as a game - the kind of people that think it's an issue that the economy got messed up. These people have almost nothing of value to bring to a test.
kadimir wrote: » Noaani wrote: » Wrennardx wrote: » The issue isn't finding the bug, or even testing it and then reporting it. It's the continued use afterwards (players used it thousands of times) that's the issue. Why is that an issue? The economy isn't important at this stage. No one is testing anything important with the economy at this stage. The most valuable testing done so far is load testing on the server, followed by finding this bug. The fact that they "exploited" it is meaningless. It is meaningless because they stood to gain nothing, and others stood to lose nothing - because the economy doesn't matter. You may well be right that these are not people you want in your game. However, they are EXACTLY the people you want in your test. Again, the people you don't want in your test are the people that treat it as a game - the kind of people that think it's an issue that the economy got messed up. These people have almost nothing of value to bring to a test. Last I checked you aren't intrepid? You don't think intrepid is gathering data?
Noaani wrote: » kadimir wrote: » Noaani wrote: » Wrennardx wrote: » The issue isn't finding the bug, or even testing it and then reporting it. It's the continued use afterwards (players used it thousands of times) that's the issue. Why is that an issue? The economy isn't important at this stage. No one is testing anything important with the economy at this stage. The most valuable testing done so far is load testing on the server, followed by finding this bug. The fact that they "exploited" it is meaningless. It is meaningless because they stood to gain nothing, and others stood to lose nothing - because the economy doesn't matter. You may well be right that these are not people you want in your game. However, they are EXACTLY the people you want in your test. Again, the people you don't want in your test are the people that treat it as a game - the kind of people that think it's an issue that the economy got messed up. These people have almost nothing of value to bring to a test. Last I checked you aren't intrepid? You don't think intrepid is gathering data? I do think Intrepid is gathering data. Mostly data relating to server performance. I also think the data on the exploit that they gathered will be of value to them. I do not think they have been gathering random data on the games economy at present, or at least nit data they care about.
Wrennardx wrote: » The data was gathered by tons of players who didn't exploit the bug
he fact that you don't see a difference between finding a bug and actively exploiting it to the detriment of the server and game is wild.
Noaani wrote: » You asked me if I thought Intrepid were gatheringdata, I said yes, on some specific things, and you come back saying that it was players gathering data.
Noaani wrote: » There is no data of value that players can gather from the test right now
Noaani wrote: » You really do seem to think that we have a game now - that seems to be the cornerstone of your issue, it seems to be why you (and a few others) think this is an issue and many of the rest of us just don't.
kadimir wrote: » Actually, nobody asked you if intrepid was gathering data
kadimir wrote: » You don't think intrepid is gathering data?
Value is defined by usefulness
At what point are you able to actually reflect and realize that everyone else isn't wrong
