Exploitation Action Promises
I have been suggesting for weeks that we need to give the devs time to handle the exploits but honestly at this point, the lack of both action and communication on the devs part is beginning to feel like they are just putting time between the exploit and any action they might be taking to lessen the public outrage against inaction or weak action on their part. This feeling seems to be building within the community as I have heard it from quite a few testers.
The last time Steven addressed exploits on Discord was on Wed Jan 8th. He stated at this time that they would have exploit actions ready before the next week and there has been complete silence, not even an update to say they are still working on this after they passed their promised deadline of action.
In the meantime, the biggest guild exploiting the war dec system on Vyra (which absorbed players from a guild that was also involved in the duping exploit) has been setting up their defense campaign in discord claiming not to know it was an exploit while simultaneously leveling new character and rebranding under the guild name ‘Waiting’.
I think it is a bit odd to plead not guilty while taking a lot of measures to hide your guilt. I wonder how many new accounts were purchased during this time to funnel gold and materials to as they seem to be pretty proactive with limiting any possible penalty while crying about their innocence?
When this guild discovered that they could spam war decs cheaply against other guilds and do little to nothing to gain fast xp, gold and rewards, their pattern of behavior changed suddenly with declaring war against the entire server. The fact that most of the playerbase was screaming that this was an exploit and did not follow suit, points to this being an exploit and the excessive spamming of war decs (100+? ) in this short period of time, points to their lack of innocence.
There are a fair number of us that watched the exploitation over Christmas that have spent little time in test since this, waiting to see how Steven handles the newest exploits, including the war dec situation.
The lack of participation is not about leverage or anger, it is about the desire to back a developer that demonstrates that they care about exploitation in the game they are developing and will actively handle it. Far too many games have suffered permanent damage from exploits after launch where developers were lax throughout test.
This wait and see approach has now turned into weeks and sadly, some have already moved on to other games to test or play. While this game certainly does not need every tester, the developer does need the faith of his community and that appears to be beginning to wane with the lack of action and passage of a promised action deadline without any communication update.
Will Steven keep the promises that he made to us last November when he warned players to report anything that they feel might be a bug that could be exploited and not partake in it and that he would deal with exploiters harshly? Or will Steven allow the offenders to hide behind the ‘we didn’t know it was an exploit’ when the exploit was obvious to the overwhelming majority of his players declared it an exploit, reporting it as one, and refrained from the using the same thing to gain an unfair advantage in xp, gold and other rewards over others just as Steven requested in Nov.
Also of importance, will Steven continue with his pattern of transparency and provide numbers and figures and action taken or will he hide and give a generic ‘we dealt with some people’ answer since it has been several weeks and this cooldown period might minimize outrage toward inaction or weak action on his part?
I think the latter would be a big mistake on the Stevens's part as he would be mistaking trust and patience in him doing the right thing with tolerance, and not a lot of testers will tolerate those that intentionally exploit, even in testing.
Setting aside all the other suggested exploiting taking place since Dec 20 including another dupe, I understand that this guild is putting pressure on Steven suggesting they are not guilty of exploiting because there was no timer. If Steven allows this, it will be a punch in the gut to all his ethical testers that did what he asked, reported the issue and refrained from partaking in the situation and trusted Steven to handle this appropriately.
I get that some of these guilds have a relationship with the devs and some of the players in these guilds have spent $2500 on their Phoenix Initiative package but if treatment on exploitation is based on who you know, this will be worse PR than the Narc situation.
I hope that Steven provides an update soon and even more importantly, that he and the rest of the dev team do what is right and stand by the promises they made to this community and handle exploiters harshly and not brush them or their actions under the rug.
