[Huge economy exploit surfaces] - what will be BIOWARE's next move?

[Inteff]

I have heard that phrase but anyone who is not a small child and has any amount of experience with real life will tell you it's a lie ... lol

 

I know I'm no better by trolling you trolls, but if the ban gets served to these exploiters, than they didn't really prosper.

 

I just hope BW does something to them soon, and make an effort at salvaging the economy.

[Wrender]

Ok first off are we absolutly sure this even happened or could it be that some evil game competitor is merly spreadding rumors to damage the popularity of this game(Blizzard) It's common knowledge that the competition already is paid to go on forums and spread hate and choas to achieve this effect of discouriging new players from even buying the game.

Secondly: If this has actually happened they need to take some drastic measures to fix it ASAP! And that is probably gonna cost bioware to do it because they are prob gonna have to do some things that they aren't gonna want to do.

1. Open new servers because a lot of people are not gonna continue to play on a server that has had it's economy ruined forever (me included)

2.Completly wipe all servers affected and give players a free month of play (essentially start the entire game launch over) I would be good with this actually but for some this would be a biggie!

3. Essentially remove all currency from the game(This could cause an opposite affect and still ruin the economy)

4.This could be a game killer over the long haul and I still would like to see them just completly wipe the servers and force everyone to start a new char at lvl 1. It's only been a month everyone and with a free month of gameplay I can't see this as a bad thing if you think about it. I have been playing since release and messin around still rolling alts my highest lvl is only lvl 13 anyways. People who have already hit lvl cap should be kicked in the balls anyways for missing all the content to 50. People who lvl to the max in 3-4 days could easily do so again or in my opinion shouldn't even be playing an MMO in the first place. Let alone a brand new game that has just been released less than a month ago

5. Best option I can see is completly wipe all servers and give players a free month. (Start over from scratch)

There really is no other option...

[Viikuna]

edit: nvm.... Edited January 6, 2012 by Viikuna

[Cootie]

Best option I can see is completly wipe all servers and give players a free month. (Start over from scratch)

There really is no other option...

 

What...? Just.... what?

 

Ban the cheaters and the accounts they hid money on. Problem = solved.

[X-ray]

My repair bill told me that some inflation is a good thing.

[Harabek]

If Bioware doesn't at least try to fix this in some way and undertakes measures to try to save the servers economy i am out.

 

This is a huge deal, and it doesnt speak for a company if it just hands out "warnings" for people that completely ruin the game experience for their whole customer-base.

 

I really like this game a lot, but that's going to far. If those exploits don't have any REAL consequences for the people involved Bioware started digging its own grave.

 

Maybe its an European thing, but i take it very personal if companies try to bend me over. Heck if i wanted that id move to the US

[Skorm]

Besides doing millions in a mater of minutes, you could also get an infinite number of commendations

[ManOSteal]

Bioware has nothing to lose by perma banning the exploiters.

If the exploiting was really as "limited" as they're making it out to be, the banning wouldn't be that significant. Further, these people would likely just buy new accounts.

If thy don't permaban the exploiters, they are sending the message that they are a pushover + angering a large portion of players. They also damage their reputation as a company.

 

 

The only other solution is wiping the credits. Note that wiping ALL the credits harms those that didn't exploit and HELPS those that did. Even if you only wipe the credits from the exploiters, they probably already have speeder riding 2, expanded banks, epic gear that they purchased, expensive mounts etc and they'd retain all of these things. This causes an unfair advantage, particularly in the gear dept.

 

I say they ought to permaban all accounts on IPs that exploited. It kills the exploiting account and any alt accounts they had to hide the credits or launder money.

 

In the event of a shared IP, people that feel they were unfairly banned can petition to be reinstated and Bioware can investigate on a case by case basis.

 

do you have any idea of how much of a bother that is. Even tracing and deleting all of the currency would be a waste of time. The exploit is fixed delete the cash off of all the accounts that exploited. yeah they get to keep their items and that's ruff but guess what they can no longer ruin an economy. they can do a slight bit of damage doing the whole cornering the market on certain things if they log in before this punishment comes down on their head but even that won't be that easy considering others can get those materials and put it up for a decent price. if the guy keeps buying up mats to corner a market then congrats you just made money off of him. Keep getting the mat he is trying to corner he will eventually give you all his money, and then he has to reduce his price on the market because no one is buying his auctions...oddly like in life people cheated and we have to work harder to make their cheating useless. but i'd rather they just deleted cash and then moved on to a different bug. I enjoy the speed at which fixes are arriving I'd rather resources were not taken away from everything just to search through an extensive database to track every credit that was made with this exploit. Don't give me any of that crap about those being two different departments if they have a delete script come out for all the money tracking and deletion a bunch of QA resources will have to go into making sure that script doesn't **** up the rest of the system.

[Democratus]

Why do posters think they should be privy to this kind of information?

 

BioWare may well have done all these things and more. But they don't have to share the details with the forums. In fact, it makes more sense to keep most of their actions behind the scenes.

 

They have already told us that they handled the situation. What exactly is wanted here? A list of baned accounts (can't do it)? A full breakdown of their tactics against exploiters (would be stupid to do it)?

 

The exploit has been patched. BioWare has done "something" in response.

 

Sounds like we should all just get back to enjoying the game.

[Marlaine]

Why do posters think they should be privy to this kind of information?

 

It's not about being privy to private information. It's about setting the minds of your customer-base at ease.

[Wrender]

What...? Just.... what?

 

Ban the cheaters and the accounts they hid money on. Problem = solved.

 

No I'm afraid that wold really not solve the problem . Unless they have a way to remove the illegal credits from the game the only option is a complete server wipe and a freee month of gametime. C'mon it's only been 3 weeks what is the big deal about starting over? Better to fix it now than wait till people have multiple lvl 50's . Most normal people don't have a lvl 50 yet anyways. And those that are stupid and ding 50 in less than a week could easily do it again no problem if they wanted to repeat thier stupidity!

[Gruug]

So, these "millions" of credits are out there somewhere. Umm...haven't seen the GTN prices move on bit over this. For those that think that "too many credits" in a game economy ruins it, I think this pretty much debunks that idea. Game economies are a closed circut and as such are not relevant to the natural laws of an economic system. Those millions are not in circulation they are only potentially in there. IF there were to be circulated then and only then would it have a fleeting impact and then only for the briefestt of periods.

[Dyraele]

I am still not sure what happened. Even the link didn't explain how you could sell stacked items for big money. I have sold stacked items before and got hardly anything for them.

[PenguinXI]

They just neeed to roll back the accounts that took part in this exploit, its easy enough to do once they track them all down (Or it should be, one would hope there is a system in place to roll back accounts in case of accounts being hacked etc) its going to be tracking them all down thats the time consuming part.

[annese]

No I'm afraid that wold really not solve the problem . Unless they have a way to remove the illegal credits from the game the only option is a complete server wipe and a freee month of gametime. C'mon it's only been 3 weeks what is the big deal about starting over? Better to fix it now than wait till people have multiple lvl 50's . Most normal people don't have a lvl 50 yet anyways. And those that are stupid and ding 50 in less than a week could easily do it again no problem if they wanted to repeat thier stupidity!

 

this will never happen and 90% of the exploiter won't get banned anyway get over it...

at least its like this in all the games i've played.

[PenguinXI]

So, these "millions" of credits are out there somewhere. Umm...haven't seen the GTN prices move on bit over this. For those that think that "too many credits" in a game economy ruins it, I think this pretty much debunks that idea. Game economies are a closed circut and as such are not relevant to the natural laws of an economic system. Those millions are not in circulation they are only potentially in there. IF there were to be circulated then and only then would it have a fleeting impact and then only for the briefestt of periods.

 

Having played an MMO that went through a phase of hyper inflation due to an exploit to gain large amounts of in game currency in little time it had a massive effect on that games economy. Something that days before would have cost the player 100.000 was days later 2.000.000 I dont think SWTOR is as reliant on the GTN as that game was on its AH, the only way to gain equipment in the other game was through the AH. SWTOR pretty much throws equipment at you, I have not used the GTN yet for anything, and probably wont so for a long time.

[borghe]

And now the price for everything skyrockets.

 

It's called inflation.

 

for the record, true inflation is impossible. I love how people compare modern MMOs to real world economics.

 

The problem with inflation is that there are many many many many companies out there all charging for their goods, with their end goal being PROFIT. In modern MMOs, there is typically ONE company out there charging for their goods (the dev), and the end goal being a SINK. Therefore from a general commodities standpoint, there is no inflation. The user buys/spends 100K credits on thermoplast flux, it is working as intended. Bioware isn't going to say "wow, so we need to increase the price of thermoplast flux 10 fold!!!"

 

"but what about the GTN!?!?!? THAT'S what we're talking about"

 

GTN isn't subject to long term inflation through short spikes of credits surging into the economy. Think about this. Say one of these players has 30M credits and they want to level synthweaving. So they buy all the septsilk they want. Or heck, by enough cloth to level them to 400. The problem is, once they get to 400, they won't be buying the low level cloth... so those prices will land where they land. The high end cloth they could maybe buy an infinite supply of... except that there's not an infinite supply. only what's posted... and let's not forget that the clock is ticking on all of this.. because the longer time goes, the more eventual it is that BW discovers the exploit, traces the users and removes their credits.

 

The money isn't in the system permanently (it can't be simply because of credit sinks) and they can't possibly spend it fast enough on the GTN (the only way it would stay in the system) before BW fixes the bug and removes the credits.

 

So yeah... the exploit sucks. ban the exploiters. remove the credits. and then let's move on. but please stop with the "this game is over. it's ruined permanently now. bioware will never recover". This isn't like the real economy. It's not even like UO's economy or SWG's economy where 90% of the goods sold WERE player driven.

[Gantrithort]

if it took them a year of beta and close to 2 week into the launch to fix this simple exploit i'm not sure how you can tell people with a straigth face that they are monitoring it ....

[Heliotic]

The first patch broke the slicing skill.

The second patch broke exploits.

The third patch broke more exploits.

 

Eight hours every time, at least, to resolve... NOTHING of the game itself. I don't care about exploits. I care about trying to play and if i can't harvest anything and Bioware is more troubled about the exploits... we've a problem. How many players are affected by the exploits? And how many about the lots of bugs?

More work for the players please.

 

The exploits break the game for everyone - Good luck buying anything off the auction house if you have 50 thousand credits and everyone else has 50 million.

[Belkiratwo]

I agree, this is illegal and should be punished...

 

I also don't understand the fun in this... You just get millions of credits, what's it all worth then... The fun in this game is about becoming stronger every day, by playing it consistently, and if you want to buy something, you got to earn the credits first!!!

 

 

Sadly, another problem for Bioware, there hands are already full (or should be full) with the lag problems... By the time they have solved that, the money is probably gone or untraceable... :(

 

Different people play this game differently.

 

While you may enjoy the slow long grind of steady progression there are those out there that want to compete at the highest levels and are willing to do anything to get there.

 

Just look at the world first WoW boss kills. There has not been a single expansion where there world's top guilds did not get caught exploiting in some fashion and were then later reprimanded (25 soulstones on lady vashj pre-nerf, DI razorgore, grenades on arthas, the whole wave that just got banned a few weeks ago for the spine exploit and it goes on).

[rocdogg]

Seriously

get a life

 

Says the guy using large type on a video game forum.

[Darth_Vala]

Well this kind of exploit where some people made buttloads of gold/credits has happened at some point in just about every single MMO I have played. It always causes an uproar and usually the rare goods prices inflate into ridiculous amounts for a while. Then after a few months nobody even remembers the bug anymore.

 

Dont think they have done rollbacks in any of the games since that would hurt the game even more then the economy.

 

But interesting to see how Bioware handles this if at all. Dont really care that much. Some people won the lotto and are now filthy rich and I am not...oh well.

 

I think it still is a fairly small minority that got filthy rich. Now some people are going to sell things in AH for far more then they are "worth" and they will also become fairly rich...

Edited January 6, 2012 by Darth_Vala

[DarthSublimitas]

I'm sorry, I'm the kind that struggles and tries to earn things the long, hard correct way. I went to the link but didn't understand what exactly the nature of the exploit was. Can someone explain it to me

[Nolez]

To all those who "dont give a damn".

Let me get something straight. If this ... situation is fine with you than you can have, as I like to say sometimes, a flag in your hand and an anchor in your ***.

 

Its absolutely OK to have your own opinion.

 

But. Do not try to impose that "ALL is ok aptitude" of yours to all those who really cares.

 

I couldn't AGREE MORE!!

 

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."

 

 

 

What I don't understand is some,if not a **** TON,are the ones in lines at stores,fast food/sit down dining,all around consumer's that....

-Ask for a full refund because you had mustard,and not ketchup

-I wan to speak to a manager

-Who is your boss

-30 day risk free trial,or your money back

-slip and fall and file a lawsuit (LOL)

 

Some of these things we have done,and don't really think twice about it.Yet A LOT of people are getting trolled,because you complain about a game you paid YOUR hard earned money for. As a consumer we have this right to complain. How many mistakes in your daily life,and career(s) can you make,before something HAS to happen to your job/career/life . 3 mistakes at my current job? "You're FIRED"

3 patches in 4 days? To fix pretty much one issue?

 

Hell why don't I just give you my paypal account info,and for starters send me 79.00,along with $15 a month following. Oh and you're not allowed to ask/complain where your money is going btw....Thx

[SunwindIon]

I demand a response from bioware on this issue also. are the people that used the exploit going to get banned or have their credits removed? do you even know, do you even have the ability to track who it was? I *********** hope so!