Concerns About Players Being Suspended

[Alec_Fortescue]

So you guys banned people who sold crystals they could just keep making from collections... that's rough..

 

It's not rough! Google Guild Wars 2 and snowflake exploits. Super cheap event (?) items provided players with rarest and most expensive materials once disassembled (r/ed). It was unintentional. Players who abused it hard received permanent bans.

 

Imagine now that some cheap weapons dropping from TOR event would drop Mass Manipulation Generator upon reverse engineering.

 

I am glad to be in that 150-small minority btw :]

Edited May 24, 2013 by Alec_Fortescue

[FrostRaven]

Well, I was one of those banned without real reason. The worse thing is they even used a permanent ban on the forums on top of my week long suspension.

 

I'm guilty of using the Legacy Weapons to do its intended purpose: transfer crystal and items, but in no way I "gamed" the system for personal gain. In my mail to CS I told them they could check my actions in the past days and that would show them I spent 15 million with my bankers in a shopping spree of cartel market crystals. I had never buyed one because I felt that if I couldnt craft them it would be too damm expensive in cartel coins or in credits to deck my alters.

 

And man, do I have alters. I have 6 55s, 6 50s and another 4 closing on 5. My plan is have all 16 advanced classes, checking the story and voiceoveres and romances of every class and sex combination. Saying that, the Collection system + Legacy Weapons transfer pushed me to spend money in NO WAY I would spend normally. I hoard credits for no reason at all, I only spend them in good looking stuff, everything power related I get myself raiding or crafting (PVP isnt my cup of tea). So even if I got crystal without paying to them some cartel coins, i got into deals with players so they would spend THEIR COINS to get my crystals. I think is a win/win situation, don't you?

 

So I just wanted to say that I love this game, I have no ill feelings, just felt it was a little harsh to ban me when there have been historically tons of bannable offenses way worse, and never happened something like this. I even wondered why I didnt abuse those unintended workarounds top max my valor in a few days, 4 alters from 10 to 50 in 4 evenings and so many situations I avoided because I knew well enough it was a bad thing.

 

BioWare has given me first 3 complimentary days for the 16 hours I missed. That was good enough for me, but today they added 2 additional weeks. It's ok, I still love you BioWare X)

[Kilora]

BioWare has given me first 3 complimentary days for the 16 hours I missed. That was good enough for me, but today they added 2 additional weeks. It's ok, I still love you BioWare X)

 

Holy crap! I wasn't caught up in the accidental bans, but god am I happy the are doing that.

 

Especially after quite a few people have come in to say the 3 days was plenty. It certainly shows they're being good, owning up to a mistake, and making an honest and realistic attempt to make up for the mistake.

 

Glad you're actions have been lifted! :-D

[TUXs]

Correct, using a Legacy Weapon to move a Color Crystal which you pulled down from your Collections UI is not an exploit. This is the case because there is no way to manipulate the system to allow for a large amount of credit gain as there was prior to 2.1.0b.

 

Yay!!!! Thank you for answering this

[LordArtemis]

I have to give Bioware some cred if they are adding two weeks to some folks that were treated badly. That's a smart move IMO.

 

Nothing says "I'm not mad anymore" like a free lunch.....

[Andryah]

You know why I won't say this?

 

Your opinion was based off of the same information I was given. I never attacked you -- but felt as if the majority of my earlier discussion was to show two possible sides of the story.

 

Yes -- I was wrong. I'm still surprised they are allowing us to circumvent a CC charge, as that goes against the evil EA mantra everyone keeps droning on about.

 

I respect your opinion the same as anyone elses opinion. In that you have a right to have one, and I have a right to question how you came to that conclusion.

 

It is sad that so many people were incorrectly actioned. At the same time, it is a good thing they managed to fix this in a day. They owned up to a mistake. Many companies not only take much longer to fix massive issues such as this, but also refuse to admit they made a mistake.

 

In the end, we will never know what happened. There could've been 500 different reasons peoples' accounts were flagged. To assume they purposely made a script without testing it is rather ignorant -- it sounds like someone made a simple programming mistake that happened to negatively affect an non-trivial amount of people.

 

In any event -- the mistake was made, owned up to and fixed quickly, and enough of a wakeup call to them that internal policies will obviously change. If they used this same method in the past with no issues, obviously they thought it would work properly.

 

**** happens. If it gets fixed, we should be happy. Obviously we should be concerned if they don't learn from this -- but to immediately assume a company handed out blanket bans to thousands of people for absolutely no reason, that is just moronic.

 

/Signed and well stated.

[Andryah]

"Can be used to send mods" does not equal "Intended to be used to send mods".

 

A gun can be used to shoot oneself in the foot, but that doesn't make self-foot-shooting the intended purpose.

 

Exactly.

 

Personally, I am fine with the fact that legacy items can be used to mule mods around a legacy. But I will not agree with people who insist that is why Legacy items were designed and patched into the game. There is difference.

[iamthehoyden]

If nothing else, this incident has been a good lesson on why to wait till the facts are in before accusing people of being liars and cheats. Hopefully, it'll remind people to pause a moment before attacking in the future. Perhaps not, but I remain an optimist.

[Andryah]

So in other words

 

BioWare made a system were people could exploit

Then you have CS baning people that should not be banned because CS people are trigger happy

Then you have to unban them because you know no court will be in your favor on this if people sue.

 

Everyone understand if CS bans someone for using a third party game hack NP, banning someone for

sending crystals is jhust plain braindead.

 

OK... let's get some fresh clarity in the topic.. since the thread is still active:

 

1) Collectively, we the players, were discussing in this thread yesterday what we thought the action might be targeted to.

 

2) We had no info from Bioware, which left us to discuss and debate it amongst ourselves, AND they left this thread open for us to do exactly that.

 

3) there were three possiblities discussed as to reasons (and roughly in this order of prevalence).... crystal duping/legacy muling.... crystal duping/loading into a cheap weapon/selling for profit.... crystal duping & REing to learn a recipe that was not intended to be learnable.

 

4) As we waited all day long for word from Eric, we debated this whole thing in circles.. and for the most part respectuflly disagreeing and nobody taking cheap shots at anyone else.

 

5) late in afternoon, Eric confirmed for us that the actions were taken for what was corrected in patch 2.0.1b. Hence, it was not for duping/legacy muling, but for duping/loading/selling for credits and/or REing to get a recipe for profit.

 

6) item 5 above, left us all continuing to wonder if the ability to dupe/legacy-mule was OK, or actionable.

 

7) Eric quickly responded that crystal duping and legacy mule approach is OK, and not an actionable exploit.

 

Everyone who has been active in this thread...agree with this summary??

 

Next: I would like to point out to a couple of people who subsequently posted and wanted some flesh and satisfaction as to my position as to legacy muling being an exploit. It does in fact meet the test for a game exploit as it goes around the design intention of unlocking cystals in the Collections UI. So I stand by my statement that it is an exploit. THAT SAID.... Eric has made it clear that this exploit is not an actionable exploit.

 

Now: I see that people are already starting up with a new complaint: "hey!!.. I want my CCs back that I used to unlock crystals... because the exploit is not actionable". I thought about this last night and expected to see it this morning. Nice to know that the forum is predictable. Personally, I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand people that are using the Collections UI for cyrstal unlocks the way it was designed are being penalized vs people who don't spend CCs to unlock and use the legacy mule approach. So yeah, there is an unfairness to that aspect. On the other hand, it is an exploit and I personally don't like to use exploits. Besides... Collections UI cloning is faster, easier, and free of credit fees so for me personally, I will continue to go with unlocked Collections. Others may choose a different answer for them. [The Bioware answer does in fact amount to ~10,000 CC discount via the legacy muling of crystals, because that is about what it would cost to unlock every single crystal in the Collections, hence my comment about them being "generous" in an earlier post]

 

Lastly: I think we learned some good things about Bioware through this action episode.

 

A) that they take actual economy exploits seriously and act quickly to interdict them.

 

B) that they are much more tolerant about exploits that do not harm the economy or other players (duping/legacy muling in this case).

 

C) that when players raise a flag that there are wrongful actions underway in the midst of valid ones, they don't sit on their thumbs.. to go investigate and remedy a mistake on their part.

 

And personally, I would like to applaud Eric for how he stayed engaged with the community and brought clarity surrounding what was a huge and passionate issue. Props to Eric for his efforts here. And double props for keeping a thread open for us all to discuss this topic yesterday while waiting for official word.

 

There were a good number of unjust statements and accusations (even after Erics posts in this thread) made toward Bioware yesterday, and this entire issue should give some pause for some of the things said about Bioware over all of this IMO.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Andryah

[Sillensumbra]

I like to be suspended in the air it actually feels good better than beeing **** by the cartel market lotery

[Pistols]

There were a good number of unjust statements and accusations (even after Erics posts in this thread) made toward Bioware yesterday, and this entire issue should give some pause for some of the things said about Bioware over all of this.

 

And there were plenty of just and on point ones as well.

[Andryah]

And there were plenty of just and on point ones as well.

 

If you mean... "Bioware has unjustly banned some people" "they need to make it right!" yeah.

 

But you know the posts I am referring to, so let's not pretend otherwise. There were a lot of ugly and non-factual cheap shots thrown at Bioware over the last day or two in the forum over this whole thing.

 

I do want to give Alec due credit for his post this morning. I know he was very upset yesterday, and it was nice of him to come back today and acknowledge accordingly. I respect him for that.

Edited May 24, 2013 by Andryah

[Stoofa]

I was thinking the same thing. I have legacy weapons to trasfer crystals between alts but assumed this would be considered an exploit and so unlocked the crystals in collections. So can we have our cartel coins back then? and if so how is the best way to do so?

 

It would appear that is a no. Sent the request to CS and got a pretty standard "No, we do not refund coins in this case".

Although there are numerous cases where people have purchased something they don't need actually getting a refund. It would appear in this case it's a very basic "tough luck".

[LordArtemis]

If nothing else, this incident has been a good lesson on why to wait till the facts are in before accusing people of being liars and cheats. Hopefully, it'll remind people to pause a moment before attacking in the future. Perhaps not, but I remain an optimist.

 

and....and...not good to jump to conclusions about conspiracies involving Bioware either.

 

I am an advocate for harsh criticism of this company and this game, especially if I feel it is constructive and presented that way. What I will not abide is silly contentions that Bioware is going out of it's way to show players that they have nothing but utter contempt for them.

 

The very notion is ludicrous IMO.

 

We should not jump to such extreme judgements on BOTH sides of the fence.

[branmakmuffin]

Loopholes are all ways gonna be any place RL as well .

What is or is not in RL has no bearing on what is or is not in TOR.