regarding punishment for exploit

[Warrgames]

People are responsible for their actions. This is true.

 

That being said, Bioware's response to this exploit is puzzling. It's been weeks. They are patching it on their regular maintenance cycle, instead of either disabling the raid until it's fixed, or hotfixing it immediately. Bioware was made aware of this exploit when it was first discovered, and has done nothing about it until now.

 

For all that players are responsible for abusing the exploit, Bioware has done **** all about it.

 

They should have punished the honest players by disabling an OP because some players choose to exploit it?

 

Lets take a real look at this issue. It is the holiday season, both player and Dev have time off. If they took the game down to fix this issue there would be outrage over bring the server down during the player holiday break. Dev are most likely under staff because of people taking time off for the holiday. Do you really think it would be a good idea to make a fix, test it and patch it. Which may break something else in game when you are short handed and most player base has time off and wants to play the game? Does that really sound like a good idea to you? Or do you wait to fix it, since the player agreed not to do it?

 

We all enter into an agreement that it is clearly written that we will not to take advantage of a bug. Player choose to disregard this agreement. Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you have the right to do it.

[Infernixx]

Good to know raiders are as few as vocal, isn't? So BW can certainly afford to ban them

 

That's debatable. Unless you believe that the F2P players are paying enough to carry the game.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

If you don't understand that work on this project is a segway out of SWTOR you are just being naive and if you think they aren't paying more attention to that game then I don't know what else to tell you. You'll just have to figure it out for yourself.

 

Again you're not actually offering up anything that is proof to your comments at all? What I know is Star Wars is a fairly big I.P. that BW/EA have access to with SWToR so I can't really see them just letting it die off into oblivion to solely focus on a game that hasn't been proven or tested to be successful and seems from the brief reading I've done to be nothing more than an easily accessible, standalone version of running a flashpoint in SWToR

[AdrianDmitruk]

In my experience the second type of ops-leader you mention is a minority. Even on freshly minted 55's and 60's I've had no trouble finding a pug that would allow me to start doing operations on that character. Don't need to be ideally geared to run operations, just gotta overcome the fear of doing them and take a risk.

 

My personal experience was about 60/40. The gear checkers were a minority, but a statistically significant one large enough that it might take a long time to find a group (as DPS) should they be out in force.

 

I prefer to learn ops as DPS and might well join my first 3.0 pugs tomorrow (it'll be my first day off since the toon I wish to use hit 60). I'll heal ops with my healer main once I've run it a few times as a DPS so I know what to expect. I won't tank PUG ops whatsoever (though I will tank FPs) because...let's just say I'm better at healing than tanking.

 

I also have a lot of friends who PVP, so that's where most of my ties to the community are, and even when I want to run PVE it's amazing how much pull that guildies in vent in warzones have...

 

You can RE from Comms gear, which is where the 186 schematics are coming from. Same for the 192 schematics. The exploit has undoubtedly accelerated the rate at which the 192 schematics are learned, but aside from moving up the time table on major milestones in that process not much else has been affected. The effects of the exploit are being overstated by those who don't understand it.

 

Wait, I can learn a schematic for a low-endurance, high-stat mod from ripping out the high-endurance mods from the comm gear and REing it? That doesn't make sense.

 

There are literally no unlettered 36 strength mods available from the basic vendor that I found. Not coincidentally, no unlettered 36 mods on my server.

 

So how the hell do I go about learning schematics for 186 unlettered mods? My cybertechs need to get busy. Presumably I don't have to run ops. I don't necessarily have to have instant 198s, but I know a steaming pile of **** (basic comms gear) when I see one. If I replace a gear slot, I expect the gear to actually be an upgrade.

[ivanhedgehog]

I see that vigilante justice is alive and well inside the MMO community.

 

I certainly do not condone use of exploits in any MMO.

 

That said.... I guess the posters here are absent any understanding of history when it comes to actions against exploiters. For instance, improper ban actions that have to get reversed manually by CS.... because any game wide action net will be programmatic in nature and may cause false positives.

 

Active penalties (ban, equipment claw-back, etc) is a two edged sword, so rather then all the player pontificating in the discussion.... I am going to let Bioware do their work and decide how they fix it and what if any penalties they levy.

 

Why? Because one thing I have observed over the years is that when an MMO applies penalties it generally hurts more people then it helps. It causes many claims of false actions (right or wrong is immaterial), which churns up as much (or more) "negative credibility" feelings with players about the dev team. I have seen it time and time again in MMOs... where some players will claim they did nothing wrong and were wrongly actioned. And again.. it matters not if the claims are real or contrived... because other players will use it as an opportunity to attack the credibility and ethics of the devs.

 

TL;DR exploitable content is a fact of life in MMOs, because some players are unethical and will cheat their way through anything and everything. Yes, a company should close such exploits as quickly as possible, and take appropriate actions with respect to exploiters. BUT... BUT... there is no way for us as players to prosecute a remedy, and regardless of what the devs do/don't-do they are going to get attacked for it by some players.

 

Also... keep in mind... it is none of our business as individual players what Bioware does/does-not do in the form of actions upon any identified offenders. Read your EULA.... the company has sole discretion of how they handle violations, and they do not make their actions public other then to make broad generalized statements.

 

I am shocked. I fully(maybe I should emphasize that) FULLY agree with Andryah! spot on. all the emo rage wont amount to anything in the end. BW will have to decide what measures they wish and that they can afford. only they can make a decision that has the potential to greatly affect their game and their livelyhoods. I will certainly critisize bw when they deserve it, but they will look at the whole picture and decide if they can afford to spend the resources to punish this. It looks to me like they are moving along towards 3.1 rather than going on a crusade.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

That's debatable. Unless you believe that the F2P players are paying enough to carry the game.

 

That's implying all subscribers are raiders then?

 

I think quite a lot more are toon-a-holics and spend more time starting their next toon and working through it for the story each time than what is spent on raiding ( PUG or Guild ) but I've no proof to back that up really, just a hunch from people I've met/spoken to over the years.

[Warrgames]

/Agree.

 

Though the forum membership is chewing on both end of this noodle with their extreme positions.

 

The funny part to me is players thinking they actually have any say in this one way or the other. Bioware will decide, and it will be what it will be. All any single player can do is appeal a conviction, if they receive one and feel it is unjust. Everyone else are simply unarmed bystanders gawking, rubber-necking and starting egg throwing fights.

 

General chat in game is more fun about this issue. When player are asking to buy

 

and someone points out the Dev post about it and they start back tracking on the issue. Claiming they have no way of telling or that its BW fault for not fixing and so on. The quarter baked ideas people are coming up with puts the forums to shame.

[RiVaN_]

Again you're not actually offering up anything that is proof to your comments at all? What I know is Star Wars is a fairly big I.P. that BW/EA have access to with SWToR so I can't really see them just letting it die off into oblivion to solely focus on a game that hasn't been proven or tested to be successful and seems from the brief reading I've done to be nothing more than an easily accessible, standalone version of running a flashpoint in SWToR

 

 

There is money to be had in running such a casual friendly game, big money. Everyone who is trying to be a big name wants their name associated with the next big thing. Ladder climbers jump from project to project and get their name on every big thing that comes down the pike.

SR is in development and there is a lot of work to be done, so I doubt these 4 are spending much time on SWTOR or really care to.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

So how the hell do I go about learning schematics for 186 unlettered mods? My cybertechs need to get busy. Presumably I don't have to run ops. I don't necessarily have to have instant 198s, but I know a steaming pile of **** (basic comms gear) when I see one. If I replace a gear slot, I expect the gear to actually be an upgrade.

 

People don't need to be quite so harsh on comm gear if they think about it more ( or is this less? ) logically. That is for example ( and I can't remember the exact gear I bought so this is pure example ) I didn't like any of the enhancements in comm gear except Waist. So I bought each piece of comm gear I needed the armouring from ( and might as well take mod as well in most cases ) that wasn't for my set piece slots and then I just bought a bunch of Waist items to strip the Enhancements out of that I needed to min/max my char as best as possible.

 

It may depend on class but in the end I got my sin to the accuracy I needed and pretty close to the surge/crit I needed also ( based on Dulfy guides ) for supposed min/max.

 

It's not perfect and it was more expensive but I had a ton of comms to spend so I'm just saying it can be done with comm gear.

[Preston_Violent]

That's debatable. Unless you believe that the F2P players are paying enough to carry the game.

 

Not at all, I believe that subscribed casuals who happen to be pretty much locked out of both new ops (willingly because they simply don't wish to do them or unwillingly because in most cases they can hardly progress past the 1st bosses, let alone even get to enter the hm instance) keep the game alive. And in a way I admire these people's enthusiasm because not having much left to do but dull dailies or warzones on the same old, same old, same old maps they remain subscribed and buy cartel stuff.

[Pagy]

1. A seven day Tuesday to Tuesday account suspension.

2. All 186 gear, mods, armorings, barrels, hilts, relics, implants, MK-10 kits, "36" augments, etc. deleted. This would include any armor pieces containing or modified by these items. This would also include anything equipped on companions, in cargo holds, or in legacy cargo holds. I am aware this would include gear earned legitimately from DF/DP and PVP gear. I did say "severe" punishment.

3. All grade 11 crafting materials (including Operation drops) deleted.

4. Credit levels set to either the amount a toon had the day 3.0 went live, or current amount, whichever is less.

5. Reputation for Rishi / Yavin reset to zero. All reputation tokens/items deleted. All achievements/titles connected to 3.0 reset.

6. All comms reset to 0 except for Basic Comms. Basic comms would be set to 1000 or the amount a toon had the day 3.0 went live, whichever is less. This allows them to purchase some basic gear.

7. Account suspension from all global chat channels (general, trade, etc.) for 30 days. This would also counts as a huge reward for those not guilty of using the exploit. :-)

yeah this will be a great way to kill the game

[Preston_Violent]

yeah this will be a great way to kill the game

 

Only for the exploit abusers, given how overall few they are, no one will notice but them

[LordArtemis]

Only for the exploit abusers, given how overall few they are, no one will notice but them

 

LOL

 

I think quite a few folks would notice rollbacks to 3.0, which is one of the things that rather draconian post suggested.

 

Unless, of course, all of the items mentioned in that post are meant to apply only to those that exploited. Then I digress.

Edited January 9, 2015 by LordArtemis

[Preston_Violent]

LOL

Unless, of course, all of the items mentioned in that post are meant to apply only to those that exploited. Then I digress.

 

That's what I thought

[MeNaCe-NZ]

There is money to be had in running such a casual friendly game, big money. Everyone who is trying to be a big name wants their name associated with the next big thing. Ladder climbers jump from project to project and get their name on every big thing that comes down the pike.

SR is in development and there is a lot of work to be done, so I doubt these 4 are spending much time on SWTOR or really care to

 

I'm sort of at a loss as to who they are and what they do here and how it implies SWToR is being left behind?

 

Eric isn't a developer I believe, he's more community relations manager though one would think it a full time job just for SWToR having a comment on a blog over there isn't that big of a deal. Same deal with Courtney I believe from when I noted her posting in the Dev threads - just community relations and again not a developer. The rest I've not heard of, perhaps from SWToR inception and they are best used assets by Bioware for new games than existing ones?

 

Either way nothing points to SWToR being left behind.

[Max_Killjoy]

I can sincerely say that you'd kill the game to gain satisfaction.

 

Multiple people in this thread have said they'd rather see SWTOR "burn" than let the "grievous crime" of using the exploit not be met with "justice".

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Unless, of course, all of the items mentioned in that post are meant to apply only to those that exploited. Then I digress.

 

That was my understanding of his post. No point in punishing those that did nothing wrong. A roll back won't happen, not that far since there was pre-launch week to take into consideration also.

 

Regardless of whatever happens let's hope the person/people/guild that are responsible for putting this out there and even went as far as to try profit from it at least get perm banned. That would at least send something of a message ( if you find exploits don't share them with the entire community lol ).

[AdrianDmitruk]

People don't need to be quite so harsh on comm gear if they think about it more ( or is this less? ) logically. That is for example ( and I can't remember the exact gear I bought so this is pure example ) I didn't like any of the enhancements in comm gear except Waist. So I bought each piece of comm gear I needed the armouring from ( and might as well take mod as well in most cases ) that wasn't for my set piece slots and then I just bought a bunch of Waist items to strip the Enhancements out of that I needed to min/max my char as best as possible.

 

It may depend on class but in the end I got my sin to the accuracy I needed and pretty close to the surge/crit I needed also ( based on Dulfy guides ) for supposed min/max.

 

It's not perfect and it was more expensive but I had a ton of comms to spend so I'm just saying it can be done with comm gear.

 

The character I'm talking about is a vengeance juggernaut.

 

I found NO unlettered mods available on the vendor. Every single DPS strength mod available from the SW basic comms vender was high endurance, very low power (or crit, but I'm mostly interested in power). Before 3.0, it was possible to buy 10 copies of whatever piece had the BiS mod, and mod rip accordingly. But no more, at least not for my class.

 

As a result, it was much better to simply leave the (optimized) 180 mods I had in there equipped. The basic comms were only good for implants, ear, and armorings (as I only had two leftover set pieces to send over by the time this toon hit 55 right before 2.0).

 

Enhancements have been like that ever since I got back into PVE, but the comms before 3.0 were at least useful for getting decent mods provided sufficient grind. It appears now the comms have degraded to total uselessness, and yes now I view it with utter disdain. Hell I'd consider grinding ranked PVP gear with proper itemization over suffering the high endurance crap from the PVE comms vendor if I had to start on a fresh 60 from absolutely nothing, and I know for a fact that if we were talking about my sorc healer instead, that would be indisputably better because of corruption's heavier-than-most-classes reliance on set bonuses.

 

I should also mention that 192s/198s from comms seem to have the same stat allocation, just scaled accordingly. So if it's crap at the basic comm level, it'll be crap at ult level too.

 

I can't help but wonder if the comms gear is literally such a steaming pile that it encouraged the proliferation of the exploit. If shady people feel they have no good options, they'll find one--by hook or by crook.

Edited January 9, 2015 by AdrianDmitruk

[LordArtemis]

...I will admit that the folks directly affected by this probably represent a very small portion of the community. After all, few likely raid, even fewer run Ops, which, to my understanding is where this issue stems from. Edited January 9, 2015 by LordArtemis

[Pagy]

I thought so too but then it all depends on what identifying flags ( for lack of a better word ) there are in the logs to show what is exploit and what is not.

 

For all we know it could be as simple as they can readily see anyone who has achievement and gear but didn't actually kill the boss ( this would make life simpler ) as it didn't set a certain register or something and almost seems it would be quite likely. I guess I'm not entirely sure on this because I'm not 100% on how the exploit works ... I'm just assuming there would be some differential between someone who has done it legit vs someone who has not in logs.

 

On that someone mentioned it was for final boss only or is it for all bosses? That being the case if it's final boss only ( and you can skip all others ) then it would be pretty simple to spot the people with a final boss kill/achievment or gear piece but missing all the others.

 

One you can identify the players the rest is easy.

you're assuming such a db query exists and it can be used to ban players without having to export a list.

furthermore, having the final boss achievement and not the others is not proof positive that you exploited.

furthermore, having all hm boss achievements is not proof positive that you did not exploit on alts or perpetuate the exploit.

 

Iou remove everything ( gear, GTN, lockers, Companions, anything I'm forgetting ) that has level 198 mods in it ( or is 198 itself ) ( or 192 though that could be going too far as it's SM I believe? ) and also token's, mounts, RE schems basically anything that CAN drop from a HM op.

 

This means that you may lose things you were legally entitled to including shells you purchased but there in lies the punishment.

 

This ideally could be easily enough scripted as long as you get the initial list of players to begin with.

again, i hope you dont mind playing a dead game. you'll be following the exploiters to the game across the street eventually.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm sort of at a loss as to who they are and what they do here and how it implies SWToR is being left behind?

 

Eric isn't a developer I believe, he's more community relations manager though one would think it a full time job just for SWToR having a comment on a blog over there isn't that big of a deal. Same deal with Courtney I believe from when I noted her posting in the Dev threads - just community relations and again not a developer. The rest I've not heard of, perhaps from SWToR inception and they are best used assets by Bioware for new games than existing ones?

 

Either way nothing points to SWToR being left behind.

 

SWTOR pulled in about $100 million in gross income for the most recently available year-long figures -- and that was before the SoR sales started.

 

Somehow, I doubt EA is losing money on SWTOR, or is eager to ditch the game.

[Kryand]

Lets take a real look at this issue. It is the holiday season, both player and Dev have time off. If they took the game down to fix this issue there would be outrage over bring the server down during the player holiday break. Dev are most likely under staff because of people taking time off for the holiday.

This excuse is getting tiring. No job I've ever had (programming field) allowed for more than 2 consecutive days off for a holiday, built into the work schedule. 3 weeks is *********** absurd. Of course, people could use up their vacation days however they want, but 3 weeks in a row? No one ever did that. Let alone the entire staff doing it at the same time. And even when I took vacation days, I still got calls from the boss anytime there was something that needed to be fixed, asking me if I had access to a computer.

 

BW's absence during this period is absolutely inexcusable. Period. If they gave the slightest crap about their product, someone would have gotten their *** into the office to fix this the moment they heard about it. That is simply what you do when you have a product with active paying customers.

 

Do you really think it would be a good idea to make a fix, test it and patch it. Which may break something else in game when you are short handed and most player base has time off and wants to play the game? Does that really sound like a good idea to you?

 

Oh you mean, for example, fixing a bug where loot didn't drop at all on the last boss of an operation, right before the entire staff goes on vacation? Yeah, that would be a bad idea!

[LordArtemis]

I hardly think even banning every person that participated in this exploit would make the game dead...I mean we are talking about hardcore HM Ops raiders, right?

 

Not exactly a huge portion of the community.

 

I certainly do not want to see the game lose ANY players...but this game could likely suffer the loss of every raider it has and would probably hardly flinch....IMO of course.

Edited January 9, 2015 by LordArtemis

[Projawa]

There is money to be had in running such a casual friendly game, big money. Everyone who is trying to be a big name wants their name associated with the next big thing. Ladder climbers jump from project to project and get their name on every big thing that comes down the pike.

SR is in development and there is a lot of work to be done, so I doubt these 4 are spending much time on SWTOR or really care to.

 

Exactly. It's not just ladder-climbers trying to get hitched to the next big thing. Artists, coders, systems guys- people get bored after spending years on a single project and want to try something new. And as a cost-saving measure, management is always eager to get double duty or more mileage out of employees rather than have redundant staff.

 

That's why I think Shadowrealms has cannabalized TOR's team to some extent. Think back to WoW. After the Lich King xpack launched, most of their veteran WoW team (the A team) went and started working on their secret big project Titan while the B team took over and put out Cataclysm and Pandaria. Both were substandard compared to Lich King which most long time WoW players regard as the peak of that game's quality.

 

Sure, Titan didn't pan out as they hoped and they salvaged what they could into Overwatch but these are common resource allocation practices and I'd be surprised if a big corporate entity like BW/EA deviated from such common big-corporate practices.

 

Now let's play devil's advocate and assume TOR wasn't stripped of resources to feed Shadowrealms. Is 3.0 really the best they could come up with? I mean, I like 3.0 but it could've been better.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Projawa

[Kirazy]

I thought so too but then it all depends on what identifying flags ( for lack of a better word ) there are in the logs to show what is exploit and what is not.

 

For all we know it could be as simple as they can readily see anyone who has achievement and gear but didn't actually kill the boss ( this would make life simpler ) as it didn't set a certain register or something and almost seems it would be quite likely. I guess I'm not entirely sure on this because I'm not 100% on how the exploit works ... I'm just assuming there would be some differential between someone who has done it legit vs someone who has not in logs.

 

On that someone mentioned it was for final boss only or is it for all bosses? That being the case if it's final boss only ( and you can skip all others ) then it would be pretty simple to spot the people with a final boss kill/achievment or gear piece but missing all the others.

 

One you can identify the players the rest is easy.

 

You remove everything ( gear, GTN, lockers, Companions, anything I'm forgetting ) that has level 198 mods in it ( or is 198 itself ) ( or 192 though that could be going too far as it's SM I believe? ) and also token's, mounts, RE schems basically anything that CAN drop from a HM op.

 

This means that you may lose things you were legally entitled to including shells you purchased but there in lies the punishment.

 

This ideally could be easily enough scripted as long as you get the initial list of players to begin with.

 

This assumes that Bioware is willing to eliminate legitimately acquired gear. I frankly doubt that. You and those like you are more than willing to hope and pray that Bioware does this, but I doubt they will to a reasonable degree of confidence.