regarding punishment for exploit

[ROGERMNF]

In my opinion those who claim for the head of all who have used the exploit are just focusing in one thing: "using exploit is bad, and nothing can justify it". Ok, I can agree with that but also I think that view is a short of "MMO cultural" and is not considering some cases that deserve special atention.

 

Know the player about take profit of a bug is "unlegal"?

For those who have played MMO's for years this is a clear answer. But what happen with, more casual gamers? I'm sure that a lot of players when somenone say them: "do this, and this, and this and go to X" and they see what happened, they don't think "oh man! this is wrong!", they just say: "oh cool". Actually, in my guild for example there are people that when we said "This is an exploit" they simply said: "What is an exploit?". Did deserve a lifetime ban? I don't think so... Anyway, I admit this is a problematic point, because you can't say what players are more or less experience gaming MMO's. Take into acount that if there is a massive number of players who have used the exploit it means that there are ppl that uses to do such things, but there are others that never used exploits, no mater if they don't use for not knowing or because they use simply to play and don't cause troubles.

 

How many times do it?

For me this is the key. Having done once is not the same that have done it once with multiple characters, than have done it twice, than have done it for weeks. The consecuences are far diferent: gear disbalances, ingame economy, mounts, mats, inverse engin,... Same punishment for all? Really? The more repeated exploit, the more the punishment. Only from this view I can agree (actually I'm not) with ban a limited number of heavy exploiter users, and other sanctions (advicement, limited content, taking related gear/goods from the acount, money or others) for players who have used fewer times.

If justice aplies capital punishment for all ofences then is not justice.

[Kryand]

you make huge assumptions here. with your in depth knowledge of bw's logging system,can you tell us if bw even keeps the data you claim is easy to search? I love how non programmers will tell you how easy a project is without having squat for knowledge of the actual data being used.

 

And I love how people losing an argument will resort to ad hominem attacks.

 

I already said I am willing to accept the possibility that they don't actually keep decent enough records to track any of this. It would require an embarrassing level of incompetence, but it's possible. However, given that they were able to randomly distribute all loot, over a week later, among the 8 people who were in a Rav+ToS raid of mine back when the final bosses didn't drop loot, they obviously keep a log of group members and boss kills in a raid. And that is the only thing they would need to track down every single exploiter with 100% certainty, and even exclude the people who only did it once "on accident" or subbed in just to kill the last boss, etc.

 

So if all you have to add is "NO ITZ 2 HARD THEY DIDANT GIV ME LOOT 1 TIME THERE4 THEY CANT DO IT IMPOSSABAL", I think we're done here.

[ivanhedgehog]

And I love how people losing an argument will resort to ad hominem attacks.

 

I already said I am willing to accept the possibility that they don't actually keep decent enough records to track any of this. It would require an embarrassing level of incompetence, but it's possible. However, given that they were able to randomly distribute all loot, over a week later, among the 8 people who were in a Rav+ToS raid of mine back when the final bosses didn't drop loot, they obviously keep a log of group members and boss kills in a raid. And that is the only thing they would need to track down every single exploiter with 100% certainty, and even exclude the people who only did it once "on accident" or subbed in just to kill the last boss, etc.

 

So if all you have to add is "NO ITZ 2 HARD THEY DIDANT GIV ME LOOT 1 TIME THERE4 THEY CANT DO IT IMPOSSABAL", I think we're done here.

 

YOU TOLD US HOW EASY IT WILL BE. I did not use any ad hominem attacks. you must have knowledge of bw code base if you can tell us this. or were you just guessing? I know of many more people that were told "tough luck" when they asked for loot from the final bosses...or the loot from the 16 man rav that dropped 8 man loot. What I have to add is that you are making knowledge of bw's code up as you go along. you(and I) have NO idea. I would be willing to be the devs ask the programmers if something like this is possible.

[WhiteStriker]

All they really need to do (and probably should do, honestly) is track down the people who spread or otherwise made the exploit available to other players as those are the individuals doing the real harm. We know that those people know that the game was behaving in an unintended manner as they were taking advantage of it by making in-game credits off of it. If they go after those individuals and take a light, but still noticeable action, that will send a clear signal to them that (1) cheating is unacceptable and (2) a harsher punishment might come the next time they try to break the terms of service.

 

I'm not sure what Customer Service suggested, but you could probably help the situation by reporting anybody you see offering the exploit by using the in-game reporting features. Realistically speaking though, it doesn't make sense to punish the hundreds or thousands of other characters that benefited from the exploit. It's an unfortunate situation, but all that can really be done is to make the best out of a bad situation.

 

In the end the cheaters will lose, because they'll be the ones looking for more content to do once they've maxed out their gear so far ahead of everybody else. The same kind of applied to the people who exploited Illum back in the early days of the game's launch.

[Max_Killjoy]

dont worry about him... he is just a troll that likes going around poking people with a stick trying to get them riled up

 

Doesn't agree with Edzew = troll, now, huh?

 

Keep going, we're playing "signs of having no actual argument" Bingo here, and I just need a couple more squares to win.

[Max_Killjoy]

you make huge assumptions here. with your in depth knowledge of bw's logging system,can you tell us if bw even keeps the data you claim is easy to search? I love how non programmers will tell you how easy a project is without having squat for knowledge of the actual data being used.

 

I've been dealing with that for almost 2 years now, on our "new, better" software at work.

 

We still don't have the Day 1 requirements, let alone the 30, 60, and 90 day requirements. We're still dealing with the most basic of failures and faults, much of them related to how data is stored.

[Edzew]

Doesn't agree with Edzew = troll, now, huh?

 

Keep going, we're playing "signs of having no actual argument" Bingo here, and I just need a couple more squares to win.

 

poke poke poke yer so funny

 

 

fyi i didn't say anything about agreeing with me i was talking about how you just argue with multiple people for no apparent reason. you also seam to jump to conclusions and lump people together and then gripe at other people saying they are doing the same thing you are doing but dont even acknowledge the fact that you were doing it too B^)

 

heck you even admitted you dont care what happens. you are just in here to argue with people and poke at them

[grombrinda]

Funny how they can track this yet when Hard Modes weren't counting towards the weekly and my group sent tickets in, we were told that they cannot track these or the loot drops. Funny how when Ilum was being exploited and the Imperials SIGNIFICANTLY widened the PvP gear gap that ruined PvP for months (Battlemaster, RNG etc etc) not a thing was done. That was far more egregious IMHO because it affected EVERYONE on a PvP server. What were we told then? They had no way of tracking it and there would be no roll back. Even with screenshots with clearly visible names, they said they couldn't do anything because it couldn't be verified. SO NOW all of a sudden, they can use NSA spy techniques and track everything? I don't think that they're only now able to do it, I just think now they're WILLING to do it, and that's pathetic. I'm pretty sure a lot of people are watching how BW handles this and they may find a lot fewer subs on the books come Wednesday morning that left willingly.

 

^..This...

[GeneralRhodes]

BTW, the legal advice you might get from many U.S. attorneys is that you should breach a contract when the expected net harm that will come to you as a result of the breach is less than the expected net benefit of the breach: that is called an "efficient breach." The concept of "honor" has little impact in current U.S. contract law doctrine.

 

Uh, no. No lawyer anywhere in the US is going to tell you to breach a contract. Ever. They aren't allowed to. Breach of contract is an actionable crime. Giving such advice would be advising a client to break the law. A lawyer is explicitly not allowed to give a client, or anyone else any kind of advice or recommendation that involves committing a crime. That is an ethics violation and would result in the lawyer being disbarred.

 

And note that here as with any other breach of any other contract, the nonbreaching party (here, we will presume that to be BioWare) is completely within their rights to overlook the breach, if that serves their interests. It happens all the time in every kind of contract imaginable.

 

Actually they aren't. A contract is a contract. Both sides are equally required to adhere to it. BW cannot hold a customer to adhering to a tos agreement that they intentionally fail to enforce themselves. Contracts work both ways. What you are claiming would be a blantant breach of contract

 

wow dude just wow, this isn't a potential breach of contract it is a breach of the ToS, and US law don't matter squat here friend, only what BW says and does.

 

Actually the tos agreement, like all tos agreements is a contract. Its is BWs responsibility to enforce it and the users responsibility to adhere to it, provided the contents of it are legal. and US law does matter, more specifically, the laws of the state of california. Contract law does apply here, as do consumer protection laws.

 

lol nobody is litigating anything, the ball is solely in BW's court, they own the game it is a private entity beholden to no one. And how it works in the USA not even the law as businesses make the laws

 

Tell that to origin, linden labs and the thousands of other companies that have been sued over the years. Businesses do not make laws. They are required to adhere to them just like everyone else. This is a paid service being provided by a company. We are its customers. Customers do have rights and are protected by consumer protection laws, among others. No company is above the law or 'beholden to no one'

 

you are funny, your point is??? you ignored all mine all you want is your argument to be heard, you would do much better trying not to act like you know everything and just dismissing everything else.

 

Says the guy who is totally ignorant of US law and makes absurd claims of companies being answerable to nobody

 

Oh look, another one. "If you're not in favor of dropping the hammer, you must be a cheater afraid of being hit!"

 

So many witch-hunters...

 

Every single post you have made in this thread has either been a lie or an attack against someone

 

Here is a fact: you are either in favor of getting rid of exploiters or you are supporting there actions. There is no in-between. If you are not doing something about them you are a party to excusing their behavior and enabling it and are part of the problem

 

I don't think people will tolerate any form of ban as subscribers. If it was me, I would simply cancel even if the ban was for 5 minutes.

 

so if you get caught cheating and get banned for it you 'won't tolerate it.' that is absurd. if you got a ban for something like that its because you did something to deserve it. you might as well say 'if they ban me for anything i'll quit and you won't get my money so you better let me do anything I want'

 

oh i didnt know we had a bw employee here, whats their db index gui app called?

 

Is that a serious question? Its called querying a database. you can do it manually, or you can write a small app to do it for you and quite quickly. You just need the info to be in a database - which it is, and to know what you're looking for.

 

"All exploiters need to be banned" is not a financially viable option.

 

Yes it is.

 

1st...this is not a database we are talking about, it is individual logs.

 

Then write a parser to flag suspicious activity and then do a database query based on that. this isn't rocket science

 

you make huge assumptions here. with your in depth knowledge of bw's logging system,can you tell us if bw even keeps the data you claim is easy to search? I love how non programmers will tell you how easy a project is without having squat for knowledge of the actual data being used.

 

Non-programmers you say? Thats funny, seeing as i'm a programmer myself. There is no assumption there. The server keeps logs and character data - all character data, is stored in a database. Databases can be queried to return entries that meet a chosen criteria. A parser can be written to go through logs and flag anything you want. You don't need to know every detail about how the structure of this particular game, because certain things have to operate a certain way. Data storage and retrieval being one of them.

 

YOU TOLD US HOW EASY IT WILL BE. I did not use any ad hominem attacks

 

and you followed that with 'I love how non programmers....' therein lies the attack

 

you must have knowledge of bw code base if you can tell us this

 

No, he must just have a basic understanding of how SQL, databases, parsers and data storage work. not to mention basic common sense

[Lucyfer_Infinity]

I love how you people overestimate the amount of cheaters. Because you and your friends/guild cheats doesn't mean everyone else does. The game will be more than fine without you.

[Max_Killjoy]

poke poke poke yer so funny

 

 

fyi i didn't say anything about agreeing with me i was talking about how you just argue with multiple people for no apparent reason. you also seam to jump to conclusions and lump people together and then gripe at other people saying they are doing the same thing you are doing but dont even acknowledge the fact that you were doing it too B^)

 

heck you even admitted you dont care what happens. you are just in here to argue with people and poke at them

 

 

 

BINGO!

 

Thanks, man.

[Andryah]

the crafting market is a non starter. it is unbalanced and the exploit actually opened it up to greater participation which is a good thing. more competition is a healthy change to the market.

 

100% Agree.

 

Worst case it simply shortened the time that the few had a quasi-monopoly on the GTN.. and so they were unable to pursue competition free pricing. No sympathy for predators... pricing predators.

[Max_Killjoy]

100% Agree.

 

Worst case it simply shortened the time that the few had a quasi-monopoly on the GTN.. and so they were unable to pursue competition free pricing. No sympathy for predators... pricing predators.

 

That was pretty much my opinion as well -- very little sympathy for those who lost time on their market exclusivity because of more stuff getting onto the market. Not much concern for the tears of gougers.

[Andryah]

I see the pitchfork nerds are still going at it. Poor mother ******

 

New Term: Radicalized MMO Gamer

[BuriDogshin]

Uh, no. No lawyer anywhere in the US is going to tell you to breach a contract. Ever. They aren't allowed to.

 

I take it you aren't a lawyer, are you? I'm not guessing that lawyers may sometimes advise a client to breach a contract, I've heard a Big Law lawyer give that advice.

[Andryah]

so i take it then youve never opened a ticket for operation loot related issues?

 

because between myself and guildies, no one ever gets their loot and are told "gee sorry we cant be sure".

 

if you think they have tools to perform mass investigations like this youre deluding yourself. bw cant even ban credit spammers within 48 hours nm investigate operations loot issues.

 

Yeah.. he is conveniently mixing apples with oranges.

 

In most modern setups like this.. you have a lot of probes in the code and transactions that collect and store data along with certain specific id information. This is a great resource if you have the id information and just need to query the db specifically. Which is one of the reasons that CS wants very specific information when you open a ticket. Wrong id info, or incorrect information can cause a CS fail. Missing data in the data warehouse can to.. though that should be less common really.

 

All this "it's trivial" handwaving around here ASSUMES that broad queries for information A) exist B) that they are bulletproof at parsing across millions of divergent entries of data. It doesn't work that way.

 

How it does work (broad brush strokes):

 

The data is most likely routed to data warehouse(s) where it is broadly cataloged (server, planet, few other things). the analytics we hear so much about from Bioware are simply modern day analytics overlays to the data warehouse(s). And to apply those overlays.. you have to code up a report, debug it, and then deploy it. So, yeah.. they probably have a really good set of existing reports that mine/parse/graph specific data sets that they use to keep an eye on what is taking place on the servers. Making new reports though is not trivial at all. [This is basic data dash-boarding for watching and analyzing key metrics].

 

However, when a CS ticket is entered for a very specific incident, CS is going to need very specific data so that they can fill out a form that triggers a query. If CS is constantly finding a need for a specific type of data, then the support teams would write them a custom report to help CS be more efficient. This is a highly manual process that relies on a data warehouse as the source data.

 

As for tracking all the various parameters of human behavior associated with an exploit..... a whole different beast to deal with. Why? There can and will be dozens of different permutations to attack. Some easy, some hard. AND...you will be sifting through the data warehouse millions and millions of times and in effect creating a whole new db that will be humongous and still won't accurately cover all the human behavior variables. There are some things of course that make excellent "markers" to look for in the data.. and this is likely where they will focus. Even then.. they have to be quite careful, or they get piles of false positives.

Edited January 12, 2015 by Andryah

[Max_Killjoy]

Yeah.. he is conveniently mixing apples with oranges.

 

In most modern setups like this.. you have a lot of probes in the code and transactions that collect and store data along with certain specific id information. This is a great resource if you have the id information and just need to query the db specifically. Which is one of the reasons that CS wants very specific information when you open a ticket. Wrong id info, or incorrect information can cause a CS fail. Missing data in the data warehouse can to.. though that should be less common really.

 

All this "it's trivial" handwaving around here ASSUMES that broad queries for information A) exist B) that they are bulletproof at parsing across millions of divergent entries of data. It doesn't work that way.

 

How it does work (broad brush strokes):

 

The data is most likely routed to data warehouse(s) where it is broadly cataloged (server, planet, few other things). the analytics we hear so much about from Bioware are simply modern day analytics overlays to the data warehouse(s). And to apply those overlays.. you have to code up a report, debug it, and then deploy it. So, yeah.. they probably have a really good set of existing reports that mine/parse/graph specific data sets that they use to keep an eye on what is taking place on the servers. Making new reports though is not trivial at all. [This is basic data dash-boarding for watching and analyzing key metrics].

 

However, when a CS ticket is entered for a very specific incident, CS is going to need very specific data so that they can fill out a form that triggers a query. If CS is constantly finding a need for a specific type of data, then the support teams would write them a custom report to help CS be more efficient. This is a highly manual process that relies on a data warehouse as the source data.

 

As for tracking all the various parameters of human behavior associated with an exploit..... a whole different beast to deal with. Why? There can and will be dozens of different permutations to attack. Some easy, some hard. AND...you will be sifting through the data warehouse millions and millions of times and in effect creating a whole new db that will be humongous and still won't accurately cover all the human behavior variables. There are some things of course that make excellent "markers" to look for in the data.. and this is likely where they will focus. Even then.. they have to quite careful, or they get piles of false positives.

 

Yeap.

 

And the belief that BW keeps a log of "and then he pressed W to move forward for 3.079 seconds between these coordinates between these two time stamps" is a bit... optimistic. Given the number of players on at any one time, there's only so much data that can be saved over time.

Edited January 12, 2015 by Max_Killjoy

[Eanelinea]

The only thing that worries me mostly, is those of us who did the raid as it was originally intended getting into trouble. My guild knew nothing of it. I DO agree that those guilds (whether it's one man/woman or the entire guild) who told everyone, sold spots and switched servers be banned for life. But there are innocents out there, those who saw the 37 items on gtn and bought them who had no idea *** was happening.

 

I don't care if Bioware knew this exploit was happening for 1 day, 1 week, or 10 years. It is THEIR game. If they want to sit back and do nothing, that's their right. If they want to ban every single person who participated in the exploit knowingly or not, that's their right. You accepted THEIR terms whether you read the TOS or not, before you first logged into the game. It even says they can and will remove your account, ban your account, etc if they wish to with or without explanation.

 

Your toons, items, in game credits ALL belongs to Bioware. It doesn't matter if you're free to play or if you buy 6 month subscriptions at a time. They have the right to do anything or nothing they wish to.

 

They DO keep track of every single thing you do in this game. Especially this game. How do you think the NPCs in newer cut scenes, if you bother to watch them and not spacebar through them, mentions what you did? Or knows you're female. Or knows what class you are? Or even how the properly working intros know if you married or didn't marry a companion? THEY HAVE EVERY SINGLE THING YOU'VE DONE in their system.

 

I believe, most times when they say they can't help you, they either truly have no record you did what you say you did, or sadly, they're just being lazy.

 

But as I said, if you KNOWINGLY exploited and continue to exploit, you deserve whatever punishment Bioware deems appropriate and everyone complaining has NO right to complain. You knew what you were doing was against their TOS and kept doing it. Don't act innocent or think it's okay because you might think 3.0 sucked or is bugged or whatever.

[Pagy]

In my opinion those who claim for the head of all who have used the exploit are just focusing in one thing: "using exploit is bad, and nothing can justify it". Ok, I can agree with that but also I think that view is a short of "MMO cultural" and is not considering some cases that deserve special atention.

their reaction is pretty obvious...they are upset that if the exploiters arent banned, that there was no reason why they should not have exploited too.

 

it's petty and pathetic. they want people punished because of the righteous indignation payoff they are getting.

[Max_Killjoy]

They DO keep track of every single thing you do in this game. Especially this game. How do you think the NPCs in newer cut scenes, if you bother to watch them and not spacebar through them, mentions what you did? Or knows you're female. Or knows what class you are? Or even how the properly working intros know if you married or didn't marry a companion? THEY HAVE EVERY SINGLE THING YOU'VE DONE in their system.

 

I believe, most times when they say they can't help you, they either truly have no record you did what you say you did, or sadly, they're just being lazy.

 

There are flags that get set and saved that record a lot of specific things for future reference, like what decisions you made during cutscenes of certain quests, etc. But those flags have to be set up to record those things in advance, it's not like the game is going over the entire history of your character looking through every keystroke to find that decision.

 

Those flags are part of what the savegame editors for games like ME2 are viewing and manipulating. Same thing with the "history setting" function at the start of DA2 if you don't import a savegame from DA:O.

Edited January 12, 2015 by Max_Killjoy

[Pagy]

And I love how people losing an argument will resort to ad hominem attacks.

he did not make an ad hominem argument, perhaps you should acquaint yourself with the definition.

[ivanhedgehog]

calling someone a nonprogrammer is not an insult. its a fact. I deal with people all the time that dont know programming that will tell you just how easy it is..with absolutely zero knowledge of what they are talking about. that is NOT ad-hominem.

[Pietrastor]

I love how you people overestimate the amount of cheaters. Because you and your friends/guild cheats doesn't mean everyone else does. The game will be more than fine without you.

2 weeks ago? Yes. But not now, especially after Bioware's post. It's being discussed in general chats, guilds TS channels and everywhere possible, especially as the timeframe to "benefit" from the exploit is closing and people are deciding whether they're gonna do it or not. Last but not least, if u took a short trip to Rishi entrance today and saw the lag from all the people crammed in front, u would know it's a mass exploit party at this stage.

Edited January 12, 2015 by Pietrastor

[ivanhedgehog]

Yeah.. he is conveniently mixing apples with oranges.

 

In most modern setups like this.. you have a lot of probes in the code and transactions that collect and store data along with certain specific id information. This is a great resource if you have the id information and just need to query the db specifically. Which is one of the reasons that CS wants very specific information when you open a ticket. Wrong id info, or incorrect information can cause a CS fail. Missing data in the data warehouse can to.. though that should be less common really.

 

All this "it's trivial" handwaving around here ASSUMES that broad queries for information A) exist B) that they are bulletproof at parsing across millions of divergent entries of data. It doesn't work that way.

 

How it does work (broad brush strokes):

 

The data is most likely routed to data warehouse(s) where it is broadly cataloged (server, planet, few other things). the analytics we hear so much about from Bioware are simply modern day analytics overlays to the data warehouse(s). And to apply those overlays.. you have to code up a report, debug it, and then deploy it. So, yeah.. they probably have a really good set of existing reports that mine/parse/graph specific data sets that they use to keep an eye on what is taking place on the servers. Making new reports though is not trivial at all. [This is basic data dash-boarding for watching and analyzing key metrics].

 

However, when a CS ticket is entered for a very specific incident, CS is going to need very specific data so that they can fill out a form that triggers a query. If CS is constantly finding a need for a specific type of data, then the support teams would write them a custom report to help CS be more efficient. This is a highly manual process that relies on a data warehouse as the source data.

 

As for tracking all the various parameters of human behavior associated with an exploit..... a whole different beast to deal with. Why? There can and will be dozens of different permutations to attack. Some easy, some hard. AND...you will be sifting through the data warehouse millions and millions of times and in effect creating a whole new db that will be humongous and still won't accurately cover all the human behavior variables. There are some things of course that make excellent "markers" to look for in the data.. and this is likely where they will focus. Even then.. they have to be quite careful, or they get piles of false positives.

 

you put it a lot more concisely than I could. I have had user try telling me for years just how easy the task they want will be, and be completely wrong.

[ZETA_SCORPII]

I've seen more love between Al-Qaeda and the United States than some of the people here.