Ravagers Exploit Action Update

[Ardarell_Solo]

This x10.

 

The exact opposite of this x10x10x10. What planet do you guys even live on?!? It's surely not in the Star Wars Universe, man!

[Grayseven]

As I said, inconsistent application of the rules results in anger and frustration and people 'will' quit if the punishment is too severe.

 

To say that past behavior is irrelevant is ridiculous. All we 'have' is past behavior and the expectation that that pattern of behavior doesn't deviate. Had they been consistent from the start about exploiters, we'd not be in this mess now. Wildly deviating depending on circumstances is a horrible way for any authority to act when it comes to application of the rules and it results in these sorts of messes.

 

You have no way of knowing what the past behavior concerning exploits is since EA/BW does not advertise what actions have been taken. You might have some anecdotal evidence, but you have no proof.

 

The ToS/RoC is the ONLY RELEVANT CONSISTENCY they need. It is a cut and dried statement.

 

Any other argument is nothing more than justification for breaking the rules. You have no valid defense for people breaking the rules.

[Chewbacta]

Exploiters did the crime, now they do the time. Zero sympathy from me no matter how harsh the penalty is. It was well earned.

[Glzmo]

Hey folks,

 

Let’s talk a bit about the Ravager’s exploit. There are two stages to the process of removing an exploit and handling actions for players who participated. Stage 1 – fix the issue and ensure players can no longer partake in the exploit. That change is out as of today in patch 3.0.2.

 

Stage 2 – With the exploit removed, we can work towards finalizing our data review and assigning appropriate actions. We have a lot of information! We know who used it, who they invited, how many times they exploited, when they participated, credits gained, and whether they gained a crafting pattern from reverse-engineering. We are still reviewing the data and determining the appropriate action for those who took undue advantage of the exploit. We won’t be taking action today, but we’ll wrap it up in the next week or so.

 

On the plus side, most players didn't partake in the exploit at all allowing us to focus on the few who did. It may seem silly to thank you for not using an exploit, but we really appreciate you taking the time to raise our awareness of the issue through a variety of channels. It demonstrates your commitment to the game and to keeping the game fun, and fair for everyone. So thank you for not using the exploit.

 

-eric

I've got an idea. Why not award a substantial amount of Cartel Coins, Credits, Commendations etc. to players that didn't exploit whenever you fix a major exploit and officially announcing that you are rewarding non-exploiters? That may encourage those that are tempted to exploit things not to do it.

Intentional offenders still need to be punished, of course, but a positive incentive not to use exploits by rewarding the "good" players may be something revolutionary and make people think twice before exploiting anything.

Edited January 13, 2015 by Glzmo

[Chewbacta]

I've got an idea. Why not award a substantial amount of Cartel Coins, Credits, Commendations etc. to players that didn't exploit whenever you fix a major exploit and officially announcing that you are rewarding non-exploiters?

 

I'm an adult; I don't need a reward for doing what's right.

[grombrinda]

Wait so all those times I've been told that I'm SoL because I've lost items to various glitches and bugs and they "cant verify or return" lost items was total BS since they claim they can track every little detail when they actually care enough to?

 

Its nice to know they only care about doing their job when its something they lost and not something their customers lost. They clearly are either lying now or have lied to us before about not being able to compensate people for all the other crap we have had to put up with over the years. How about worrying more about making things up to your paying customers when YOU mess up then punishing them when, again, YOU messed up.

 

How about trying to use these new magic resources to help your player base deal with the crap you roll out

 

Good question...

 

Eric can you please elaborate on this...or is it "something new" that all of a sudden became attainable??

[Nadru]

If you made that argument, I would laugh in your face.

 

First off, doing 55 Ops is still playing the game. The rewards were out of touch with the time and effort required, but you were still playing the game within the rules of the game. This exploit involved taking a completed lockout and abusing it to zone back into the instance and repeatedly loot the boss over and over, and then selling the ability to do so to someone else.

 

Second, we are talking about optimized 198 tier gear with set bonuses versus vendor garbage that in most cases is worse than 186 raid gear.

 

Third, Ultimate comms has a weekly cap, there is only so much gain you can get per week by running old content. The exploit allowed people an endless supply of loot drops. They could reset and do it over and over as many times as they wanted.

 

Fourth, it enabled players to get gear beyond their skill level, which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of the game. Within the confines of the game mechanics, any player can eventually get 198 vendor gear if they put in the effort. Yes, doing 55 Ops helped speed up this process, but they could still get it eventually. This is not the case with 198 tier gear.

 

To your first and third points, that is not how the exploit worked. You could only run it once per week per character. Much like the ultimate comm limit. You could not reset it and do it over and over. No third party programs were involved. You were playing the game as the games was coded. You can split hairs over intentions and obviousness, but to me it was obvious level 55 Ops should not have still been rewarding ultimates.

 

To your second point, what does it matter. An exploit is an exploit. It doesn't matter if the gear is better or BiS. As you people like to point out, wrong is wrong.

 

To your fourth point, the ultimate comm gear is out of the reach of many now. You can only get ultimate comms from NiM DF/DP and SM Ravagers after today's update. An average casual not good at raiding will be able to earn less than 20 ultimates a week now. That is 6 weeks to buy one piece of gear. All of your justifications are no better than the justifications for why those who exploited Ravagers did so.

[TravelingNomad]

At the end of the day, continued discussion is irrelevant and pointless. We can be waving documents, past experiences, or whatever in front of each other, but we are really only debating amongst ourselves. Chances are, Bioware won't use this thread for anything other than using it for announcement purposes. The continuation of arguing is utterly pointless, regardless of how you may feel about the subject.

[branmakmuffin]

At the end of the day, continued discussion is irrelevant and pointless.

Thus the reason you decided to not post in this thread, which would have continued the pointless discussion.

[Jonfendm]

Not desperation at all. I'm pointing out how trivial the "exploit" was when you look at this issue as well. There were TWO massive screw'ups out...the "exploit" was only one of them.

 

Except for the fact that in one case you actually had to ... you know... DO the content. Whereas with the other case it generally began with a guys whispering you saying "you want to come take advantage of this glitch that requires you to do nothing except click on an escape pod?" or with a shady whisper offering to "sell" a lockout. Sure, sure, they are one in the same.

[Anuduin]

27 separate instance of The Ravagers were up in the middle of the day on my server. 27. This wasn't prime time mind you it was the middle of a week day. I can assure that far more than a handful of people participated. On my server I would venture to say over half of the active population participated. I know of a handful of people who did the exploit that are not only subs but spend hundreds of dollars on the CM. These are raiders that have dealt with lag, ability delay, broken/bugged fights (Underlurker) and they will quit and take their money elsewhere. You say they are showing the player base that exploiting is not okay. Well maybe the player base is showing them that releasing bugged broken content and charging money for it is not okay.

 

Exactly! Well put.

[aeterno]

Expolits wise people have been getting away with murder for years now. People wouldn't dare pull this if was a Blizzard game. Bout time for a couple of slaps.

[Avicii]

Yes the pitchfork crowd could take a lesson from this post as to where the blame really is

 

ROFL the people who exploited it knowingly are to blame, everyone knew it was an exploit pretty much right away. Listen to any of the SWTOR podcasts or chat ect. Everything else is just trying to justify doing something wrong that people knew was wrong because they thought they wouldnt be punished.

 

To the people that exploited, would you have done it if you knew you could lose your account?

 

Blame BW, blame others, try to justify douche behavior because it's a game just reflects on your personally values.

 

As for the "negative" message crowd, please.

 

It's postive to the rest of the community and the outside looking in to ban those that willfully take advantage of an exploit or a violation of ToS. GW2 ban hammered accounts for buying an item from a vendor they accidently put in at a low price because internet being what it is people bought as many as they could to gain an advantage, they knew it was wrong just like these people knew it was wrong.

 

GW2 ban them and gave them a small window to appeal the ban. It was a good msg to send. GW2 official response

 

"Today we banned a number of players for exploiting Guild Wars 2. We take our community and the integrity of the game very seriously, and want to be clear that intentionally exploiting the game is unacceptable. The players we banned were certainly intentionally and repeatedly exploiting a bug in the game. We intended to send a very clear message that exploiting the game in this way will not be tolerated, and we believe this message now has been well understood."

 

This is a positive message to send for the community.

 

WoW just banned 2 very popular streamers for account sharing because it was against ToS. You send a msg and people won't do it again. GW2 had it correct and it's time for SWTOR to do the same there is no justification when you know something you are doing is wrong that anyone can say.

[ijustcantbelieve]

hello all to BW devs.

 

First thing to be aware is: some took advantage of something, but YOU guys take advantage of my Money every month to provide a ****** service. i use the exploit once, np in admit, but let see now what you guys are going to do about it.

 

Ban me if you´re like, but keep in mind, start providing BETTER SERVICE then you have atm.Do not take amoney from players and then don´t give a **** about the service you provide, keep that in your mind

[Huez]

WOW

I was not part of exploit BUT WOW

 

if people start getting banned I am going to quit the game.

Not because exploiters are getting punished

but because Devs are going to pin players who found loophole and used it.

If it was anybodies fault it was the Devs for over looking this and let it live for so long.

I mean what kind of Sith is not plotting an exploit?

What would the Republic do without its corrupt exploiters?

Seriously though 2 1/2 years playing swtor and if I see people getting banned for the Devs fault im outie~

[Fallenenjeru]

hello all to BW devs.

 

First thing to be aware is: some took advantage of something, but YOU guys take advantage of my Money every month to provide a ****** service. i use the exploit once, np in admit, but let see now what you guys are going to do about it.

 

Ban me if you´re like, but keep in mind, start providing BETTER SERVICE then you have atm.Do not take amoney from players and then don´t give a **** about the service you provide, keep that in your mind

 

Lol at you.

[Fallenenjeru]

To any saying it's the devs fault,it isn't really. Bugs/loopholes exist in all games,it does not then make it correct to abuse those bugs/exploits. If you are aware of something like this,you send a ticket in,and get it resolved. Not abuse the living hell out of it.

[Jojomagro]

I feel like i'm at a freakshow at a carnival. Disgusted but I just can't turn away from you all.

[Drockter]

WOW

Not because exploiters are getting punished

but because Devs are going to pin players who found loophole and used it.

 

Ummm.. that is exactly what an exploit is... a loophole that the players found... The player becomes an exploiter when instead of reporting the issue, they farmed it. Encouraged others to farm it, sold access to others.

 

Sorry, they deserve what they get...

 

But good luck with that argument.

[XVAAyrton]

Ppl are All happy about other ppl getting bannd?

 

to be fair towards BW and EA. The Underlucker is bugged its to hard for Social players, ppl who don't wanna do 4k Effective healing and allot of dps.

 

so yes Ppl used the Exploit and what about those who used the Nerfa Exploit? thats forgotten to BW or what??

 

so no meaning to be rude to anyone at BW for doing their job. but i think just take away the ppl who made money and got gear, don't ban them. many don't wanna sub lately, don't lose more players

 

but yeah had to say.

 

sorry if it sounds mean, just wanna be fair and honest here

[Ajuma]

lol most players didn't use the exploit?? Oh you mean the F2P and people who didn't buy the exspansion? Good luck trying to ban 50% of each server.

[Darkwords]

Beta testers in my guild said they reported the exploit before release. it was released anyway. A simple blanket email sent to players in game, (like the repedative announcement one Bioware sent this morning) warning people not to participate might of been the better choice.

 

I know the exploit had been around and used by many many people before the info got to me a week and a half ago. I couldn't figure out why the first couple days after release a few players were selling barrels and hilts...silly me. Also, it is not just a few people. While standing on Fleet this am for about 5 min in one area, I saw about 18-20 people run by me and inspected them...surprise!! Well Que'sera sera...the exploiters better hold off on buying CCs till this is sorted out.

[Ajuma]

IF ANYONE is banned on harbinger server then ZORZ and YES guild need to be banned, Zorz found it and sold it to YES. Because of them they started it all on the server.

[DarthDymond]

The devs did not state there was an exploit or a consequence until a week ago, therefore cannot punish anybody that did it before there statement, however after the statement is another story.

That's... not how it works.

 

Now, if your personal sense of fairness/right & wrong leads you to object so strongly to BW punishing those who used the exploit before last week that you chose to cancel your subscription over it, that is absolutely your right to do so (the same as it is the right of those who have said they will unsubscribe on principle if BW doesn't ban everyone who used the exploit) - "voting with your wallet" is a tried-and-true method of trying to influence a business's policy choices.

 

But if you honestly think you're going to get any MMO to adopt a policy of "we won't consider a bug to be a punishable exploit until we have publicly labeled it one"... well, good luck with that.

Edited January 13, 2015 by DarthDymond

[BuriDogshin]

IF ANYONE is banned on harbinger server then ZORZ and YES guild need to be banned, Zorz found it and sold it to YES. Because of them they started it all on the server.

All of Zorz? Or just one player?

 

It's hardly fair to punish an entire guild or raid team for the actions of one player.