Ravagers Exploit Action Update

[Alec_Fortescue]

two stars thread. exploiters are mad mehehhehehe

[Pagy]

"They can't afford to ban so many"

 

Myth Debunked

do you know what the word "most" means?

 

Was there ever anyone claiming that "most" players exploited?

[Nydus]

I have absolutely no idea what people are talking about. At some point could someone please explain it to me?

 

Talking to you Torocast / Bad Feeling podcasts.

[BrianDavion]

far as I can tell the exploit was only super prevelant on a one or two servers or so.

[Briggology]

I'm sorry, but if it's live, it's fair game.

[Pagy]

It's already begun. Many people with whom I raided with on a regular basis have un-subbed. I've got 2 days left myself, but wish everyone good luck who stays (if you live for endgame you're gonna need it)

yeah its pretty scary...the expansion should have rejuvenated the game and added to the sub base.

 

after the ability delay, massive amount of bugs, drama and absence of the bw dev team over xmas...they took an opportunity and turned it into a disaster. i just resubbed one month on Sunday...i foolishly wanted to give them another month for the lag delay given the focus now. i'll see what happens.

 

but right now, the game has very little for me to do with the ravagers/tos bugs.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Pagy

[Drockter]

Many if not most of the people who exploited are subscribers, many have subscribed for 2-3 years. They are people who play all parts of the game, augment their gear, and min/max.

 

I'm really confused by this argument to be honest... your claim, correct me if I am wrong, is that exploiting is fine... as long as you are a subscriber? Or the leet or leet should be allowed to exploit? How leet do you need to be? Is there a threshold of leetness that makes cheating OK? Is cheating a requirement for leetness?

 

This argument, to me, sounds eerily similar to "all the cool kids are doing it"

[Grayseven]

such stuff is already exist. this people is being carryed by capable players and grab loot from operation.

Funny part some of them after that will go on forum and QQ that SWTOR should be casual and game will not lose anything from losing hardcore pve and pvp players. it's total ********, because this people is one of few things wich keep this game alive

 

Being "carried" isn't an exploit. The content is still being done in the manner in which it was designed. The loot rewards are gotten once per week per boss.

 

This is another straw man argument. Nice try but you've failed.

[Eanelinea]

As much as I'd like every single player who did the exploit even once, knowingly or not, banned forever,

Bioware more than likely won't do this. From what I'd wager, they'll find the people or guilds who switched servers, told everyone and their mother about the exploit and charged for spots into the exploit and perma ban those people guilds.

 

The ones who did it multiple times but didn't advertize it or sell it or switch servers, may get a suspension for a few days, their items (whichever Bioware can find, etc) removed, and some or all credits removed. If they can't tell exactly how much profit you made from selling your ill gotten gains, they could strip you broke.

 

Those who did it once and never attempted it again, may get a lesser punishment of something like one day ban, gear removed and a note saying 'stoppit!' and move on.

 

I don't think they'll ban everyone who did this, just those who made it viral and profitted from it in a huge way.

 

Whether 10 people did it or 100,000 people did it, they won't perma ban everyone cause, as much as i hate to admit it, they DO need our money. Mostly because people leave games for really dumb reasons.

 

I've been here since 1.0, I've been through the very minor bugs in game, to the game breaking bugs in game. I either learned to work around those bugs if that were possible, or I reported and moved on. It IS only a game, but rules are rules. And this is Bioware's game.

 

Also....as for gold sellers/spammers. The only way to completely remove them from game is to remove f2p/preferred. And the f2p/pref crowds shouldn't be kicked to the curb just for QOL annoyances.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Eanelinea

[Briggology]

I'm really confused by this argument to be honest... your claim, correct me if I am wrong, is that exploiting is fine... as long as you are a subscriber? Or the leet or leet should be allowed to exploit? How leet do you need to be? Is there a threshold of leetness that makes cheating OK? Is cheating a requirement for leetness?

 

This argument, to me, sounds eerily similar to "all the cool kids are doing it"

 

I think his point is, BW would be punishing loyal subscribers.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Briggology

[Andryah]

Being "carried" isn't an exploit. The content is still being done in the manner in which it was designed. The loot rewards are gotten once per week per boss.

 

This is another straw man argument. Nice try but you've failed.

 

Yep.

 

I would say that commodities futures for "straw" are probably surging right now.

[Andryah]

I think his point is, BW would be punishing loyal subscribers.

 

If you use exploits to play the game, you may be a subscriber, but you forfeit the term "loyal". Loyal players do not tear their game apart by deliberately using exploits.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Andryah

[Pagy]

1) All items gained through use of the exploit will be taken away. Same goes for schematics learned and credits made from exploit gained items.

i still dont think this is easy for them.

 

maybe the chestpiece but even that would require looking for armoring mods in inventory.

so the crafting mats, schematics...thats all easier to find.

but if players unsocketed the mods, its almost impossible to trace. and unless its the chestpiece armoring, impossible to know if it was looted from the ravagers chest, or other hm bosses.

 

finding instance IDs is something bw could always do. chasing down armor and mods? they always deny those CS requests.

 

now they are supposed to investigate the individual inventories of thousands of players and backtrace all mods? i truly doubt this happens.

[Eanelinea]

My guild 'carried' my husband through DF and DP SM and he benefitted from it alot. But you know something, there were no 'cheats' or exploits. My husband worked his *** off to get those items. Sure, he didn't put out 10k numbers or whatever, but he worked his *** off.

 

So, being 'carried' is NOT an exploit. No where in the rules does it say you're not allowed to bring in a guild member who is less uber than you.

[Briggology]

If you use exploits to play the game, you may be a subscriber, but you forfeit the term "loyal". Loyal players do not tear their game apart by deliberately using exploits.

 

Um. They do. And they did. That's why we're having this discussion.

[Psylence]

As much as I'd like every single player who did the exploit even once, knowingly or not, banned forever,

Bioware more than likely won't do this. From what I'd wager, they'll find the people or guilds who switched servers, told everyone and their mother about the exploit and charged for spots into the exploit and perma ban those people guilds.

<snip - I read it all but not going to repost it all>

 

You know, that doesn't seem like a very good stand point. "...every single player who did the exploit even once, knowingly or not"? If a person doesn't realize it's an exploit, goes through it once and then comes to the realization it's probably a bug they should not be punished. I would even say I think they should be rewarded if they followed it up with a bug report and did not use it from that point forward. Don't punish someone for finding a bug, punish someone for exploiting a bug over-and-over for gain.

[Drockter]

I think his point is, BW would be punishing loyal subscribers.

 

I really find it hard to use the terms "loyal subscriber" and "exploiter" in the same sentence. Just my opinion...

 

I'm sure there are many more loyal subscribers that didn't do the exploit, then there are "loyal" subscribers who did. Being a subscriber or not shouldn't excuse cheating.

[Elracor]

... If someone is full of 198's in an OP already. I really could care less because they are helping me clear this OP or HM FP.

 

This kind of situations depends on your PoV I think.

 

What if when you were about to join this OP and a 198 geared exploiter wanted to join as well. The leader might look at gear, and chances are the exploiter has better gear than you, so the exploiter gets your spot.

 

If you're a crafter trying to sell 186/192 gear, each person taking his fresh lvl 60 through the exploit to grab gear is potentially a lost customer, someone who could have bought a couple mods, armorings and/or enhancements on GTN to gear up his fresh lvl 60.

 

If you're a crafter trying to sell consumables for raiding (stims, adrenals, grenades), a player who uses this exploit won't be using any consumables for the bossfight he exploited, whereas non-exploiters at least MIGHT be using some.

Edited January 14, 2015 by MFollin

[Andryah]

i still dont think this is easy for them.

 

maybe the chestpiece but even that would require looking for armoring mods in inventory.

so the crafting mats, schematics...thats all easier to find.

but if players unsocketed the mods, its almost impossible to trace. and unless its the chestpiece armoring, impossible to know if it was looted from the ravagers chest, or other hm bosses.

 

finding instance IDs is something bw could always do. chasing down armor and mods? they always deny those CS requests.

 

now they are supposed to investigate the individual inventories of thousands of players and backtrace all mods? i truly doubt this happens.

 

All items in game (other then perhaps gray vendor trash) will have unique ID numbers associated with them. So they could in fact comb the data warehouses and follow a mod from the point it was awarded within a piece of gear.... all the way to where it is today (including the trash bin). It's simply a question of how far they want to farm data and do they bother writing scripts to do it.

 

Once they have paired a player action to an item ID number... there is no way to hide if they want to track you down.

 

The larger issue is how far will they follow an item. Will they follow it through the GTN and to an end user who purchased it off the GTN? They could.. but they probably won't. This is not like real life theft where the police confiscate a stolen or ill-gained item from an innocent third party who bought it from an open sale.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Andryah

[Briggology]

All you hypocrites who are screaming "PERMA-BAN!" should have had your game consoles ripped away from you when you were little for using the Konami Code.

[XiamaraSimi]

i still dont think this is easy for them.

 

maybe the chestpiece but even that would require looking for armoring mods in inventory.

so the crafting mats, schematics...thats all easier to find.

but if players unsocketed the mods, its almost impossible to trace. and unless its the chestpiece armoring, impossible to know if it was looted from the ravagers chest, or other hm bosses.

 

finding instance IDs is something bw could always do. chasing down armor and mods? they always deny those CS requests.

 

now they are supposed to investigate the individual inventories of thousands of players and backtrace all mods? i truly doubt this happens.

 

Well, in theory, if they tracked they illigitimately looted 2 chestpieces, they will know player received 2 armorings, 2 mods, and 2 enhancements from those two illegal chestpieces. Doesnt matter if they stripped them outvand moved them elewherebthey can go " Ok Bobthecheater got 2 armorings, 2 mods, and 2 enhancements, if he has 4 of each in his gear since he did 2 loots legitimately its rather safe to assume that 2 of each of them were exploit items and can be "removed"

 

Kind of like if a parent knows little bobby had 10 marbles, then tommy says bobby stole 3 of his marbles. Bobby says he didnt steal them, but when mom counts bobbys marbles, lo and behold bobby somehow now has 13 marbles...

 

Right now the exploiters seem to be hoping/banking on that either mom (BW) doesnt know how many marbles they had, and isnt counting them to make sure.

Edited January 14, 2015 by XiamaraSimi

[Andryah]

All you hypocrites who are screaming "PERMA-BAN!" should have had your game consoles ripped away from you when you were little for using the Konami Code.

 

Tick tock.... the clock is running.

 

and NO.. I do not support perma bans for everyone. I'm fine with some perma bans for the egregious who thought it would be cool to sell lockouts and sell the methodology. Some level of permabans are needed in this case... to make an example out of people that willingly sell and/or propagate and encourage others to exploit. We simply do not need players like this in the game, any game really.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Andryah

[Elracor]

All you hypocrites who are screaming "PERMA-BAN!" should have had your game consoles ripped away from you when you were little for using the Konami Code.

 

I think it depends on who you want to permaban. I heard some players tranfered characters to other servers to spread/sell the Hard Mode version of this exploit, and I would at least consider if that tiny group of players should be permabanned if I was to make that decision.

Edited January 14, 2015 by MFollin

[Jadescythe]

If you use exploits to play the game, you may be a subscriber, but you forfeit the term "loyal". Loyal players do not tear their game apart by deliberately using exploits.

 

This is like being a loyal spouse for 40 years who has been secretly cheating the entire time. That makes you a long-time spouse, but certainly doesn't make you a loyal one.

 

Or being a loyal CIA agent that has been selling secrets to other countries for 20 years.

 

Length of service does not equal loyalty. Simply paying a subscription does not mean that all of your actions are in support of the game. Loyal players who are supporting the game would report the issue to have it fixed, not abuse an error for some perceived advantage.

[GreggorZane]

I would like to see everyone who didn't exploit get a legacy title to show that they didn't exploit.

 

Then we can see how many people didn't exploit.