Ravagers Exploit Action Update

[Volcan]

@Eric

 

My guild and I specifically steered clear from the exploit. However, some of us have bought 192 mainhands off the GTN with our hard earned credits. The possibility the seller of these mainhand barrels/hilts was an exploiter is somewhat high, I'm hoping whatever actions taken would only affect the sellers and not the buyers. Can you speak to this?

[Andryah]

If all you were saying initially was "wow, they mismanaged this whole thing" - I pretty much agree.

 

I took:

to implicitly mean "so they shouldn't do that" ("that" = punish/ban/etc), which is a position others have taken in this thread that I disagree with, sorry if I mistakenly lumped you in with that crowd.

 

That being said, using the phrase "care bears" unironically makes you sound like a moron.

 

^^ Agree.

 

This thread is full of attempts to negotiate the actions by discussing the exploit as Bioware's fault, not the players.

 

It's a giant waste of time and only puts a flashlight on ones own activities IMO.

[NogueiraA]

"did you got raped? Well, it's your fault to not dress like muslims".

Oh that leftist thought line...

[Andryah]

The new mail, not an exploit. The ship parts bolster, not an exploit.

 

Straw man arguments won't make a players use of an exploit no longer an exploit.

 

I find it funny that so many people are trying to justify the exploit, which makes me wonder how much longer those people will be posting on the forums.

 

Yep yep.

 

But actually I see that as a good thing. It means they are moving past pretending and denial and are now trying to bargain. Soon will come acceptance of what they did.

Edited January 13, 2015 by Andryah

[Infernixx]

Sorry... no... Words would be meaningless... action is what drives the point home.

 

The exploiters have earned whatever consequence comes their way.

 

If BW had a consistent history of doling out consequences for exploiting, you'd have a point.

 

Inconsistent application of the rules tends to result in contempt and resentment and frustration and anger when they suddenly decide to care about those rules and dish out consequences.

 

All or nothing, in other words.

 

Start with a clean slate, remind everyone in LARGE COLORED WORDS that exploiting is bad and they're going to be taking it seriously from here on out, and everyone will get the message and have no excuse at all when/if they exploit again and get busted. No one will be able to say that they didn't know or that BW has no grounds for getting mad about exploiting.

 

Arbitrarily deciding that 'this' exploit is worthy of punishment while steadfastly ignoring the Nefra thing, the win-trading thing, the Dashrude thing, the Ship Parts thing, the Bolster thing....Resentment, frustration and anger ensues.

[Pagy]

3 options.

 

1, put your foot down at some point, but not on me, do it on an issue that I'm not involved in.

 

2, never put your foot down, let exploits go without punishment for all time in this game, you did it before so its only fair.

 

3, put your foot down now, establish a new precedent moving forward regardless of past inaction.

 

I'm on board with option 3, if you're with 1 or 2 that's fine, but that's what it boils down to.

im good with 3 as well, but it needs to be measured. be too harsh and the player quits. give a 3-7 day ban and say "future infractions will involve stiffer penalties." bam, done.

 

if i was managing this, i would separate everyone who exploited into 2 groups. vast majority would qualify for a 3-7 day ban, and the extreme cases where there involves server transfers, selling of the instance to many people, etc to be treated with a stiffer penalty.

 

in my mind, there is a big difference between a guy that did it once or twice and a guy that sold it in gen chat to hundreds of players and made millions off it. or maybe all will be treated equally...we'll see.

[Ardarell_Solo]

I'd like to point anyone who goes on their "broken game before christmas, BW's fault, if it's there it will be used, and other lame excuses"-blabla to this quote from the movie K-Pax:

 

Prot: Every being in the universe knows right from wrong.

 

And everybody DID when they abused this. Pretending otherwise now is yet another display of a lack of decency.

 

I hope that everyone - no excuses - who did this or knowingly profited from it will not just get their stuff deleted, but will get an appropriately painful reminder what fair play is all about.

 

...for the sake of those who have been playing by the rules and will do so because they just believe in doing so, no matter the advantages to be gained from doing otherwise!

[Aries_cz]

Good to know that BioWare keeps such detailed records of all actions made.

Now bring out the Hammer of Punishement

[TravelingNomad]

I think many of you have too little intelligence to truly understand the implications of whatever action they may take. Demanding bans for ALL those that exploited would be the absolute worst thing to happen in the game from multiple perspectives including overall game health, populations of servers, number of subscribers, and game image.

 

Let's talk about game health for a minute. Right now, from what I've personally seen, there are more credit sellers spamming chat than ever, and while that is a frustrating and annoying thing to deal with, it is also a relatively good indicator that the game is in fact actively growing. Those types of people generally don't mess with games that won't have a reasonable return for whatever effort they put in obtaining gold to sell, mass creation of accounts to spam, and run their little cancerous business. I am not saying credit sellers are a good thing, I am saying the level of presence they have bodes well for the growth of the game. Without seeing current and past numbers of players, it is impossible to truly know the truth, however I am reasonably confident that the game is in fact growing.

 

I mention this because those of us that have been playing for years might be a staple in whatever community we are in, be it your guild, server, or even outside the game creating guides and helpful materials to the rest of us. There are a ton of people that used the exploit, and many of them are solid community members that have a greater level of influence server or game wide. Banning is not something you want to have happen to absolutely everyone that used it. This isn't an issue of "if you used it, it doesn't matter, you broke ToS so you get banned", this is an issue of overall game health. That being said, severe offenders, the people that started this, and people that transferred servers to spread it should of course be banned regardless, that is just an absolute abuse that is above and beyond what should be tolerable.

 

So let's say all these people that used the exploit got banned. Bam, you got your wish. The amount of people that would demand refunds for a broken product would be immense, and it would seriously hurt them financially. On top of that, as some have mentioned, it would cause people to begin leaving the game that are already on the edge of leaving because their friend left, their guild is half the size now, they didn't keep the old mods in their gear so they are stuck with empty shells now, lost a ton of credits from mods they obtained through exploited gear, loss of craftable blueprints, loss of gear, mats, decor, mounts, elite and ultimate comms gained from running old 16man content, loss of mods they bought from someone that learned a schematic from an exploited item, and the list goes on. People will leave, even if they haven't done the exploit, because they got screwed over by the changes. It's one thing to demand bans for people that did something that was specifically for their character or account, like let's say bugged a datacron to give them infinite mainstat or one of those achievements that give you cartel coins to be completed multiple times. Those sort of things, though they don't exist, would be a great example of "LET'S BAN EM ALL!" but this is hardly the case here.

 

Server populations would be reduced by a noticeable level. Think it's hard to get a hardmode flashpoint now? Think how much worse it will be when there are even less people on at any one time. GTN markets would suffer, credits would be lost, people would transfer out to healthier servers, and Bioware is in for another downsizing of servers. Combine that with the fact that a lot of progression raid teams have used the exploit to gear up to progress further and you will have far less people doing bleeding edge content, or any hard mode content at all. If you lost the hardcore raiders and you are just left with the casuals, it is going to suck and you won't get much endgame at all. I have seen guilds that have issues even doing SnV HM at level 60, so it gets pretty bad on the casual side of raiding.

 

Subscriber numbers would drop, which would drastically change plans Bioware has for the future of this game. If a couple hundred subscribers left, meh, not a big deal. If several thousand subscribers left, that will turn some heads, if tens of thousands leave or get banned, then they have a problem.

 

For the game image, this game is starting to look appealing to other people, and people that have left the game previously. However, if your average player that used the exploit to a less than severe way was banned, no one would want to join the game. The content we have is broken AF, and the fact that Bioware went on vacation for 3 weeks and we saw no bug fixes to seriously bugged content, a massive exploit was left wide open and used by so many people, that I was amazed they didn't hotfix it for 3 WHOLE WEEKS. Of course, those that used the exploit deserve some punishment, however we shouldn't forget that Bioware left the game in a terrible state for 3 weeks with no fixes whatsoever. Bioware, next time, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, release the new content AFTER planned studio vacations so we don't have to deal with this in the future.

 

It all comes down to how they handle this situation. If I had any say in the matter, I would say permanently ban those that initially spread this through their lockouts, permanently ban those that server transferred to further spread the exploit, convert all the 198 gear obtained to the comms gear variant, including mods that were ripped out, remove all set bonuses obtained from gear obtained by the exploit, remove all learned schematics from those that learned mods from reverse engineering items obtained through the exploit, remove all mats, decos, mounts, and achievements from those that used the exploit, slap those that used the exploit severely, those that used it to get gear with all their alts, with a 3 day ban, slap those that used the exploit with an in-game message detailing why they shouldn't do it again and letting them know changes to their gear, and a clear message should be made that ANYONE found using an exploit will be permanently banned in the future.

 

I am all for permanently banning people in the future, however, at this time, some fault can't be shifted away from Bioware. The content was broken, they could have easily sent a dev to the studio offices with the promises of extended vacation time and pay to quickly fix the exploit, they could have just told everyone "Sorry, Ravagers isn't available at this time due to an exploit" and made the operation unenterable til they fixed it, etc. The fact that this was so broken and they had 3 weeks to make an announcement saying "Using the exploit any further from this point on will result in a permanent ban" or something along those lines in game so everyone can see it. I don't believe a permanent ban for the average player is justifiable at all. If you do, you obviously can't understand how much that will change the game.

[Andryah]

@Eric

 

My guild and I specifically steered clear from the exploit. However, some of us have bought 192 mainhands off the GTN with our hard earned credits. The possibility the seller of these mainhand barrels/hilts was an exploiter is somewhat high, I'm hoping whatever actions taken would only affect the sellers and not the buyers. Can you speak to this?

 

 

Just speculation on my part.. nobody really knows yet.. but I would say if you bought them after Eric's earlier post about the exploit.. you might be at risk (probably only a claw-back of the item). If you did so before hand, probably not.

 

For an exploit... generally even lenient dev teams will not cut much slack after they warn people away from the exploit. Yeah.. I understand that a player has no way to know for sure if what they purchase on the GTN is legit or not.. but a prudent player would steer clear of GTN listings for 192s after Eric made is warning post.

 

But again... nobody knows.. as it is up to Bioware to decide. Bioware probably has not finalized their actions yet to be honest.

Edited January 13, 2015 by Andryah

[HansAPilss]

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

 

Hey Eric,

could you please tranlate it and post it in the german forum?

 

Thank you

[Infernixx]

3 options.

 

1, put your foot down at some point, but not on me, do it on an issue that I'm not involved in.

 

2, never put your foot down, let exploits go without punishment for all time in this game, you did it before so its only fair.

 

3, put your foot down now, establish a new precedent moving forward regardless of past inaction.

 

I'm on board with option 3, if you're with 1 or 2 that's fine, but that's what it boils down to.

 

Yep. Put your foot down, let everyone know that exploits are now srs bsn and any future violations will be dealt with severely. Send out emails to all players. Send an in-game mail to all players. Use severe language.

 

Then move on. Because I can guarantee you that if the players had known at launch that BW was suddenly taking exploits seriously, they'd have not exploited in the first place.

 

BW and BW alone is responsible for creating the impression that they don't are about exploiters. We just reacted to that impression.

Edited January 13, 2015 by Infernixx

[Athena-Nike]

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

[Grayseven]

What has or has not been done previously does not matter.

 

In fact, there is no way to know what has been done in the past as EA/BW does not broadcast actions taken.

 

The ONLY thing that matters is this:

 

To keep the Service a compliant, fun, fair and safe gaming environment for everyone, you may not engage in any of the following behavior:

 

[snip...lots of stuff]

 

Exploit any bug in the Service to gain unfair advantage in the game and/or communicate the existence of any such bug (either directly or through the public posting) to any other user of the Service.

 

[snip...more stuff]

 

Nothing else matters. You have already been warned and agreed to the Tos/RoC. Precedence does not change the ToS/RoC.

[BuriDogshin]

I hope the punishment is just harsh enough to cost them a decent amount of subs and results in bioware employees being laid off.. imo that is where blame should be placed.

I do not think it is appropriate to hope that anyone, even a BioWare employee, should be thrown into unemployment just because a bunch of people exploited a bug in a video game.

 

It's just a game. No one suffered any real-life harm because of the exploit. Putting a person out of a job, and maybe their home and more as well, is an inappropriate consequence to hope for.

 

If a dev is incompetent, fine, fire them for that. But not for one bug that just happened to go viral.

[dwanius]

Will you ban people after doing nothing about the Nefra exploit? Will you ban people after doing nothing about the CM RE exploit? Will you ban people after doing nothing about win trading in rateds?

 

Perhaps you will.

 

Perhaps, after being told by beta testers, by the "teachers pets" that report everything and still doing nothing you should accept that it was your mistake. Be like Bunji and erect a shrine to commemorate the moment, like the meat tree.

 

This is a product you put out. We, the users and subscribers, pay for it. We did and have bought it. If you don't like what happened, take the time to put out a BETTER product. This game is a far cry from the KOTOR online it was meant to be as it is. Do NOT chase away your subscribers by over reacting and blaming players for YOUR mistakes.

 

I understand my one voice doesn't matter much to you, but I'm speaking common sense.

[AmphysvenaCorp]

sarcasm, I hope

Must be one of the PVP exploiters after all. Let him enjoy it while it lasts, and I hope all WZ PVP exploiters get what they deserve in time.

Edited January 13, 2015 by AmphysvenaCorp

[Drockter]

If BW had a consistent history of doling out consequences for exploiting, you'd have a point.

 

Inconsistent application of the rules tends to result in contempt and resentment and frustration and anger when they suddenly decide to care about those rules and dish out consequences.

 

All or nothing, in other words.

 

Start with a clean slate, remind everyone in LARGE COLORED WORDS that exploiting is bad and they're going to be taking it seriously from here on out, and everyone will get the message and have no excuse at all when/if they exploit again and get busted. No one will be able to say that they didn't know or that BW has no grounds for getting mad about exploiting.

 

Arbitrarily deciding that 'this' exploit is worthy of punishment while steadfastly ignoring the Nefra thing, the win-trading thing, the Dashrude thing, the Ship Parts thing, the Bolster thing....Resentment, frustration and anger ensues.

 

Whether or not BW made you "feel" it was ok... is irrelevant. The ToS had never changed.

 

Look... you admitted in another thread that you did the exploit... Bravo, it takes guts to admit it, and I have a deep respect for that. You and I don't see eye to eye on the forums a lot, but I do respect your courage to admit to doing the exploit. Now accept the responsibility for your actions, and accept the consequences.

 

You can contact customer service to plead your case... personally, I wouldn't start that conversation by blaming them for a conscious decision on your part. You rolled the dice that they would continue to ignore exploiters, and well (we dont know what will happen yet), but you lost.

[Infernixx]

What has or has not been done previously does not matter.

 

In fact, there is no way to know what has been done in the past as EA/BW does not broadcast actions taken.

 

The ONLY thing that matters is this:

 

To keep the Service a compliant, fun, fair and safe gaming environment for everyone, you may not engage in any of the following behavior:

 

[snip...lots of stuff]

 

Exploit any bug in the Service to gain unfair advantage in the game and/or communicate the existence of any such bug (either directly or through the public posting) to any other user of the Service.

 

[snip...more stuff]

 

Nothing else matters. You have already been warned and agreed to the Tos/RoC. Precedence does not change the ToS/RoC.

 

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.

Edited January 13, 2015 by Infernixx

[TravelingNomad]

What has or has not been done previously does not matter.

 

In fact, there is no way to know what has been done in the past as EA/BW does not broadcast actions taken.

 

The ONLY thing that matters is this:

 

To keep the Service a compliant, fun, fair and safe gaming environment for everyone, you may not engage in any of the following behavior:

 

[snip...lots of stuff]

 

Exploit any bug in the Service to gain unfair advantage in the game and/or communicate the existence of any such bug (either directly or through the public posting) to any other user of the Service.

 

[snip...more stuff]

 

Nothing else matters. You have already been warned and agreed to the Tos/RoC. Precedence does not change the ToS/RoC.

 

Under normal circumstances I would agree, however, because this is so widespread, it isn't a simple "LETS BAN EVERYONE!" thing, its a calculated response that needs to take into account how far reaching such a heavy handed approach might be. In addition, there have been numerous previous exploits that were simply ignored, so they need to set precedence NOW so people know they aren't going to be picky about what they choose to punish people for like they have in the past.

[Andryah]

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?

 

They log data into data warehouses. When you file a ticket on something.. they require you to provide specific information so they can query the data and see if they can verify your claim. Often they can, sometimes they cannot. Data sometimes is lost via transactions glitch (maybe the same exact glitch that caused you to miss items), and sometimes you give them inaccurate information. Bottom line, they need to be able to confirm your claim to remedy it.. or they can take your word for it (but you might be scamming too).

 

Scrubbing the data for an exploit action is entirely different exercise. But again.. if the data is there in the data warehouses, and they know what they are looking for.. they can run special queries to gather data for actions.

 

There is nothing amiss here except your inability to understand the differences.

[Pagy]

What has or has not been done previously does not matter.

 

In fact, there is no way to know what has been done in the past as EA/BW does not broadcast actions taken.

 

The ONLY thing that matters is this:

 

To keep the Service a compliant, fun, fair and safe gaming environment for everyone, you may not engage in any of the following behavior:

 

[snip...lots of stuff]

 

Exploit any bug in the Service to gain unfair advantage in the game and/or communicate the existence of any such bug (either directly or through the public posting) to any other user of the Service.

 

[snip...more stuff]

 

Nothing else matters. You have already been warned and agreed to the Tos/RoC. Precedence does not change the ToS/RoC.

you're right, it doesnt change their right to act. no one is saying otherwise.

 

theres a difference between saying bw has no right to act based on past inaction, and saying bw ought not to react in a way that isnt aligned with the precedent of inaction.

 

ideally, bw will want to punish subs without losing subs. that include people that would quit based on the punishment severity or lack thereof.

[Ardarell_Solo]

I think many of you have too little intelligence to truly understand the implications of whatever action they may take.

 

Excuse me? This just shows you lack the social intelligence to even be posting on a subject like that.

 

The excuses you're making are invalid and you'd be sending the wrong message with what you're suggesting. It might seem more efficient in short term, but not for long term success of the game. It's your exact line of thinking and arguing that's the breeding ground for situations like the one we've been having in the past weeks.

[Infernixx]

Whether or not BW made you "feel" it was ok... is irrelevant. The ToS had never changed.

 

Look... you admitted in another thread that you did the exploit... Bravo, it takes guts to admit it, and I have a deep respect for that. You and I don't see eye to eye on the forums a lot, but I do respect your courage to admit to doing the exploit. Now accept the responsibility for your actions, and accept the consequences.

 

You can contact customer service to plead your case... personally, I wouldn't start that conversation by blaming them for a conscious decision on your part. You rolled the dice that they would continue to ignore exploiters, and well (we dont know what will happen yet), but you lost.

 

As I said, I'm not worried about the consequences. If they ban me, I'll wander off and find another game to play that's consistent with their behavior. There's plenty out there that are. If they ban my guildies, I'll follow them where they go.

 

In short, participation in this game isn't worth me going hat-in-hand to BW and say I'm sorry for logically following their patterns of behavior and expecting them to react as they have in the past. But, in case any of them are reading this, here:

 

"I'm so sorry, BW, for expecting you to overlook these exploiters like you overlooked all the others in the past. Please forgive me for not being able to read your minds and realize that you take 'this' exploit in particular to be super serious and worthy of punishment. May I please continue to give you my money?"

 

There.

[Andryah]

Under normal circumstances I would agree, however, because this is so widespread, it isn't a simple "LETS BAN EVERYONE!" thing, its a calculated response that needs to take into account how far reaching such a heavy handed approach might be. In addition, there have been numerous previous exploits that were simply ignored, so they need to set precedence NOW so people know they aren't going to be picky about what they choose to punish people for like they have in the past.

 

Disagree.

 

There is a mob mentality at play here. The mob counts on hiding within itself. It's like looters after a sports game, relying on cover of others to go unpunished.

 

This is simply another form of bargaining. And it won't matter anyway. Bioware is not taking player inputs on what they should do or should not do. They will assess what they feel is the best course for them to take (which for something widespread is likely to be a range of actions.. to address a range of exploiting actions by players).