Temple Chair (Basic) Exploit

[FerkWork]

You can say that again.

 

"But they left the bank vault open officer! They shouldn't have turned around when I had a gun. They shouldn't have been wearing that last night...." It's all fun and games until you realize these are the same people who make use of the same disgusting (il)logic in RL

Edited June 24, 2015 by FerkWork

[LanceDrakmiir]

Yeah got it I haven't been on the station or at the bazaar in a quite a while there are several new vendors there.

 

And I didn't read anything that said I couldn't buy chairs to use only that I couldn't buy them and sell them back to the vendor.

[Anaesha]

"But they left the bank vault open officer! They shouldn't have turned around when I had a gun. They shouldn't have been wearing that last night...." It's all fun and games until you realize these are the same people who make use of the same disgusting (il)logic in RL

 

Sadly true.

[jankiel]

The Progenitor, 4 AM. By morning there will be madness here...

 

http://i.imgur.com/4DtXxEq.jpg

Edited June 24, 2015 by jankiel

[JediRelentless]

Just buy the chairs from the vendor and sell them on the GTN for big profits.

BioWare doesn't care about you taking advantage of other players.

Exploit people, not the system.

Edited June 24, 2015 by JediRelentless

[AdmiralBlue]

You don't think this game logs every transaction you make with a Vendor, the GTN, or via Mail? Go ahead and use the exploit but don't coming complaining here when you get your *** in trouble for using it.

 

I doubt all the data is tracked and stored. If it is than they probably dump it all every X number of hours, and I imagine that they would filter a great deal of "minor" data points out. Metadata adds up pretty fast and without proper maintenance of your database you'll find yourself out of space sooner rather than later. Not even mentioning the CPU power required to process that data into a useable format.

 

Beyond that, let's say it is recorded. Do they have the tools needed to retrieve that information and then someone to analyze it? If they have tools, are they comprehensive enough to expect search parameters that yield actionable intelligence? Tracking and the subsequent analysis of data isn't like dusting crops.

 

When it comes down to they should have fixed this in a much more timely manner. This mistake has been repeated by numerous MMO's and history shows once it happens, and lingers for a fair amount of time, the damage is already done.

[kyledevious]

not even possible. F2P accounts have a max cred cap of 200K and last I checked they are not allowed to mail credits.

 

Thank god, yeah I didn't think about that... but just to further my point, that is just one example of the possibly, many, edge cases that could cause this to spin out of control.

[Anaesha]

Just buy the chairs from the vendor and sell them on the GTN for big profits.

BioWare doesn't care about you taking advantage of other players. Exploit people, not the system.

 

Assumption and anyone who buys it off the gtn for those asinine prices is a retard when you can buy it from the vendor for 1 cred.

 

You don't get in trouble for just buying them you have to sell it back to the vendor.

[jankiel]

not even possible. F2P accounts have a max cred cap of 200K and last I checked they are not allowed to mail credits.

 

Buy a time card.

[kyledevious]

I doubt all the data is tracked and stored. If it is than they probably dump it all every X number of hours, and I imagine that they would filter a great deal of "minor" data points out. Metadata adds up pretty fast and without proper maintenance of your database you'll find yourself out of space sooner rather than later. Not even mentioning the CPU power required to process that data into a useable format.

 

Beyond that, let's say it is recorded. Do they have the tools needed to retrieve that information and then someone to analyze it? If they have tools, are they comprehensive enough to expect search parameters that yield actionable intelligence? Tracking and the subsequent analysis of data isn't like dusting crops.

 

When it comes down to they should have fixed this in a much more timely manner. This mistake has been repeated by numerous MMO's and history shows once it happens, and lingers for a fair amount of time, the damage is already done.

 

I was thinking the same thing.

 

Although, yeah, you can buy things back from a vendor. So a threshold of a certain amount of items is kept in a transactional database somewhere for that purpose, I doubt its client side.

[Kelindar]

I didn't read the 11 pages of replies, so if this has been stated my apologies. Having said that, it would be nice if you would take this same stance towards those who buy and sell credits in game for real money. When is the last time you took action against the multitudes of accounts that constantly spam my in-game male advertising their web sites for me to buy credits? I report every mail as spam, and every spam bot on the fleet as spam. When will this be addressed? Do you really think people are selling low level items on the GTN for millions of credits? I do appreciate your heads up on the chair issue, but you have bigger problems than a 99 credit turn around on a chair.

[Anaesha]

I didn't read the 11 pages of replies, so if this has been stated my apologies. Having said that, it would be nice if you would take this same stance towards those who buy and sell credits in game for real money. When is the last time you took action against the multitudes of accounts that constantly spam my in-game male advertising their web sites for me to buy credits? I report every mail as spam, and every spam bot on the fleet as spam. When will this be addressed? Do you really think people are selling low level items on the GTN for millions of credits? I do appreciate your heads up on the chair issue, but you have bigger problems than a 99 credit turn around on a chair.

 

A month or so ago they took billions of creds from a gold selling ring and banned accounts plus they have been taking steps to stop the gold spammers hence why they have resorted to sending mails.

Edited June 24, 2015 by Anaesha

[AdmiralBlue]

I was thinking the same thing.

 

Although, yeah, you can buy things back from a vendor. So a threshold of a certain amount of items is kept in a transactional database somewhere for that purpose, I doubt its client side.

 

You're right, the game keeps a transaction recorded for buyback. However, we know that that particular record is dumped rather quickly. There also exists the possibility that that recorded can't be processed and interacted within on a meaningful level. It's not enough to have a system in place that just tracks raw data. That's usually were people get tripped up when they design and implement collection systems.

Edited June 24, 2015 by AdmiralBlue

[Gorgor]

Hey folks,

 

In today's patch, we placed Temple Chair (Basic) onto the Esstran Exports vendor for one credit. After bringing the servers live today we noticed that currently, you can sell the Chair back to the vendor for 100 credits. Obviously, this is not intended. As stated before, when these issues arise we want to make sure we get out in front of it as quickly as possible and are open with you about what is being done.

 

For the time being, please do not buy and sell the Temple Chair (Basic) in this manner. This behavior is considered an exploit. We will be addressing this issue as soon as possible. Once fixed, we will investigate and then take appropriate action for use of this exploit.

 

Thanks everyone. I will pass on update as I have them.

 

-eric

 

May I have your permission to do this 1200 times to recoup my 120,000 credits wasted crafting a buggy lightsaber?

[kyledevious]

You're right, the game keeps a transaction recorded for buyback. However, we know that that particular record is dumped rather quickly. There also exists the possibility that that recorded can't be processed and interacted within on a meaningful level. It's not enough to have a system in place that just tracks raw data. That's usually were people get tripped up when they design and implement collection systems.

 

Yes it is a very scary thing, that they probably can't just do a:

 

SELECT ItemId, PlayerId

FROM VendorTransactions

WHERE ItemId = :ExplotedChairItem AND PurchaseTime BETWEEN '2015-06-23 07:00:00' and '2015-06-23 08:00:00'

AND PlayerId = :PlayerWhoExploited

 

If I had to figure out who exploited I would probably look at the amount of credits a player had before the patch, and find the delta between what they have now and if its a very large amount, i'd probably flag them for further query investigation.

 

Maybe they have heatmaps on player position over time? You could then isolate a segement of users that utilized the shortest path between the location to buy the exploitable item and the closest place to sell it, but even then its a ton of work.

 

They've got their work cut out for them if they seriously plan to fix any problems created by this oversight.

Edited June 24, 2015 by kyledevious
forgot some stuff

[ccanop]

I was logging in for raid night when i was greeted by this, you guys could rephrase this in some other way ? it's confusing, thought i was being warned about some kind of exploit i neither had knowledge or participated in any way ( i'm patching at the moment), at least there was a link to this page.

[DawnAskham]

Buy a time card.

 

The nefarious credit farmers will just use a stolen CC.

[kyledevious]

But even then, at the very least, credits gained by exploit, (and this is a simple thing to exploit) that are used to purchase gtn items will require every item sold to be returned to the seller.

 

That right there is enough for me to honestly say, there is no way in hell they can fix the damage this will do to the game's economy and to player experience effected by people utilizing this incredibly easy to execute exploit.

 

This is just one example of how this is a huge deal.

Edited June 24, 2015 by kyledevious

[MiguelGx]

I was logging in for raid night when i was greeted by this, you guys could rephrase this in some other way ? it's confusing, thought i was being warned about some kind of exploit i neither had knowledge or participated in any way ( i'm patching at the moment), at least there was a link to this page.

 

I have the same problem and I'm very afraid because I dind't do nothing wrong D:

[TheHunterNixon]

I'm in the same boat as some other people, I did it but didn't find out that there would be consequences until later. I only did about 1-2 mill. I apologize for using this exploit and hope that you can fix it soon.

[The_Wulff]

But even then, at the very least, credits gained by exploit, (and this is a simple thing to exploit) that are used to purchase gtn items will require every item sold to be returned to the seller.

 

That right there is enough for me to honestly say, there is no way in hell they can fix the damage this will do to the game's economy and to player experience effected by people utilizing this incredibly easy to execute exploit.

 

This is just one example of how this is a huge deal.

 

[sarcasm]Exactly. It's not like this happened right after a major server patch that they have backups of just prior to this happening. [/sarcasm]

Just figure that BW is collecting data all day today and will roll back the server to the server re-launch and send out levels of ban based on severity of exploit.

[MajorCorwin]

Ironically I didn't know about the chair business till it was plastered all over the welcome message on my launcher and linked from the splash screen to the forum. Look it's taking me ages to realize that a subscriber gets 65000 XP saying hello to Viddu and 512 XP killing 30 snipers. I spent three months getting to level 23 for a Smuggler as a Free To Play and about an two hours getting to level 20 as the same type of character as a subscriber.

[kyledevious]

I'm in the same boat as some other people, I did it but didn't find out that there would be consequences until later. I only did about 1-2 mill. I apologize for using this exploit and hope that you can fix it soon.

 

And people admitting it is the easiest way for them to do something about it.. maybe they can use data against your player id to isolate patterns to be used to locate other exploiters?

[Anaesha]

I'm in the same boat as some other people, I did it but didn't find out that there would be consequences until later. I only did about 1-2 mill. I apologize for using this exploit and hope that you can fix it soon.

 

Gee You bought it for one credit then found out you could sell it back for 100 credits and you didn't once think that BW would consider that an exploit?

 

The age of common sense and Logic is truly dead and buried.

[kyledevious]

[sarcasm]Exactly. It's not like this happened right after a major server patch that they have backups of just prior to this happening. [/sarcasm]

Just figure that BW is collecting data all day today and will roll back the server to the server re-launch and send out levels of ban based on severity of exploit.

 

You're nuts. They will never undo everything that happened to a past backup. Even if they could.

 

Imagine the outrage of players who were just leveling toons and log on after a reset to see that all their work on the game they pay a monthly subscription to has been undone... that's never going to happen.