Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

The "Banhammer"

    • 78 posts
    April 26, 2020 8:59 AM PDT

    I'm playing a game currently that had recently banned (Well suspended at least) some folks for taking advantage of an exploit. They received a week suspension and also a two week rollback of gear, which probably equated to 24+hours of grind time for each and every one of them. This was negatively received by two parties one of which were the suspended folks (obviously) and the other some folks who think that the exploit is the devs fault and they shouldn't be punished because of some unintended game mechanic etc.. Personally I am a fan of the harshest penalties to people who take advantage of exploits. An example of something that may come up in this game : a repeatable quest giving obviously far more exp than intended allowing you to level faster than most anyone else, a corpse has loot each and every time you click on it etc etc...

    So how do you guys feel about such things? I think the biggest issue that tends to happen is the devs aren't up front enough about what will happen when people do xyz, there's always a general statement about what may happen, but hopefully Pantheon is clear from the start about the consequences of "cheating" even if it's just taking advantage of an error on their part, because with a small team I think they're more prone to some of these exploits. There's nothing that takes the fun away more than playing with cheaters.


    This post was edited by TLogan at April 26, 2020 9:14 AM PDT
    • 1584 posts
    April 26, 2020 9:13 AM PDT

    TLogan said: I'm playing a game currently that had recently banned (Well suspended at least) some folks for taking advantage of an exploit. They received a week suspension and also a two week rollback of gear, which probably equated to 24+hours of grind time for each and every one of them. This was negatively received by two parties one of which were the suspended folks (obviously) and the other some folks who think that the exploit is the devs fault and they shouldn't be punished because of some unintended game mechanic etc.. Personally I am a fan of the harshest penalties to people who take advantage of exploits. An example of something that may come up in this game : a repeatable quest giving obviously far more exp than intended allowing you to level faster than most anyone else, a corpse has loot each and every time you click on it etc etc... So how do you guys feel about such things? I think the biggest issue that I see with these issues is the devs aren't up front enough about what will happen, hopefully Pantheon is very clear from the start about the consequences of "cheating" even if it's just taking advantage of an error on their part, because with a small team I think they're more prone to some of these exploits. There's nothing that takes the fun away more than playing with cheaters.

    Next ban ban them longer and if they complain ban them for complaining, honestly I think when people complain about Devs punishing players for doing something they weren't suppose to just makes me shake my head.

    It's also the Dev's responsibility to make sure the players are playing the game it is meant to be played and if they find a glitch in the game and exploit it well beyond its means to get ahead, they should be punished no questions asked, and no guilt should be put on the Devs for taking a Stand against individuals for doing something they know they shoudn't be.

    Honestly if it was me I would of figured out when they started doing that exploit and reset them like 2 days before that just to make sure how serious i would be about it, at the end it was the player that was being stupid, and just wanted to give the least amount of time to skip content by doing something over and over again.

    A bit off topic but i also hope VR does something like Valorant is doing and make us load a feature like Vanguard, that way hacking will also be a lot harder to do as well and will be banned for trying to do so.

    • 1921 posts
    April 26, 2020 9:38 AM PDT

    I was very pro "perma-ban" until I saw Frontier Developments mistakenly ban thousands of their customers shortly after launch.
    They cast the net very wide, and caught a lot of innocent customers.  Eventually, many weeks later, they admitted their mistake. 
    They were completely, utterly, wrong.  Most of the accused were simply playing the game normally, yet, had their accounts banned.
    They tried to reverse the changes they made, it didn't work as expected, and many hundreds of customers had their accounts permanently affected.
    It was handled very badly, and since then, I'm not such a fan of "perma-bans" without competence & evidence.

    Having said that, if there are server side logs demonstrating egregious exploitation that has no other explanation, with 100% certainty?
    Under those conditions, the punishment should certainly be more severe than a simple 24hr ban (which is basically nothing, these days).

    • 1584 posts
    April 26, 2020 9:42 AM PDT

    vjek said:

    I was very pro "perma-ban" until I saw Frontier Developments mistakenly ban thousands of their customers shortly after launch.
    They cast the net very wide, and caught a lot of innocent customers.  Eventually, many weeks later, they admitted their mistake. 
    They were completely, utterly, wrong.  Most of the accused were simply playing the game normally, yet, had their accounts banned.
    They tried to reverse the changes they made, it didn't work as expected, and many hundreds of customers had their accounts permanently affected.
    It was handled very badly, and since then, I'm not such a fan of "perma-bans" without competence & evidence.

    Having said that, if there are server side logs demonstrating egregious exploitation that has no other explanation, with 100% certainty?
    Under those conditions, the punishment should certainly be more severe than a simple 24hr ban (which is basically nothing, these days).

    Agree you have to have the evidence, with my statement above, I basically meant with the right evidence to actually go forward with the ban, not just assume they were and cheating and ban them to make it simply easier to do so.  But yes i agree with everything that you said

    • 945 posts
    April 26, 2020 9:42 AM PDT

    Depends if the exploit is intentional or not really.  To use an example in the OP, if I find a quest or NPC that gives more exp than others, it is able to be repeated, and there is nothing indicating that repeating it is wrong, I'm going to repeat it.  A good analogy for this would be if you were walking down the street and saw your destination on the other side of the street so you decided to cross the street, should you get a ticket for J-Walking because you didn't know that had you walked 50 more feet down the street you would've seen a crosswalk, should you get a warning, or should the police even waste their time repremanding you (while others are crossing the street too) and instead put up a sign that says "use the crosswalk or you will be punished."

    • 1584 posts
    April 26, 2020 9:58 AM PDT

    Darch said:

    Depends if the exploit is intentional or not really.  To use an example in the OP, if I find a quest or NPC that gives more exp than others, it is able to be repeated, and there is nothing indicating that repeating it is wrong, I'm going to repeat it.  A good analogy for this would be if you were walking down the street and saw your destination on the other side of the street so you decided to cross the street, should you get a ticket for J-Walking because you didn't know that had you walked 50 more feet down the street you would've seen a crosswalk, should you get a warning, or should the police even waste their time repremanding you (while others are crossing the street too) and instead put up a sign that says "use the crosswalk or you will be punished."

    Let's be completely honest here, and if you are doing a quest and you are leveling in an insane or at least abnormal rate, you should probably report it, and to keep doing it would only mke you look more guilty.  You can play the "I didn't know card." but to me i think other than like Orc Ears or something liek this at the very beginning of the game  shouldn't have any repeatable quest to begin with, except for maybe tradeskill quest.  So this whole I didn't know from a quest respective doesn't really fly with me, you know if you are doing something wrong, many people have at least played some kind of game for 5 years by now for the most part and know if you are doing something that is incorrect, we don't need to be treated like children you did something wrong you get punished it is simply that simple.  If someone is at work and did something they weren't suppose to, they get in trouble, maybe even get fired, and the whole i didn't know simply just means you did it without thinking, and ignorance shouldn't be blissed, it should be punished. 


    This post was edited by Cealtric at April 26, 2020 9:59 AM PDT
    • 1479 posts
    April 26, 2020 10:25 AM PDT

    2020 people allways consider that giving them the "option" to break the game is the dev's fault, and allways try every possible weird technique in order to achieve such goal. It's simply a lack of undertaking and a bad habit to push the blame ont others.

     

     

    Exploits should be punished especially when you repeat it to benefit of it multiple times. It's a player's responsibility to save the game they are playing by reporting any bug they encounter and not taking advantage of it. Punishing developpers or pushing the blame only encourage looking and searching for exploits safely.

    • 945 posts
    April 26, 2020 10:53 AM PDT

    It needs to be defined as an "exploit" before it can be a punishable offense.  It is literally incumbent upon the palyers to find different ways to defeat and approach encounters.  We want to encourage players to think outside of the box and not be fearful of trying something new.

    To use EQ as an example, reverse kiting was not the way that the NPCs were intended to be fought (technically an exploit of exp), but players manipulated the agro mechanic to force NPCs to chase indefinitely - instead of punishing players, the devs made adjustments to the damage over time dealth to an NPC that wasn't feared (because kiting and quad kiting were intentional mechanics opposed to reverse kiting and swarm kiting).  Another exploit that was patched instead of banning entire servers was being able to log out in certain areas and log back in on the other side of a zone.  Siren's Grotto that I could remember was a big one for that because entire guilds would save hours navigating/corpse running that nightmare of an underwater zone with high level see invis mobs on their way to raid Dragon Necropolis or Temple of Veeshan. 

    • 78 posts
    April 26, 2020 11:03 AM PDT

    Darch said:

    Depends if the exploit is intentional or not really.  To use an example in the OP, if I find a quest or NPC that gives more exp than others, it is able to be repeated, and there is nothing indicating that repeating it is wrong, I'm going to repeat it.  A good analogy for this would be if you were walking down the street and saw your destination on the other side of the street so you decided to cross the street, should you get a ticket for J-Walking because you didn't know that had you walked 50 more feet down the street you would've seen a crosswalk, should you get a warning, or should the police even waste their time repremanding you (while others are crossing the street too) and instead put up a sign that says "use the crosswalk or you will be punished."

    Most of the exploits that exist obviously won't tell you that you shouldn't do it, so of course there will be nothing indicating that it's wrong except your own logic. If you see no other reason to exp somewhere or with other people because this "one thing" is giving you more exp than you can get doing anything else, there's a great chance that it's an exploit. I feel like we need to work as a community to report these things quickly. Too many people these days keep this stuff "hush hush", and exploit, then have their friends exploit, and some of these may even be decent people(?), but when the devs finally get around to a ban/suspension it ends up being either too late or something like a month rollback which would likely cause these people to quit the game, and that's not necessarily a good thing. What I would love is some clear and concise rules laid out for all to see so that people know in advance what will happen if they manipulate code (or however hackers do things I've no idea) vs what would happen if you take advantage of some quest/mob/loot bug for first offenses / second etc..

    • 78 posts
    April 26, 2020 11:07 AM PDT

    Darch said:

    It needs to be defined as an "exploit" before it can be a punishable offense.  It is literally incumbent upon the palyers to find different ways to defeat and approach encounters.  We want to encourage players to think outside of the box and not be fearful of trying something new.

    To use EQ as an example, reverse kiting was not the way that the NPCs were intended to be fought (technically an exploit of exp), but players manipulated the agro mechanic to force NPCs to chase indefinitely - instead of punishing players, the devs made adjustments to the damage over time dealth to an NPC that wasn't feared (because kiting and quad kiting were intentional mechanics opposed to reverse kiting and swarm kiting).  Another exploit that was patched instead of banning entire servers was being able to log out in certain areas and log back in on the other side of a zone.  Siren's Grotto that I could remember was a big one for that because entire guilds would save hours navigating/corpse running that nightmare of an underwater zone with high level see invis mobs on their way to raid Dragon Necropolis or Temple of Veeshan. 

    In the above situation (the zone bug) it's a clear exploit in my opinion and though not severe enough for a permaban or anything like that I would like to see all who participate in something like that suspended for a week or something so that they know that's a serious unintended advantage / exploit.

    • 1479 posts
    April 26, 2020 11:09 AM PDT

    Darch said:

    It needs to be defined as an "exploit" before it can be a punishable offense.  It is literally incumbent upon the palyers to find different ways to defeat and approach encounters.  We want to encourage players to think outside of the box and not be fearful of trying something new.

    To use EQ as an example, reverse kiting was not the way that the NPCs were intended to be fought (technically an exploit of exp), but players manipulated the agro mechanic to force NPCs to chase indefinitely - instead of punishing players, the devs made adjustments to the damage over time dealth to an NPC that wasn't feared (because kiting and quad kiting were intentional mechanics opposed to reverse kiting and swarm kiting).  Another exploit that was patched instead of banning entire servers was being able to log out in certain areas and log back in on the other side of a zone.  Siren's Grotto that I could remember was a big one for that because entire guilds would save hours navigating/corpse running that nightmare of an underwater zone with high level see invis mobs on their way to raid Dragon Necropolis or Temple of Veeshan. 

     

    Well I don"t know, if you manage to make the boss not hit you it's obviously not clever mechanics.

     

    Also just a note, in EQ all dots were 1/3 when the target was moving, to nerf kiting and reverse kiting. It didn't affect direct damage however, neither dot rotting.

    • 844 posts
    April 26, 2020 11:20 AM PDT

    MauvaisOeil said:

    Darch said:

    It needs to be defined as an "exploit" before it can be a punishable offense.  It is literally incumbent upon the palyers to find different ways to defeat and approach encounters.  We want to encourage players to think outside of the box and not be fearful of trying something new.

    To use EQ as an example, reverse kiting was not the way that the NPCs were intended to be fought (technically an exploit of exp), but players manipulated the agro mechanic to force NPCs to chase indefinitely - instead of punishing players, the devs made adjustments to the damage over time dealth to an NPC that wasn't feared (because kiting and quad kiting were intentional mechanics opposed to reverse kiting and swarm kiting).  Another exploit that was patched instead of banning entire servers was being able to log out in certain areas and log back in on the other side of a zone.  Siren's Grotto that I could remember was a big one for that because entire guilds would save hours navigating/corpse running that nightmare of an underwater zone with high level see invis mobs on their way to raid Dragon Necropolis or Temple of Veeshan. 

    Well I don"t know, if you manage to make the boss not hit you it's obviously not clever mechanics.

    Also just a note, in EQ all dots were 1/3 when the target was moving, to nerf kiting and reverse kiting. It didn't affect direct damage however, neither dot rotting.

    For clarity.

    In early days EQ1, when players realised that Druids could easily SOW themselves, then DOT and kite around 2, 3, 4 mobs with little or no risk. Almost overnight 10's of thousands of players created Druids, as everyone wantd to powergame solo.

    SoE's solution was to nerf the potentcy of the DOT if the player was moving, not the targetted mob(s). As long as the player was stationary the DOT remained at full strength.

    • 844 posts
    April 26, 2020 11:40 AM PDT

    Banning for cheating, exploiting, hacking is always a slippery slope in gaming.

    Most dev teams will create tools or mechanics to monitor what they think are potential cheating parameters.

    But As Vjek pointed out, relying on some software tool a dev created to ban players can be a disaster. False positives from a poorly coded tool can cause more issues than not having the tool. And most, if not all techniques to monitor cheating require enormous logging on the part of the game, which also impacts performance.

    And to efficiently and accurately assess cheating requires a skilled overview. Precious cycles from a high level engineer that understands the code and the database.

     

    And then there's exploiting.

    All players abuse exploits when they think they can not get caught. Others will say they're just playing the game as it was designed, even though it may be obvious they are exploiting an obvious bug.

    Do you ban them all? Roll back their characters?

    One example I recall from Vanguard. SoE dev's had released a good sized update that expanded crafting into higher tiers and involved some complex involved quests. The quests were supposed to be one-time only and gave an enormous amount of XP as they were elaborate.

    But some dev forgot to turn off the ability to repeat the quest when it went live, as I am sure it was repeatable on the test server. And players exploited the quest, doing it multiple times over and over, amassing multiple level gains, high-level gains. Players leveled their characters to the max in hours.

    SoE didn't ban them, didn't roll them back. Thus continuing the SoE policy that cheating had no penalties.

     

    Managing cheating, exploiting, hacking is a very time-intense business and requires skilled people to manage and validate. Most game companies don't care to expend those resources in that way, so the cheaters are not punished and games suffer.

    • 1584 posts
    April 26, 2020 11:59 AM PDT

    Darch said:

    It needs to be defined as an "exploit" before it can be a punishable offense.  It is literally incumbent upon the palyers to find different ways to defeat and approach encounters.  We want to encourage players to think outside of the box and not be fearful of trying something new.

    To use EQ as an example, reverse kiting was not the way that the NPCs were intended to be fought (technically an exploit of exp), but players manipulated the agro mechanic to force NPCs to chase indefinitely - instead of punishing players, the devs made adjustments to the damage over time dealth to an NPC that wasn't feared (because kiting and quad kiting were intentional mechanics opposed to reverse kiting and swarm kiting).  Another exploit that was patched instead of banning entire servers was being able to log out in certain areas and log back in on the other side of a zone.  Siren's Grotto that I could remember was a big one for that because entire guilds would save hours navigating/corpse running that nightmare of an underwater zone with high level see invis mobs on their way to raid Dragon Necropolis or Temple of Veeshan. 

    Kiting wasn't an Exploit it was just being clever enough to use your abilities in such a way they made it possible to "kite," but to constantly turn in a quest over and over gain to gain a large amount of exp with little effort isn't by any means the same thing, much like if you realize with a certain disposition you could use it to turn it into your advantage to win certain encounters i wouldn't call an exploit, its simply using what you have to gain an advantage.

    But if you pull a Mob and run in a long a wall or whatever and he zig zags and never can get to you, that is an exploit.  Again you don't need to be told what an exploit is, you simply just need to ask yourself does this feel like i should be doing this to gain some kind of advantage that makes me essentially cheating the game.

    Or if you quest giver ask for 3 Orc Teeth and you give him 4 and he says he only requires 3 but gives you the Exp and the items back and you keep doing it til your heart content is an exploit, again you don't need to be told this, just play the game the way it is meant to be played, if you are clever enough to find out you can solo with a class in a very interesting way, good for you, you thought outside the box, if you are using a glitch or something than you should be punished it is simply that easy.

    Plus with that whole Siren's Grotto, you could simply just evac to the right side of the zone so honestly the whole logging in nd out was kind of unnesscary if it was even a thing. 


    This post was edited by Cealtric at April 26, 2020 12:01 PM PDT
    • 1281 posts
    April 26, 2020 1:45 PM PDT

    This is a hard question to answer.

    In one scenario, if you are doing something and you wind up with 2 items, then do it again and wind up with 4 items, and so on, I assume most players find it reasonable to believe that was a dupe bug. But if you are buying items from one NPC and selling to another for profit, I don't know if that is something you would immediately assume is unintended. Yet both could be considered duping or exploits.

    As the development team, how can you create a user agreement to cover all possible expamples of this and say "this is not alowed".

    • 560 posts
    April 26, 2020 1:55 PM PDT

    If a game had stances like this, I would be afraid to play the game. Some exploits every reasonable person would consider an exploit and sure devs should address the players taking advantage of it. But a lot of exploits could just be something the devs did not intend. Not all unintended consequences are bad. Some could be good for the game in the long run. Making player afraid to think outside the box because they could be punished is a line, I would not want them to cross.

    Devs should look at ever incident in depth and make a reasonable response. This could be anywhere from a permanent ban to encouraging other players to play that way as well. Because the response can very so wildly it is important the devs take a reasonable response after consideration.

     

    Edited for spelling


    This post was edited by Susurrus at April 26, 2020 1:57 PM PDT
    • 185 posts
    April 26, 2020 2:01 PM PDT

    Isn’t part of the fun of these games to operate in and explore a vast open world? I would carry that over to the technical side of this virtual world as well.

    Finding something interesting (even if you would call it a bug) would be like an easter egg that you probably should be able to reward yourself with.

    The instinct to demand people ‘BE BANNED!’ for things like this is anathema to me.

    If on the other hand they are griefing or otherwise interfering with Other players, that should be something that devs should consider for punishment, but not this.

    The devs should just own up to their mistake and take responsibility for it rather than punishing people “to send a message”

     

     

    • 945 posts
    April 26, 2020 2:05 PM PDT

    zewtastic said:

    For clarity.

    In early days EQ1, when players realised that Druids could easily SOW themselves, then DOT and kite around 2, 3, 4 mobs with little or no risk. Almost overnight 10's of thousands of players created Druids, as everyone wantd to powergame solo.

    SoE's solution was to nerf the potentcy of the DOT if the player was moving, not the targetted mob(s). As long as the player was stationary the DOT remained at full strength.

    This is completely incorrect Zew.  Druids still had to snare NPCs, but their snares lasted for minutes and were insanely low mana cost, while producing incredible threat and Druid's charm was also great.  A Druid could still kite with snare and /sit while their pet beat on things for huge damage without having to DoT kite.  But that isn't the part you are "completely incorrect" about.  I don't know where you got the DoT information from... I played every kite class and mained SHD... but as my necro, I pretty much never had to move.  When fear wore off and the NPC started coming back toward me, the DoT tics lessened (by like 60% if I remember right) because the NPC wasn't feared or rooted (any other condition "the NPC was in" reduced the dmg).  

    • 945 posts
    April 26, 2020 2:11 PM PDT

    Riahuf22 said:

    Kiting wasn't an Exploit it was just being clever enough to use your abilities in such a way they made it possible to "kite," but to constantly turn in a quest over and over gain to gain a large amount of exp with little effort isn't by any means the same thing, much like if you realize with a certain disposition you could use it to turn it into your advantage to win certain encounters i wouldn't call an exploit, its simply using what you have to gain an advantage.

    This was exactly my point Riahuf.  My comment of "It needs to be defined as an "exploit" before it can be a punishable offense.  It is literally incumbent upon the palyers to find different ways to defeat and approach encounters.  We want to encourage players to think outside of the box and not be fearful of trying something new." was immediately following Mauv's comment of:

    MauvaisOeil said:

    2020 people allways consider that giving them the "option" to break the game is the dev's fault, and allways try every possible weird technique in order to achieve such goal. It's simply a lack of undertaking and a bad habit to push the blame ont others.


    This post was edited by Darch at April 26, 2020 2:12 PM PDT
    • 945 posts
    April 26, 2020 2:32 PM PDT

    Riahuf22 said:

    Plus with that whole Siren's Grotto, you could simply just evac to the right side of the zone so honestly the whole logging in nd out was kind of unnesscary if it was even a thing. 

    It sounds like you didn't play when I did if you think it was just "simply just evac to the right side of the zone" lol. 
    Part of the fix to prevent people from camping through Siren's Grotto included clearing the evac zone of the undercon NPCs... especially back when people had crap PCs (compared to today) and it would take some people 20-40 seconds to load... meanwhile, everyone except the tank loads first after the evac and wipes.  I remember very clearly spending hours FD corpse pulling through there.  People getting stunned by NPC cleric sea horses... then you have no enduring breath items.  And not everyone had a wizard in their pocket. 

    Dangers

    • Evac/Succor landing location can be dangerous due to a roaming aggro mob.*

    Many of the creatures here are very high level, and see invisible.

    The other problem here is that much of the zone is underwater. This can make getting around problematic if you don't have a way to breathe underwater.


    This post was edited by Darch at April 26, 2020 2:33 PM PDT
    • 1921 posts
    April 26, 2020 2:36 PM PDT

    zewtastic said: ... One example I recall from Vanguard. SoE dev's had released a good sized update that expanded crafting into higher tiers and involved some complex involved quests. The quests were supposed to be one-time only and gave an enormous amount of XP as they were elaborate.

    But some dev forgot to turn off the ability to repeat the quest when it went live, as I am sure it was repeatable on the test server. And players exploited the quest, doing it multiple times over and over, amassing multiple level gains, high-level gains. Players leveled their characters to the max in hours.

    SoE didn't ban them, didn't roll them back. Thus continuing the SoE policy that cheating had no penalties.

    I remember that exact patch and exploit, zew. 
    I also remember all the subsequent max level crafters praising Silius's sadistic punitive designs as exceptionally fantastic, for months afterwards, beause a) they didn't have to level using them and b) they were already max level, with full sets of max level / yellow crafting gear.
    It was absolutely infuriating, and unfortunately, I saw many players quit over this mistreatment of non-exploiters, by not banning or rolling back the exploiters.
    Since then, though, the mantra of "exploit early, exploit often" has been used successfully, by most players, in every single MMO I've ever played, including EQ1. 
    There are rarely/never serious consequences, because the company wants the subscription money more than they want to punish egregious proven repeat exploiters.

    • 99 posts
    April 26, 2020 2:56 PM PDT
    I remember in wow you have to throw a bomb that did insane dmg from a flying mount well if you took the quest but didnt talk to the person to fly you had a bomb. Anyways i got side tracked ended up mounting and doing something else realized i had a bomb in my bags. I threw it from my mount and it worked totally didnt think it was an exploit until i killed something big i forgot what it was called i had a dev port me and wanted to know how i did it. Told him he said he needed to fix it and left it at that luckly i didnt get banned cause had no idea it would work and i didnt do it after he told me not to. Anyways that was the only time i seen gm island lol.
    • 200 posts
    April 26, 2020 3:07 PM PDT

    Hi,

     

    this is a very difficult thing. It s not always clear for the players whether a machanic is an exploit or intention. Things like dupe exploits are very clear. But when a quest gives too much experience. The player can not know how much experience is too much and what the intention of the devs was. Or when some gadgets trivialize boss mechanics. I wouldn't always blame the players when they do unintended things.

    Greetings

    • 40 posts
    April 26, 2020 3:30 PM PDT

    Before issueing a suspension the question should be asked -  "Is it possible that a new player doesn't understand that this is an exploit?"  If the answer is Yes, then a suspension should not be given.  A warning should be given, and the exploit should be hot fixed.  If the answer is No, then issue the suspension.  Time suspended based on how game breaking the exploit is, and prior infractions from said player if they have any.



    This post was edited by Hane at April 26, 2020 3:32 PM PDT
    • 238 posts
    April 26, 2020 3:56 PM PDT

    I think that if you knowingly exploit the game in a breakable manner then you are subject to whatever harsh penalties the devs place upon you.  The situation in classic WoW with people altering the code of the game to get into C-Thun's room comes to mind here. Clearly this wasn't intended and the players that did this were altering code (which is not normal player behavior) to pull this exploit off.

    That being said if something is being exploited but people don't know that it's an exploit due to a bug I believe that the fault lies with the devs in this matter. WoW recently had an issue where people were chest farming in the latest patch and they were only supposed to be able to loot one a week. However, due to a bug people were farming the required materials to open more than one. Blizzard passed a massive ban hammer and then eventually went back and revoked these bans. This is a situation that I firmly believe falls on the devs and not the players who were just playing the game. 

    I think there is also a question of what counts as an exploit. Technically anything that a player takes advantage of during a fight that was not intended by the devs is an exploit. There is another situation from WoW that comes to mind and this situation arose back in Cataclysm. There was a boss in Blackwing decent that was extremely broken. He would use sound waves on the ground but the mechanic its self was not functioning as intended. Instead of being a periodic mechanic, it would stay on the ground throughout the fight and just murder players. So the player base found a way around it by pulling the boss into a corner of the room, stacking and ignoring this mechanic altogether. The question in this (and similar) situations is was this an exploit or was this an acceptable way to deal with the broken mechanics of this fight? 

    Personally I feel like if a repeatable quest is giving more experience then intended then that falls on the devs and their design. If there is a corpse that continues to grant loot by clicking on it then yeah a player should probably know better in this situation. I think that the question of should the player be held at fault comes down to (1) was it their intention to break the game (2) were they doing something that was definitely out of a players agency (such as altering code) and (3) should the player have known better (such as continually looting a bugged corpse, or again altering game code).