I would like to hear everyone's thoughts about a topic I was confronted with earlier today.
In a game I play right now, there are a few quests that require the player to collect a large-ish number of things from doing older content, in order to complete. The developers of the game built the quests as a way to get players to go back and run older content and potentially help newer players out. However, most people working on the quests seem to just view the activity as a painful grind.
Today, I witnessed a group of players discussing in open chat how to speed things up by repeatedly accepting and then abandoning a subquest without completing it - all so that they could get through the grind faster. In their minds, this was simply the most efficient way to finish the larger quest and they were recommending it to other people working on the same thing. Not a single one of them ever even considered that what they were doing might be thought of as an exploit. I have my own opinion about what they were doing and it's kind of a strong one. But the whole situation really made me wonder how everyone really feels about this kind of thing.
You might be asking, "What does this have to do with Pantheon?" I think it has everything to do with Pantheon, myself. One of the things many of us have said that we want in Pantheon is a return to a more meaningful progression where we have to spend time working on things. We don't want instant gratification where stuff is just handed to us. That's going to mean that there will be times when leveling or quests or faction or whatever feels like a grind. Thus my question: If you're faced with a grind in game, and there's a small exploit (like repeatedly accepting and then abandoning a quest) that will let you finish it more quickly, is that ok, since the game allows you to do it? Or is it not ok? And if it's not ok, what should the response be?
Exploits that allow you to circumvent time investment are the worst kinds of exploits in my opinion. I have seen them abused in some of the games I have played in the past and the impact can be very nasty. I hope VR will be willing to roll characters back if they are found guilty of these type of exploits. At the same time, I do acknowledge that it's up to the development team to be proactive and prevent these types of things from going live. If it does creep into live then they need to watch how the players interact with their game and it's content and respond accordingly. In my eyes that means fixing the exploit and rolling characters back. Some people will complain and that's okay. Add a good disclaimer in the TOS that explains what is and is not considered an exploit with the caveat that VR reserves the right to roll characters back if it helps preserve the integrity of their game.
Nephele said:Thus my question: If you're faced with a grind in game, and there's a small exploit (like repeatedly accepting and then abandoning a quest) that will let you finish it more quickly, is that ok, since the game allows you to do it? Or is it not ok? And if it's not ok, what should the response be?
It is not OK. The players should have a short suspension, all gained XP, coin and items are removed.
Spluffen said:I don't think they should be punished. Punishing people for 'exploits' is just a (very) weak excuse for developers to use. If a so called exploit exists (I'd call it a bug and/or design flaw) then FIX it. Don't blame players when you (the developer) do a sloppy job.
When your making an entire game, expecting it to be made without something to be 3x plotted will basically never happen, so if they find it they should report it to the development not use it to their own advantage, this is why I believe impo they should be suspended for up to a weekat max on first offense, becuase you are right the devs time should make sure their isn't exploits like this just like people are smart enough to know what is an exploit and what isn't and when they find one it should be reported not taking advantage of.
Riahuf22 said:When your making an entire game, expecting it to be made without something to be 3x plotted will basically never happen, so if they find it they should report it to the development not use it to their own advantage, this is why I believe impo they should be suspended for up to a weekat max on first offense, becuase you are right the devs time should make sure their isn't exploits like this just like people are smart enough to know what is an exploit and what isn't and when they find one it should be reported not taking advantage of.
I'd settle for a roll-back. If they discover someone exploited something, they should be happy they now know about a problem. And yea, sure, some things are super obviously not intended but other things are in a grey area. Either way, my position is still that since its a mistake on behalf of the developer (even if its understandable and to be expected), players should not be punished for it. Maybe its different in other places but where I'm from policemen aren't allowed to bait people into commiting crimes for the same reason I think this isn't something the exploiter should be blamed for.
Spluffen said:Riahuf22 said:When your making an entire game, expecting it to be made without something to be 3x plotted will basically never happen, so if they find it they should report it to the development not use it to their own advantage, this is why I believe impo they should be suspended for up to a weekat max on first offense, becuase you are right the devs time should make sure their isn't exploits like this just like people are smart enough to know what is an exploit and what isn't and when they find one it should be reported not taking advantage of.
I'd settle for a roll-back. If they discover someone exploited something, they should be happy they now know about a problem. And yea, sure, some things are super obviously not intended but other things are in a grey area. Either way, my position is still that since its a mistake on behalf of the developer (even if its understandable and to be expected), players should not be punished for it. Maybe its different in other places but where I'm from policemen aren't allowed to bait people into commiting crimes for the same reason I think this isn't something the exploiter should be blamed for.
I understand where you are coming from, but there has to be something in place impo to prevent people from wanting to find/use exploits. And a simple rollback just doesn't seem enough to stop people from doing it, they shod feel encourage to report these exploits instead of using them, and a small suspension should be enough to do that, as for a rollback the only thing the players are hoping to wish for is that they hope they don't get rollbacked, which is basically no punishment at all. I'm not trying to change your mind on this kind of thing, but trying to shred some light if there isn't any true punishment for exploiting the game than there will be a handful of people who will use it to get ahead of people who were doing this legitly
Riahuf22 said:I understand where you are coming from, but there has to be something in place impo to prevent people from wanting to find/use exploits. And a simple rollback just doesn't seem enough to stop people from doing it, they shod feel encourage to report these exploits instead of using them, and a small suspension should be enough to do that, as for a rollback the only thing the players are hoping to wish for is that they hope they don't get rollbacked, which is basically no punishment at all. I'm not trying to change your mind on this kind of thing, but trying to shred some light if there isn't any true punishment for exploiting the game than there will be a handful of people who will use it to get ahead of people who were doing this legitly
Yea, I see what you mean. I play by the rules in games, its just that in a video game, the code is the rulebook. I'll follow that of course, not hack or anything, but if the code allows me to do something then its fair game. I'm not interested in the morals of other players or the developers. I pay for a game and I play it, that's it pretty much.
EDIT: actually now I'm a bit torn because I thought of community guidelines when it comes to chat interaction.
Nephele said: And if it's not ok, what should the response be?
I'm going to answer this part first.
Since most of us are not judicial judges (if you are then thanks for your service), it's very easy for many people to feel that everyone who commits a specific crime should be punished exactly the same way. But as you find with real life... each individual event needs to be looked at based on various factors and decisions of punishment will differ.
Of course we are not really talking about crimes, but rather just cheating in a video game. But just like in the idea of punishment for crimes, punishment for a cheat should also look at various factors of the specific instance and punishments will differ.
Sometimes a simple rollback might be in order. Other times it might require a short suspension. In some extreme cases perhaps even a permenant ban might be needed. When given these hypothetical scenarios it just doesn't help to argue over what the specific punishment will be.
We can't always definitively say that 'This' punishment should always be for 'That' action. This is why judicial systems always need to be careful when implementing 'Mandatory Minimums' for crimes. It does happen, but it's not always the best course and in many of these situations the 'minimums' are eventually removed or lowered because of cases that show it might sometimes be too harsh.
As for the origional question...
Nephele said: If you're faced with a grind in game, and there's a small exploit (like repeatedly accepting and then abandoning a quest) that will let you finish it more quickly, is that ok, since the game allows you to do it? Or is it not ok? And if it's not ok, what should the response be?
Exploits are by definition subverting the reason that the feature exists, and I do NOT think it is ok to exploit, and there should be consequences when discovered.
Basically if you can say to yourself "I know they don't want me to be doing this... but I'm going to do it anyway" then this falls into the 'It's not ok' category in my opinion.
You do need to be aware though that some things that were not intitially 'intended' are not always exploits. Thinking outside the box to accomplish something in a way that the developers did not originally forsee, can be a totally valid tactic and often times the Devs are very happy when you figure things like that out. If they decide though that you make things too easy by doing that thing, then they may change things to bring back difficulty even if you use that trick or tactic or they may remove the ability to use the tactic or trick. But this does not mean this will have punishment.
As for your specific example... this kind of thing is about finding a loophole in how the quest line was developed and then taking advantage of it. It would be up to the game developers, once made aware of this loophole, to decide if they want to change it to bring back their reason for creating the questline in the first place. If they decide, "Oops... we screwed up... But we don't want to invest time to fixing it." then choosing to punishing people who figure it out seems unfair. On the other hand if they say "Wow... we better fix that fast." and then make an anouncement to the effect of 'This is an error and we are fixing it', then yes people who continue to use the loophole will probably face punishments. But like I explained before... the punishments may be different depending on each case.
@Philo
That's like saying that you understand that robbery is wrong, but it's the cops responsibility to make sure I can't break into a house. Otherwise its fair game.
The devs cant be everywhere at all times. They can't fix every bug immediately. No software on the planet is perfect, no matter how long its been around and how many testers and coders have worked on it. And often exploiters will deliberately keep an exploit secret so that they can take advantage of it for as long as possible before it is fixed. Bugs like dupe exploits especially.
I find it rather sad that there are so many people that are inherently dishonest, and use weak justification like "everyone's doing it" as an excuse to be dishonest. It says a lot about their character.
If accepting and abandoning the quest repeatedly allows you to RNG generate the optimal quest to actually take part in, then I think that's fair game. If it fools the game into thinking they've actually completed the quest, then I don't think that's fair.
Like a delivery quest that either tells you to go to Thronefast or Whitehall based on RNG. If I am already going to Thronefast, then I would be willing to accept and abandon that quest over and over until I get the Thronefast delivery quest, then do that quest. If accepting and abandoning the quest automatically completes the quest for me, then that's not cool.
In the MMOs I have played of late it would be fine for devs to fix it, but not punish anyone. I think that's because any exploits for personal gain are victimless crimes or are at least seen that way. Duping bugs wreck the economy, so everyone is a victim to some degree. Experience gaining exploits only hurt the game in so far as there is competition between players (not much in most MMOs). Boss killing exploits hurt most when the rest of the community is deprived the ability to actually kill that boss.
Those are the three categories of exploits that I have seen. I think it's easy to let it slide when they are perceived as victimless crimes, but I think in Pantheon they may matter a whole lot more. Unfortunately, that puts the onus on the developers to code in ways to figure out who has been exploiting their system so they can be punished.
I am in favor of punishing the use of exploits and I think that it goes a long way. I also think that the punishments should be harsh in the clear cut cases and quite lenient otherwise.
Feyshtey said:@Philo
That's like saying that you understand that robbery is wrong, but it's the cops responsibility to make sure I can't break into a house. Otherwise its fair game.
The devs cant be everywhere at all times. They can't fix every bug immediately. No software on the planet is perfect, no matter how long its been around and how many testers and coders have worked on it. And often exploiters will deliberately keep an exploit secret so that they can take advantage of it for as long as possible before it is fixed. Bugs like dupe exploits especially.
I find it rather sad that there are so many people that are inherently dishonest, and use weak justification like "everyone's doing it" as an excuse to be dishonest. It says a lot about their character.
I think it's more along the lines of going to the store and seeing that certain goods are advertised at an abnormally low rate. There was a misprint that was circulated and now people are showing up to the store and trying to buy that merchandise. They didn't ask for a stellar rate, it was just there. Either way, they came to buy their stuff and then move on with their day. If the store is going to honor the price until all of the merchandise is sold then of course people are going to take advantage of the sale. This isn't the same thing as breaking into someone's house and robbing them. In my experience, this is exactly how these exploits worked. I saw it in EQ2 where multiple guilds were able to acquire 6+ months of relic gear for their entire raid team in a single night in the first week of a new expansion. None of it was rolled back. The dev team decided "Ooops our bad, we let that sneak in and it's our fault ... congrats to anybody who took advtantage of it." I think that's a horrible way of doing things personally but it really depends on what kind of rules are put in place to handle these situations.
I remain convinced that it's "for the greater good" to just roll back characters that have these "opportunities" fall into their lap. If someone wasted an entire night focused on maximizing the value of what is ultimately considered an exploit (though they have some merit in saying that they were just being opportunistic) ... too bad, roll them back and offer them a free month of game time. There are a lot of "grey areas" when it comes to these sorts of things and as Goofy pointed out you really need a judge in there to evaluate the situation and render a verdict. At the end of the day, though, the integrity of the world and it's challenges need to be preserved. I think suspensions and bans are warranted if you see the same people doing borderline shady behavior, especially after they are warned and confronted with the "This is considered an exploit clause in the TOS." If someone is trying to be clever ... and their actions could be viewed as "emergent gameplay that produced undesirable results" then you simply inform them that you messed up as the development team in not being proactive enough to prevent that bug/glitch/exploit from going live. Roll their characters back and give them a free month of gametime.
It depends what kind of exploit you're talking about. When a person finds that if they position themselves in a particular spot that they can melee attack mobs that agro, but the mobs cant melee back, so the player is able to sit there are get xp and loot with zero risk for an indefinite period, that's not simply an oppurtunity that fell into their lap. When a person actively seeks ways to create dupe bugs, and once found they get a second account to become grossly wealthy, transfer the funds around a few times, delete characters and the second account, and the quietly pass the info on to others to be further exploited, this cant be justified. These are obvious gamebreaking exploits. And there are hosts of people out there that not only use them, but deliberately and systematically try to find them.
Now perhaps it would be unfair to put someone like philo in that category. Perhaps he's ok with simple exploits that allow him to circumvent some minor grind in the game. But I find the cavalier attitude with casually and knowingly doing things the devs obviously wouldn't condone, and not reporting it so that it's corrected, and telling example of the type of moral compass a person has.
Yes, it's just a game, and not "real life". But what people who use this excuse coupled with using exploits fail to recognize is that while it is just a game, there are negative impacts to real people. Thousands of them, perhaps millions. Perhaps its with the ingame economy being adversely affected. Perhaps its with legitimate and condoned uses for skills or spells being nerfed. Nonetheless, there's impact.
Feyshtey said:Now perhaps it would be unfair to put someone like philo in that category. Perhaps he's ok with simple exploits that allow him to circumvent some minor grind in the game. But I find the cavalier attitude with casually and knowingly doing things the devs obviously wouldn't condone, and not reporting it so that it's corrected, and telling example of the type of moral compass a person has.
To be fair ... he did say that he would bug report it first. I'm going to stick with my assertion that ill-gotten gains need to be rolled back. VR needs to take a firm stance when it comes to exploitation. If something is super obvious and game-breaking ... like a dupe bug that throws the entire economy out of whack, I would hope to see them roll the entire server back a couple days. I know it would be really inconvenient to a lot of people but I would rather lose out on a couple days of /played time than be permanently screwed with a jacked up server economy. Giving out a free month of game time to those affected is obviously a major financial consideration ... and one that wouldn't have to be made if these exploits were prevented in the first place. I feel pretty confident that our amazing community will uncover the vast majority of exploits during testing. The more access we have to the testing environment the more likely these potential exploits will be exposed and removed from the game prior to launch.
In the case of a economy destroying dupe, if a person were to have been found to use it and not report it, they should be permanently banned. Without question. And there are plenty of other exploits that fall into the same category. The toxicity and damage that a player with that kind of attitude has should not be allowed to remain.
A possible roll-back of the server is a pretty serious impact to every player. Think of the guy that's been trying to aquire a rare dropped item or rare quest item for months, finally succeeds, and then has it ripped away thru no fault of his own, but rather the fault of unscrupulous players.
I'm not saying that a roll-back is out of the question, or cant be appropriate. I am saying that this is exactly the type of real impact to real people that exploiters who excuse it as "the devs shouldn't have made it possible" don't give a crap about. And they should be gone from the game forever.
Exploiting. Always a tricky subject.
Based on how many posters here are completely removing what they wrote or substantially changing it, I would say it is proving complex for the newbs.
Unfortunately there will always be exploits and players will always cheat.
Games will rarely if ever punish or roll back. In an MMO a roll back is unheard of and I have never seen it happen, no matter how badly it was needed. Largely because programatically it is almost impossible to do. Taking a DB backwards in time for something as complex as an MMO, not realistic.
Personally I do not exploit. But small cheesy quests simply designed to place time sinks into game for no other reason than to eat time can get annoyong very fast. Especially if they have to be repeated.
So I can see just using an exploit for something small and annoying like it sounds you are describing.
Biggest exploit I recall. In Vanguard, they had just released the expansion to level 55 from 50. This also included crafting level, which was my interest at the time. There was a long and complex quest with many legs to gather items for a one-time turn-in. It gave a large amount of XP. something like 20% of a level 51, on the way to level 55.
Well QA did a poor job on that. The XP was off by a factor of 10x and exploiters found you could simply not turn in the items (which gave a reward) and repeat the quest. Players were now doing the quest repeatedly. Within hours the server started filling up with new level 55 players. No one was banned, no rollback occured. Now that is an exploit.
If you report the exploit you should get punishment immunity but still have all the exp/loot removed that you've gained from it.
If you don't report it and you're found out.. then you should be punished with all your exp/loot removed gained.
As for punishment? If it was up to me. You'd get temp banned for a week for a first offense. Perma for the next as you've been warned the first time and clearly don't care; and if you don't care.. why should I? banned.
I think the character should be rolled back and suspened for 3 days.
I love some of these responses with morality lol, if you don't care about someone lese morality then no one should care about yours.
Anyways, I would assume there are a portion of people on these forums that actually program and should be speaking up about this. There is a general rule with programming that if you fix one bug, 3 mor bugs pop out. There is no such thing as a perfect program. There will always be bugs. The question is can you make it so that there are only small bugs and the bigger bugs are surrounded by soo much code that even expert exploiters can't figure out the loop hole.
Since there is no such thing as a perfect program then there will always be something to exploit. The question is what is the response to people who decide to go the me me me me route and eploit for their benefit? I think what I said is a fine. If they reaccure then by the 3rd or 4th time perma ban or delete that character, not account.
There are grey zones but this one is it not for me .
Was a player hurt economically or morally ? No . Did I annoy , harrass somebody ? No . Did I get an item (real or virtual) I was not supposed to get ? No . Did I harm morally or materially the company running the game ? No . In RL any action answering with no all the above questions would be normal and nobody would rise an eyebrow .
So what did I really do that would deserve reprobation or even according to some , punishment in a game when a similar action would be normal in RL ? Well the developper expected me to spend 10 hours on some action he designed and I spent 1 instead . Yes I guessed that I was probably expected to spend 10 hours but I have also been given the choice to spend 1 hour instead . That the existence of the choice was probably unintended doesn't make the choice inexistent and that is really the only thing that matters .
Did I steal 9 hours (the difference) from somebody ? No . At worst I multiplied my usual ratio XP/hour by 10 for a short time . Is there a rule written or not which says that the ratio XP/hour must be less than some number in all circumstances ? No and it wouldn't make sense anyway .
So I would of course choose to spend 1 hour instead of 10 and wouldn't be bothered at all that somebody (a dev) probably expected me to spend 10 . A slightly harder question is "would I inform the devs that I was spending less time than they probably expected ?". I might start by asking them if they had any expectations about the time it should take for action X . If they say no or don't answer then I continue choosing 1 hour as usual . If they say 20 hours then I would tell them that they are sorely mistaken as 1 hour is enough because ....
I'm confused as to why you think abandoning a quest and doing it again would be considered an exploit. Unless I clearly misunderstand the original issue.
The issue with rolling back characters needs to directly be related to the type and severity of the exploit. When garrison's first came out in wow you could have an herb garden. The herbs would grow once a day and you could collect them. If you left your garrison at level 2 instead of level 3 and you choose to grow frost lotus (i think)... the frost lotus would respawn allowing you to have an endless supply.
In everquest in sol a, there was a bar room. The bar was too high for a gnome to jump over, and too low for anything but a dwarf and halfling. You could gather up 20 to 30 mobs, get low health aggro and just jump back and forth over the bar. The mobs would run all the way around to room to try she'd get to you while your group slowly killed them.
The first is absolutely an exploit that needed to be corrected and those that abused it punished. The second is clever use of game mechanics. If that's how the game is designed, why is it exploiting.
EQ1 Tlp servers, mage and necro pets gave off alot of threat. You can send the pet in vs a raid mob and allow it to build aggro the entire time you're setting up and buffing. Then a warrior taunts off and dps can unload without worry of pulling aggro. Is this an exploit? Or a clever use of game mechanics?
When the world first lich king kill was found to have been using saronite grenades to re grow parts of the platform... that is an exploit. You're circumventing part of the encounter by means that clearly are unintended.
The issue with punishing exploits, is what one person sees as an exploit may just be an unintended strategy that the developer doesn't consider. There needs to be someone with intricate knowledge of the game and it's mechanics looking over these on a case by case basis.
Is it an exploit to split my raid into 2 raids and allow only half of them to get a lockout? But still assist in the kill since it's open world contested mobs? How about 4 different raid groups? 6?? Many people including myself view the above as an exploit, but is it really? Would it be an exploit if 2 competing guilds attacked the boss and 1 of them wins...
It's a tricky subject for sure.
It is an exploit in that they received the end result from finding a hole in the quest mechanics.
However finding a hole in the quest mechanics is not exploitive in nature- it is something I hope some of the pre-alpha folks are finding while they are testing the combat functions. the pre alpha folks are not getting banned. Likewise in Alpha I hope that the alpha testers find (or not *nods in deference to Devs*) these holes in the mechanics and report them to get them fixed.
Poachers make good game wardens.
So in a sandbox type environment, it someone has discovered a hole in the quest mechanics they should report it, if they dont report it then it is up ot the devs to watch chat and work on fixing it behind the scenes.
As far as GM action to the players finding the hole and acting on it- thats a tough one. I would agree to roll backs but I dont find the player at fault for finding a hole and getting the benefits from taking advantage of the hole. GM action might have ot be scorched earth- bring down all servers untill the devs fix it, then take the item/flags away from those that used it.
I see the harder part is ho the GM's/Devs will handle remediative action for the game and punitive action to the players for finding a hole they didn't see, so its like thanks, but now you cant have the item. fixing the hole would be better for all- so is the exploiter now the hero?
@Porygon
In your first example (herb garden) I'm not sure what the specifics were. Were you not able to grow the frost lotus in the herb garden if you were rank 3 and were able at rank 2? I would not consider staying at rank 2 and forgoing all the benefits of rank 3 to be an exploit. That would be a choice with definable benefits/costs.
In your second example (jumping back and forth over the table to pull more mobs than the group could have otherwise hoped to survive against) is by any objective definition a pathing exploit. You are using limitations of the pathing code to do things you know with certainty were never intended for you to be able to do for a significant increase in reward while also significantly decreasing risk.
On the third, how did a pet survive that raid mob? I've never heard of using pets in this way. Being a necro I know that at least in the first 6 years of the game any raid boss would destroy a mage or necro pet in seconds, and then seak out the mage or necro. (Necro having the chance to feign, obviously.) If the pet were being healed the healer would be generating more threat than the pet, and would at the least be the immediate target of the boss the moment the pet were to die or be dismissed. If there was a way to avoid these intended mechanics, I'd say it's an exploit.
No knowledge of the fourth.
There are things that are subjective when considering an exploit. The Circlet of Shadows (instant cast invis) is one, where it enabled a necro or SK to fiegn death, be removed from the hate list, and then stand up while instantly going invis and avoiding re-agro. When this was used with the fact that while feigned they circumvented the normal faction checks making them KOS on merchants or bankers, and could interact with those NPCs as if they were friendly, ... This is definately getting buggy, and some would say an exploit. But the devs openly acknowleged the emergent behavior, and instead of declaring it an exploit admitted that, hey, you got us. The CoS was nerfed, but the original remained in game but no longer dropped.
When the devs are willing to say that they were out thought and there's an understanding that action wont be taken against players, you're entering into a different category. The defacto answer is that it's not an exploit because the devs have blessed the behavior.
This is not true at all for the pathing exploit noted above. A fix might not be easy, or even possible, given the limitations of the engine. But the cost/benefit for the players who use it is completely out of whack for game balance. Health of the game being paramount, it is understood by all that pathing exploits like that are absolutely no no's, and if caught using it you should expect punishment.