Guild Wars 2

It’s clear with the amount of negative response to recent events, many paying customers are not particularly pleased with the way Anet handles situations. Combined with heavy-handed moderation, a complete lack of communication and almost condescending approach to customer feedback (This sort of thing needs to be checked by HR before being posted, seriously imagine talking to your customers outside the internet like this….) many people are upset, and rightly so.

I am not going to start another thread about recent events, there are enough of these and the PR nightmare is going to continue for a while (naturally depending on the convenient timing of a patch tomorrow to distract people…). I would however, like to start an open discussion on what people think is a fair and open approach to punishment within the game. For example, treating ‘crimes’ based on the cause/action taken and responding to that in turn, instead of just mass bannings. For example:

- If a customer is guilty of mass manipulating the TP, disable their access to the TP for a month.
- If a customer is guilty of abusive messaging and harassing others, disable their chat function for a month.
- If a player is guilty of exploits in WvW, disable their access to WvW for a month.
- If a player is guilty of karma exploits, disable their access to karma for a month.

While I can understand the necessary approach to bots and RMT, permanent bans for recent events feels akin to a government convicting capital punishment for petty theft. Is the following not considered?

- Other players who have done nothing wrong are more likely to feel a sense of fear in regards to their future interaction, rather than pleased at the punishment of others. Many of these players banned could have been our guildies, party members and other players we have spent time with. A direct browbeat approach, with abysmal communication from Anet as usual does not help. I first heard about this through Reddit…

- Many of the players who would be banned for this sort of thing are the most loyal customers, the ones who are likely to buy gems or whatever to support the company.

- Mass bannings is a PR nightmare. Never forget the impact of an angry fanbase combined with social media.

- There is so much potential to ban people for what is essentially a minor transgression:
1) Other players saying to copy them and there is no issue.
2) Players who don’t check forums etc not realizing this is an exploit.
3) Players not understanding the concept of MMO economy and the effects of inflation/manipulated supply (as really, a notable percentage of your player base will be more used to single player games where this doesn’t mean a thing).
4) Players making what they think is a cleaver discovery and want to make a couple of gold to help put together exotic kits. Lets face it, the grind and drop issues in this game can be bad and enough motivation to drive this sort of thing.

- Anet didn’t exactly make an attempt to be open or discuss this with the player base, as usual.

- What do you actually gain from banning players? Punish them in a way that makes sense, give them reason to continue playing while giving the community reason to beleive in your responsibility to take action with a just response.

- Excessive punishment is troublesome as if you go overboard then undo the punishment, it just looks bad for all involved. A fair punishment based on the crime gives a far more positive image – and player response.

We can talk about ‘responsibility’ for actions, but what sense of justice is there when a company just blames it’s customers for the mistakes the company makes?

I should clarify, in writing this I haven’t been banned or affected by what is happening,
I would just like this to be an open discussion and as constructive as possible… even if positivity may be forsaken in current situations. Thank you for reading.

See I happen to disagree with you. Just after release they had banned players. Anet came out and said that if you exploit there will be no lax punishment. You can not blame the company for not being taught right from wrong.

Let’s be honest, this thread won’t go far. People will rush in to moan and whine until it’s locked.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those “GUYS STOP SHOUTING, THERE ARE NO FLAWS LA LA LA”-guys – I’d say ANet could have really handled the situation better, to say the least. But still, you can’t expect a civil discussion right now, at least not on an official forum.

Hi everyone,

Asuka Shikinami, thanks for bringing up this well formulated and interesting thread. We like the community to give their feedback – be it possitive or negative – as long as it doesnt break the CoC.

To anyone who participates in this thread, we ask to be friendly and constructive. Refrain from any kind of unpleasant behaviour. We will monitor this thread and forward it to the team so every feedback given here is taken into account.

Thanks for your understanding. Please keep a constructive enviroment.

redhare.9210:

See I happen to disagree with you. Just after release they had banned players. Anet came out and said that if you exploit there will be no lax punishment. You can not blame the company for not being taught right from wrong.

Somewhat agreed, but that doesn’t change the premise. Not everyone would have known about that exploit, if they played casually and didn’t check forums/reddit it would have easily been missed. Also players may have started since then. We shouldn’t assume everyone is aware of the same situation, especially knowning the recent ‘exploit’ (subjective) is based around a common activity within the game supported by recent combat.

Morality aside, Information only goes as far as the company wishes to spread it, which in this case wasn’t particularly far… Still thank you for your reply, even if we don’t fully agree feedback is welcome.

Aequitas.6402:

Let’s be honest, this thread won’t go far. People will rush in to moan and whine until it’s locked.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those “GUYS STOP SHOUTING, THERE ARE NO FLAWS LA LA LA”-guys – I’d say ANet could have really handled the situation better, to say the least. But still, you can’t expect a civil discussion right now, at least not on an official forum.

So true. ;_;

I thought this sort of discussion would be a lot more constructive at the moment, but yeah.. let’s see what happens…

Asuka Shikinami, I do like your thoughts on finding other ways to ban but It really would not solve the PR for the game. No matter what is being done to ristrict these individuals there will be those that disagree. Maybe if Anet could get a PTR server up these exploits could be found before hand.

Moderator.1462:

Hi everyone,

Asuka Shikinami, thanks for bringing up this well formulated and interesting thread. We like the community to give their feedback – be it possitive or negative – as long as it doesnt break the CoC.

To anyone who participates in this thread, we ask to be friendly and constructive. Refrain from any kind of unpleasant behaviour. We will monitor this thread and forward it to the team so every feedback given here is taken into account.

Thanks for your understanding. Please keep a constructive enviroment.

Thank you for your feedback. Naturally people are going to be irritated at what has transpired (I admit my post was a little hostile in some regards) so hopefully some good ideas will pop up.

Even though I don’t think many will agree, I think this sort of discussion is essential moving forward, if only to have players and developers look at that situation from each-others perspective.

redhare.9210:

Asuka Shikinami, I do like your thoughts on finding other ways to ban but It really would not solve the PR for the game. No matter what is being done to ristrict these individuals there will be those that disagree. Maybe if Anet could get a PTR server up these exploits could be found before hand.

I agree.

There needs to be a better developer to user bridge when it comes to content. Give out a PTR to test the build instead of relying on the QA department.

It is known that a wider playerbase tends to find bugs better than an internal QA team. With case in point for that one game that Blizzard Entertainment heads. Since they released a PTR their game-breaking bug count -dropped- with each patch.

Currently it’s only .lua scripting and in-game engine scripts that break that game, but still. There needs to be a playerbase testing area for the new content drops.

All of those bugs in Fractals could’ve been avoided if there was a PTR for that content, oh and the Ancient Karka fiasco too could’ve been avoided.

Hell, that 28 karma sword that people were buying and salvaging could also gasp! been avoided if there was more player interaction with future content through a Public Test Realm.

I know that during my short time playing SWTOR that when it came to a new patch we would jump on the PTR and try to find the exploits. Now most games with that are Pay 2 Play in order to access the PTR and GW2 is better for the Buy 2 Play so why not creat a PTR and invite certain groups to participate.

Exploiters – and what we ar talking about is an exploit, everyone who abused it must have known that – are damaging games massively and a permaban is the only way to get rid of them. Otherwise they wouldnt learn anything and laugh at A-Net like: " Haha, ok I take the 3 days, but I gained 500g!" … I wont miss them and I dont feel any fear because I dont exploit – anything that looks the slightest as an exploit I dont go near. To me this is NOT a PR-Nightmare, its a good move by A-Net in my eyes.

Redhare you’re mentioning the most obvious solution to this situation. However, the only question remans is..

Will ArenaNet jump onto this?

Account wiping isn’t a punishment, its a let off, as there are plenty of ways in game to hide your gold.

But perm bans for a 1st offence is unfair too, everyone deserves a 2nd chance…

For 1st offence it should be a temporary month ban, so they miss completely one monthly event and the account is flagged for exploiting. In this case alot of the players would give the game up anyway and never come back. Well those who were sorry and like the game would get a 2nd chance.

For a 2nd offence, you would know if its a 2nd offence because there account would be flagged, then permanent ban.

Fair punishment is an account bank wipe.Let them start over with zero in the bank.

The only thing, imo, that is deserving of a permanent ban, note permanent, is a long series, of willful game abuses. Warning, with deleting the ill gotten gains, then warning with game suspension for x days (maybe a sliding scale here 7 days first, then month, ect), then ban. You should always give a customer a chance to turn it around, I’d say 2 chances, but other people obviously have different opinions.

I agree with most of the 1st post. I was the one talking about the “perma ban for exploit” issue on gw1 forums before gw2 came out (explanation at the time : I know of some exploits of gw1 that happened before I bought the game, but some were not obviously an exploit and if I had been playing at the time I could have mistaken them for a feature/update (example access to guild hall and xunlai chest from pre searing). So I was afraid that I could get perma banned in GW2, a new game, for exploiting somthing while thinking that it’s a feature).

But unfortunately, most players don’t even try to know the difference between features, farm, and exploits. They will overexploit anything saying “no it’s not an exploit, i’m just doing what the game lets me do” until the exploit gets closed and/or they get banned.
But in any case, I agree that they should first get a warning like you described (no more access to the part of the game where they exploited something, for a month, for example) so that they understand what’s an exploit, before punishing them with some days or 1 month ban, before the perma ban.

AND, MOST IMPORTANT, any benefit from any exploit, bannable or not, should be deleted from the game !!
For exemple, it seems to be well known (even if I don’t know exactly what happened) that there used to be expoits in CoF and that some players were able to get incredible amounts of money from there (hence ppl already able to pay 3000gold for a weapon).
Exploit was closed, but exploiters were not banned. Why did you not delete at least part of the money earned there, so that exploiters only have a amount of money left that is “correct” for the time spent there and that is the value they would have earned by doing through the dungeon without exploits ?

I don’t see any reason why the developers should put in a truckload of extra work as per your suggestion. Who’s going to pay for that time? Why should time and money be wasted on coddling abusive and/or cheating little brats instead of fixing, expanding and otherwise improving the game for the decent and honest parts of the playerbase?

The rules are there. If someone decides that “no 1 tells me wut 2 do cuz im 2 k3wl 4 u lol!!!111” then good riddance when they get their just desserts. They have no one to blame but themselves.

And I don’t know if mass bannings are actually a “PR nightmare”. There has been a lot of positive feedback and agreement for Anet’s measures, too. Remember the threads where people would whine about “unfair punishment” and then a dev would quote for all the world to see what sort of disgusting abuse that player had been banned for? Or how many karma exploits he used? Yeah, it wasn’t once or twice, not “an honest mistake” because “how could I have known” and “it wasn’t my fault anyway”. It was dozens of times, sometimes over a hundred.

People like that will do everything to downplay their own actions, garner undeserved sympathy and create paranoia with lies about how the devs are “overreacting” and “anyone could be banned for anything at any time”. They were dishonest in using the exploits and dishonest again in trying to avoid the consequences. Why would they stop if they can get away with it with no more than a temporary slap on the wrist?

I have my own issues with the game, and they are serious enough that I stopped playing (the abysmal story, the introduction of gear treadmills when this game was sold as being free of that BS, painful crafting). Anet’s stance on exploits and abuse is not among them — on the contrary, it is a big part of why I really wish I could enjoy the actual game more so I could justify playing and supporting it. The point being: if someone has issues with a game, then the honest choice is NOT one between chafing under these issues or cheating one’s way around them. And the developers should not be expected to cater to the dishonest people at the expense of everyone else. Keeping the game clean of those people benefits everyone.

I am one of the players that believes that any transgressions to the rules should be dealt accordingly. The recent events have shown that ANet is clearly making a solid stance against all perpetrators that willingly or unwillingly gets unwanted advantages, and although i applaud the effort, i feel also that the baseline for punishing different actions should be revised!

Different actions have different consequences, this is how any judicial system must work and it’s enforcement should be always the least harsh as possible. Stealing an apple should have a different consequence than a homicide. Two crimes still. Also, the first, can have mitigating factors that should not be forgotten (he could be starving). This small analogy was made to make my point that the transgressions should be punished, although with different categories.

ANet has it’s share of guilt in the process. I agree that more testing should be done, and with such amount of content each month being released, i believe that sometimes, somethings may be overlooked. Having aTesting Server for the general population could be one way of putting, although i don’t know also if the exploits found wouldn’t be hided and brought into the normal ones.

So, how to penalize someone breaking the rules? Let’s again make an analogy with RL.
There are fines. If someone got the hands illicitly on gold, they should pay a fine (gold and duration accordingly, instantly or over time, small or big amount).
There are Restriction orders. These would translate as restrictions. Restricting a player from joining WvW, Dungeons and sPvP could be a way as OP said, of enforcing a penalty.
There is jail. This would translate as bans, in duration proportionally to the type of transgression made:
. Hacking – Perma Ban;
. Botters, RMT – Perma Bans;
. Exploiting – Timed Bans and/or higher fines;
. Cheating – Timed Bans and/or higher fines;
. Bad Conduct – Small Time Bans and/or fines;

Having a strong judicial system would make the player base more stable, as there is a good virtual world laws to play with!

Meglobob.8620:

For a 2nd offence, you would know if its a 2nd offence because there account would be flagged, then permanent ban.

I wouldn’t call "taking advantage of an epxloit a few hundred times as a one offence…. I don’t think anyone who did it a couple of times got banned, only those who totally abused it

nofo.8469:

Manipulating the TP is a crime? lol.

If the game have an economy similar to a RL one then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation

Depends on what you do, don’t it?

I don’t bellive anyone should be banned for a developer screw up, particularly when said screw up falls in line withother methods of item or wealth procurement.

For example…..

1. I buy 1 yellow item from the AH for less than the price of 1 Ecto , I salvage it and get 2 Ectos. I sell 2 Ecto’s and buy 2 items from the AH for less than the price of 2 Ectos. I salvage those get 4 Ecto’s and repeat. Apparantly this isn’t an exploit.

2. I discover a recipe that can be easily crafted and requires 1 Ecto. When salvaged it might give back 2 Ecto’s, it might however give 1 back, or 0. In addition to that I might lose the component that required the original 1 Ecto. This apparantly is an exploit, even though it also requires purchasing additional mats from the AH, or going out for material gathering.

Except for the RMT bot squads and serious hacking (like the warp hack used by RMT bot squads), I think a permanent ban is way too harsh, especially if it’s the first offence.

fair punishment should not be bank wipe rather the a rollback to the date the exploited was discovered. meaning from that date what did u earn u do all for nothing that is a fair punishment. perm banned should be apply to hackers and botters not mistakes by the developers.

Kanthor.2094:

Except for the RMT bot squads and serious hacking (like the warp hack used by RMT bot squads), I think a permanent ban is way too harsh, especially if it’s the first offence.

Its not only too harsh, but virtually this is an intimidation to all players.
Really im discouraged by things like this, because theese are not hidden exploits, any one have access to receipes, so anyone can “exploit” accidentally the receipe.

From my point of view this is just another QA fault, fixed in a brutal way.

Seriously People “It was a developer mistake” is what you are going with?

Lets say a Brinks truck is unloading cash and leaves the door open. Is it still stealing if you take it or is it the drivers fault? Yeah ok explain that to the judge. Oh and take the soap on the rope with you.

Fook.3914:

fair punishment should not be bank wipe rather the a rollback to the date the exploited was discovered. meaning from that date what did u earn u do all for nothing that is a fair punishment. perm banned should be apply to hackers and botters not mistakes by the developers.

I don’t know if it’s possible to rollback one individual only. If they rollback the entire server that would be a penalty to everyone else, like:

- Monday : Major Exploit has been found and abused by shady player A;
- Tuesday : Claw of Jormag has crapped a dusk to kitten lucky good player B;
- Wednesday : Lets rollback server to deal with players’s A misdeeds;
- Thurdays : Player B just found that he lost his precious, and goes Gollum rage mode with all due right!

^Not a valid solution!

The apologists are concerned some people will quit because Anet is being too harsh. Maybe, but Anet also knows they lose players if those players think that the game is vulnerable to exploits….and that nothing is done to prevent it …or that exploiters are allowed to continue to play.

As someone mentioned above. Some people play these games to find …then abuse the exploits they find. They won’t stop, ever…because that’s where they find their enjoyment from the game.

Good job Anet

I think people are not taking in account what actually happened. Remember when one of the devs released figures on the 21 karma stuff? It was like, so many -thousand- items, bought by a few -dozen- players.

The people banned now? I’m betting these were not people who did it once, or a few times, but grinded it out for hours straight, doing hundreds of salvages. One guy claimed he’d made 500 gold in a day.

Bans for things like this are totally justified. Everyone knows the typically rate of income that can be earned in the game. Anything that increases that by 1000% or some insane number is obviously not intended.

Conkuur.3062:

Seriously People “It was a developer mistake” is what you are going with?

Lets say a Brinks truck is unloading cash and leaves the door open. Is it still stealing if you take it or is it the drivers fault? Yeah ok explain that to the judge. Oh and take the soap on the rope with you.

bad example.
All know that stealing is a crime.
But salvaging you own Items is not on GW2. Thats the problem. If they create an item for a Seasonal event that provide more ectos then normal ones, How many players will think that this is an exploit?

Its ok if they punish poeple that abused this, but not with a permaban, because is just their fault too, its not like abuse the texture invulnerability on WvW

The punishments for exploiting should not be absolute, but based on the severity of the Exploit, also taking into consideration how black and white the exploit is.

However, I do like the idea of Perma-Bans being replaced by a Monthly Ban, flagging the account. A second offense worthy of a Monthly Ban should be a Perma-Ban though. It gives the offender a second chance, but no more is needed in my opinion. If they have not decided to play the game correctly by then, I doubt they will ever.

As for the proposal of always removing any profit from accounts that have exploited, as much as I would like it, I imagine it would be difficult. It would take a lot resources for Anet to analyze every account flagged/Banned and decide exactly how much gold that account needs removed.

And lastly, I doubt we’ll be seeing too many more of the same old bugs that keep reoccurring after every content update. As Anet makes more content, they will learn from their mistakes. I do agree, however, that content needs to be more thoroughly tested.

Anet, you had mercy on the first big exploit with the karma weapons. Since then every exploiter out there has done every exploit they can find from the godskull to crafting to dungeons to farming. If you reverse this perma ban, all you are telling these people and anyone else on the fence, is that its ok to cheat. You WILL have more people exploiting if you let this slide.

Everyones morals are different. You have to stick with your own rules so that people will know what to expect. Think of these people as children. If you arent consistent, they will push the boundries over and over.

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

Combined with heavy-handed moderation, a complete lack of communication and almost condescending approach to customer feedback.

The first page of this board has 7 locked topics. That is traditionally a punishment on forums. I get the feeling often that I can do no right on here.

@Fook: So let’s say you exploit and you merely get rolled back. What’s stopping you from doing it again? And again and again and again and again and again? You create a negative impact on the game as well as no small amount of extra work for the devs. And they should just keep letting you do it ad infinitum?

Doesn’t make sense to me. Anyone who breaks the rules to the degree that results in a permaban knows exactly what they’re doing. They don’t merit either sympathy or coddling.

Exploits, hacking, cheating etc. is happening right now despite people knowing very well that Anet has a big stick and the willingness to use it. If you reduce the consequences, you also reduce the “temptation threshold” — and that will most likely only lead to more bad behavior, more of a mess with the economy, more frustration among honest players, more development time and money wasted on dealing with cheaters instead of making the game better for everyone.

@Ganzo: if you’re an honest player, you have nothing to fear. Your post is an example of the insecurity and paranoia that I was referring to, created by the cheaters and abusers. They want you to think that you and everyone else could be banned at any time for a “simple mistake”. They want you to sympathize with them and call for second chances and “fairer” measures. But they’re not doing it for your sake, not to protect you from the tyrannical, overreacting developers — they’re doing it strictly for their own good, so they can wiggle out of the consequences for massive, deliberate rule-violations. Not “honest mistakes”. Not “just once, for personal use”. They’re using you, man. Don’t let them.

Honestly, to briefly bring up this latest ban-hammering: maybe nobody’s typing the actual exploiting behavior they’re doing. If I’m understanding this correctly, people are crafting something that takes an ecto and salvaging it. If that’s all that’s happening, then I’m a little unclear on where the line is and what the actual abhorrent behavior is. The karma weapons were pretty clearly mispriced and that made a lot more sense when they banned them.

In addition, I’ve received 2, “infractions,” on this site. The first was from some cause beyond me and the sencond one was for going off-topic (following the route the thread was taking as conversations do). Having played Anet games since the beta weekends for GW1, I’ve developed a pretty benevolant opinion of Anet. The tight grip of moderation on this forum and this last (unless I’m misunderstanding the issue with the snowflakes) round of banning are making me a little uncomfortable.

I’d definitely be a lot more comfortable if bannable offences were clear and if there was a little moderation in the moderation on the forum. That’s not who Anet has been in my experience and it’s a little jarring to see such a strict and unpredictable authority being exercised.

Clark Skinner.4902:

The first page of this board has 7 locked topics. That is traditionally a punishment on forums. I get the feeling often that I can do no right on here.

Yeah, maybe I’ve just been playing too much Homefront lately but that concerns me. I understand moderating out flaming and other anxiety-causing behaviors but it seems to be causing a lot more anxiety than it’s preventing.

I have to admit to having mixed feelings on the perma-ban solution. Yes, I understand it and support it for blatant abuses and exploits, but if someone salvaged a couple of these things and that was it… where’s the line? You either decide to hit them all or you create an arbitrary line, in which case someone that just crossed the line will be screaming while someone just below it may or may not have gotten away with something… oy, what a mess. I’d hate to be in ANets shoes on this one. This guy did it five times, that one twice, that one ten times, that one got a hundred ectos out of it. Do you ban twenty ectos on up, while the guy that got 19 giggles?

Maybe there’s a way they can come up with that can undo these things on individual accounts, I don’t know… could be a lot of work and data storage for roll back points for individuals, plus there’d be the decision as to add additional punishments still, and again for who and at what line. I imagine at some point they simply have to go cold, whether or not it feels right, and take a hard stance on things.

Yikes, I wonder if the posters demanding permanent bans for everything would apply their logic outside of games. What, he stole some bread? Off with his head!

Chadramar.8156:

Anyone who breaks the rules to the degree that results in a permaban knows exactly what they’re doing.

Citation needed.

Kanthor.2094:

…Citation needed….

Indeed. I have no idea what the snowflake business was all about. People have been crafting rares to salvage them for ectos since we learned that worked. If someone did it 10 times or 100 times, that doesn’t compel me to call it exploitning (again unless there’s something that I’m missing).

Kanthor.2094:

Yikes, I wonder if the posters demanding permanent bans for everything would apply their logic outside of games. What, he stole some bread? Off with his head!

Chadramar.8156:

Anyone who breaks the rules to the degree that results in a permaban knows exactly what they’re doing.

Citation needed.

I would say this is more like a guy found some bread incorrectly priced (so it was cheaper) and instead of informing the store, or just buying a few for himself, he bought a thousand loaves.

It’s certainly a valid point of view to say it was also the store’s fault, but then, noone could really be surprised if the store says to the guy “You knew that was wrong, but you still did it. You are no longer welcome at this store.”

The main problem I believe is the attitute of other people regarding punishment. No one likes to be punished, and before they would even consider admitting that maybe they screwed up, they rather point at other people and feign ignorance.

Therefore I believe that even if monthly bans would be introduced we still would have the exact same reactions as now, and instead of talking about perm. bans being to harsh we would be talking about monthly bans being to harsh. In the end, people are mostly used to systems like in WoW, were being caught exploiting would at best get your account roled back, but that is it.

However, I do agree that punishments should be lowerd to 2 strikes and you are out. Most of the player base I’d asume is below the age of 18 (and I doubt they visit the forums that often) and I bet there is a fair share of fairly young people that only heard about “that money making trick” and used it and ended up being banned. So, instead I would just have a notification pop up that pretty much states “look you did this, its a bug. you got a strike and we removed the gold. the strike will be removed in a month or two, but if you get caught again it can result in a perm. account ban”.
Guilable people exist, however there are also people that try to pretend to be foolish to get out of bans, so I’d just say: give them a 2nd chance but still be strict about it. No unbanning or removing of strikes untill the time is up. Thats my 2 cents.

Third party programs

I do believe anyone running a third party program to manipulate the game for personal profit (boting) should have the highest punishment: banning. This is the norm in all online games, and most of us know the rule.

Exploits

An exploit is a bug or glitch, and if the “specific” exploit is not noted in the TOS (terms of service), players should not be automatically banned. Punishment should be handled case by case. Bugs and glitches (exploitable) have always occurred in online games, and are considered by most a normal fun part of gameplay. Unless a player uses an exploit to make real life money, then this should not be an automatic bannable offensive.

lisamee.2408:

Exploits

An exploit is a bug or glitch, and if the “specific” exploit is not noted in the TOS (terms of service), players should not be automatically banned. Punishment should be handled case by case. Bugs and glitches (exploitable) have always occurred in online games, and are considered by most a normal fun part of gameplay. Unless a player uses an exploit to make real life money, then this should not be an automatic bannable offensive.

There is one problem with that. Time. In the time they have before their case is “handled” these “exploiters” can move their profits somewhere else, how far should the developers go to search their logs as to where all those ectos end to? And then should they “take them back” or “remove the items created” as some suggestions appeared from time to time? What about those who bought those “exploited” ectos without exploiting themselves, should they also be compensated?

When the karma cultural weapon “exploit” first appeared Arenanet decided to disable the mail system before they could identify the “culprits”. Instead of punishing legitimate players, like that time, everyone lost the ability to use mail, including using the TPI, I believe the ban was necessary, if only it could stay for a finite period of time instead of a perma ban, until they can more accurately gauge how much the exploiting player affected anything, as you say, in a case by case scenario. But that in-depth analysis cannot happen while those offenders are still roaming about freely.

So yes to immediate ban, but a big no to perma ban, ban for as long as it takes to resolve each case separately.

Conkuur.3062:

Seriously People “It was a developer mistake” is what you are going with?

Lets say a Brinks truck is unloading cash and leaves the door open. Is it still stealing if you take it or is it the drivers fault? Yeah ok explain that to the judge. Oh and take the soap on the rope with you.

it doesn’t really match up. It’s more like you would get arrested for picking up a 500 dollar bill on the street. I totally agree with the exploit ban with the norn cultural weapon thing, cause that was obvious, however the current exploit bans aren’t, people with just a little cash made some money, for the people with loads of cash (say 500 g) this isn’t even profitable enough, you can earn much more just playing the trading post. The problem here is that loads of people that were banned thought they had found a market gap, not an exploit.

Gluttony.2017:

However, I do agree that punishments should be lowerd to 2 strikes and you are out. Most of the player base I’d asume is below the age of 18 (and I doubt they visit the forums that often) and I bet there is a fair share of fairly young people that only heard about “that money making trick” and used it and ended up being banned. So, instead I would just have a notification pop up that pretty much states “look you did this, its a bug. you got a strike and we removed the gold. the strike will be removed in a month or two, but if you get caught again it can result in a perm. account ban”.

Let me ask you then how many strikes should a player who exploited the same bug a thousand times get and how many someone that did it once? Shouldn’t there be some difference in punishment between someone who abused the system for days and days and someone who did it just a couple of times to get enough ectos to buy the last exotic piece he was missing?

You are forgeting the fact that those who exploit and earn tons of gold don’t tend to keep that gold on themselves, their gold could’ve been translated in abyss dyes, or exotic equipment, or for the more serious exploiters precursors. Are you going to remove those items too? What about those who sold those items? What about items made with those ectos then sold? Will you take back the items too? What if someone bought with his hard-earned money a weapon that was made using “exploited ectos”. It’s not as easy as it seems to return everything to how it was before the exploiting began, it’s not as simple as taking back the gold.

I think this is another clear example of why history shows us that so many companies use PTR’s and why this game needs one big time. It would avoid situations like this one where even your own employees don’t see it as an exploit. There would be far far less confusion and draconian policing of players and when I say draconian policing this definitely fits the bill. This is the second time that Anet has permabanned players even for the transfer of gold between accounts. I seriously doubt all of the gold tranfers were absolutely because of people trying to undermine the economy. And then there’s the issue of not permabanning bots. We’ve seen them pop back up in game even when reported a hundred times a week. Where’s the justice there?

I haven’t personally done anything with these items I found out after I made real items i could use on my jeweler nor do I know anyone who has.

With the seriously poor loot in this game and the lack of PTR or unused methods from the history lessons other MMO’s titles (like the need for a PTR for example) and the ambiguity even from staff as to whether this was indeed an exploit, the punishment does not fit the crime in this case imo.

I would like to see a 2 stage process implemented.

For a first offense… let’s see a temporary 1 month ban… and along with that another month where the player wears a “scarlet letter” next to their tag in open world that identifies them to the player base as an exploiter. Being publicly spurned in a social game would be a learning experience for most folks… the ability for a population to refuse interaction with an individual would be a great motivator. The “scarlet letter” could also act as a debuff of sorts as well, if the desire to make it more heavy a burden existed… a debuff that affects anyone who parties with them (and creates a visible debuff on each persons status bar) in the form of a negative percentage of magic find, or as permanent weakness/vulnerability for the party or some such.

Stage 2 would be a permanent ban… I mean let’s face it… if you didn’t learn that first time around you aren’t going to learn a second.

PTR server sounds like a good first step. Have criteria(certain achievements complete, min amount of hours played etc) and an e-mail for players to apply. That aside…

GW2 is a game that promotes thinking outside the box most of the time. Which is good. But it creates a big issue when it comes to exploits. How do I know if I’m just being creative or I’m being too creative for my own good? Exploiting is already a grey area thus why most games(and pretty much every game I ever played) opt for this:
- An exploit is only bannable after it has been announced as such by the publisher. Prior to that people get the “I didn’t know it’s an exploit”-excuse. Once it has been made official(on the forum and game news, not in some facebook/twitter/wtc corner), people who keep abusing it get a justified ban.
- Prior to the announcement, there is no actual “punishment”. Just removal of gain. Smb exploited to lvl up faster? Ok, remove the exp gained through the exploit. Somebody made a lot of gold/items with it? Give them a reasonable amount of time to return it. And then a temporary ban if they don’t deliver.
Just make it fair. Because right now…I’m frankly afraid to log in.

So anyone who wants an exploit-free game is probably a proponent of the death penalty? This is a really strange attempt to paint Anet and their supporters in this issue in a bad light instead of laying the blame where it belongs: with the exploiters. A ban does not bully, rob, ruin, mutilate or murder anyone. All it does it show the door to people who have demonstrated that they can’t be arsed to play nice and follow the rules. What, honestly and sincerely, is so bad about that? If you willfully and repeatedly make an nuisance out of yourself at any kind of real-world establishment, you’re going to be kicked out too — and no amount of protesting that you paid for your drink already and thus are entitled to stay and it’s not your fault but the establishment’s because they’re bad anyway is going to accomplish anything except make you look even worse.

@Valmarius: Exactly. While it is sadly true that many games and game features are released in, eh, let’s call it “less than perfect condition”, and that some mistakes are so obvious that we as players think it’s mind-boggling that no one spotted and corrected them before release … that is still no excuse to cheat the living daylights out of the system.

@Gluttony: I agree that reducing the punishments is unlikely to stop the complaining. It’d be a combination of still refusing to accept one’s own accountability and knowing that complaints have worked before, so why not complain some more? I don’t agree with the “two strikes” approach though, at least not if there’s a time limit to it after which your record is cleared. That sort of system is just begging to be exploited by exploiters.

No one who’s played this kind of MMO for any real length of time can legitimately claim to be unaware that these games do not have and are not intended to have a quick and easy path to gear, experience or money. They’re grindy like hell. We may disagree with that design choice, we may hate it, but we know it. So if we come across a disproportionally profitable course of action, can we honestly claim to think that it must be intentional and thus perfectly fine to use? Or shouldn’t we very well be aware that it is most likely a bug we should at most test only to see if it can be reproduced before reporting it?

If ANet doesn’t ban the exploiters then we will continue to be plagued by exploiters. Period.

Exploits are exploits. What they did is not petty. They abused the system for untold gain. The profit margins are extremely high considering what ecto is going for. This isn’t petty theft; it’s a heist. They are upsetting the economy from doing this.

What the snowflake exploiters did was no different from the karma exploit at launch and everyone should have known about that. The fact that they did it anyway shows that they did it in a greedy manner.

My stance stays with them being perma banned.

Punishment for in game behavior has always been a tricky issue. Hopefully this thread will stay on topic (and therefore open) and the feedback will be of value to Anet. From my point of view. Anything that effects the client/server programming (hacks) that allow things like botting, teleport warping we see, flying in WvWvW etc. gold spamming/in game mails, should be a perma ban.
When it comes to exploits, it can be a little trickier. If for example people take advantage of a design flaw in game, it gets tricky. Did they do it once, 10 times, 1000 times, etc. Did they use it just for themselves or did they start sending gold to multiple people etc. Perma ban may be to hard for a case where players take advantage of a flaw in game, but i still believe they (majority of the time) know they were abusing the system, and should at the very least have all their gold and items removed from all toons
There is no good mechanism for Anet to tell people “this item is flawed, abusing it can cause account punishments” Majority of players never come to the forums. Having said that, I would hazzard a guess that most people know they are abusing something as described earlier in this thread
On a related note to some of the comments in this thread, I agree with some of you that the forum moderation has been heavy handed and many threads closed that should never have been closed (like the official bot thread, still baffles me that they forced people to one thread and then closed that thread because people continued to use it)

BobJoeXXI.2493:

If ANet doesn’t ban the exploiters then we will continue to be plagued by exploiters. Period.

Exploits are exploits. What they did is not petty. They abused the system for untold gain. The profit margins are extremely high considering what ecto is going for. This isn’t petty theft; it’s a heist. They are upsetting the economy from doing this.

What the snowflake exploiters did was no different from the karma exploit at launch and everyone should have known about that. The fact that they did it anyway shows that they did it in a greedy manner.

My stance stays with them being perma banned.

Exploits are a very grey area because of the joint dependency of the matter. It can be interpreted as a “no smoke without fire” element.
If there’s no loopholes to exploit then there’s a likeliness that your game won’t be exploited.

But at the same time, its opportunism that causes exploiters to do what they do. Sometimes opportunism can be a bad thing if it’s ruining the experience of a majority of others. (but to be honest…did that exploit stuff effect me? Nope)

Perma banning for something that is both fault of dev and player can not be seen as fair. Temp bans are fine, and temp bans can be extended so there’s no real need for that to be a permanent ban. Especially when it’s something that can be tracked (They can track those that have been suspicious), reverted (they can pull gold/items from players…they did it before) and patched.

I guess I should actually conclude with something interesting. There needs to be a line drawn – and it needs to be communicated with the playerbase so there’s no mistakes…again.

I agree with your agreement. The forum mods are ridiculous on here. About half my posts get deleted.

No wonder people don’t know what’s going on.