Guild Wars 2

First of all, this is a great game. It has truly been an enjoyable experience for me and my friends. Thank you for taking the time to really make it something special.

That being said, go read this post by a member of the community who was banned due to “Snowflake-gate.” (Yeah, I went there).

This bothers me that my money went to a company that abuses their player base like this. Restore my faith and unban this player. He was obviously doing nothing wrong.

This was an error that was created by Anet when they didn’t think the Winter’s Day item through from an economic standpoint (or a salvage/craft standpoint). When players saw that such an item was in the game the intelligent ones played the market and made a substantial profit. They were then banned for taking advantage of a market condition that you created. If it was so easy to tell that the cycle of salvage, craft, sell was an exploit; why didn’t your quality assurance department or programmers catch that it was going to be a problem.

Patch problems, don’t ban players that were smart enough to profit from your mistakes.

I am just appalled at this.

Disclosure: I did not take advantage of this market fluctuation, the introduction of this in game item, or the market prices that followed. I do play the market daily in GW2 and in real life.

Oh please. Only the top offenders were banned according to Anet’s replies here on the forums. Those were players who used the exploit not ten times, not a hundred times, but thousands of times.

Based off of how he’s told his story on Reddit, it doesn’t sound like he did anything worth being banned over. Are we missing anything, ArenaNet?

Aside, if it is unclear whether an exploit is actually exploit, maybe it’d be a better idea to send players an in-game warning asking them to cease and desist instead of permanently banning them? I appreciate that you’re dedicated to fighting exploits, ArenaNet, but it’s more important to communicate and be transparent with your stakeholders.

Oglaf.1074:

Oh please. Only the top offenders were banned according to Anet’s replies here on the forums. Those were players who used the exploit not ten times, not a hundred times, but thousands of times.

Some were banned for only participating in the exploit hundreds of times. I’ll give the guy the benefit of the doubt, and there is plenty of doubt to be had under these circumstances.

If it was so easy to tell that it was an exploit, the people who exploited must have been rather dumb knowing that exploiting is a bannable offense.

If they were smart they wouldnt exploit it in the first place..

Oglaf.1074:

Oh please. Only the top offenders were banned according to Anet’s replies here on the forums. Those were players who used the exploit not ten times, not a hundred times, but thousands of times.

So, what you (and Anet, effectively) are saying is… exploit, but dont over exploit?

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

Oglaf.1074:

Oh please. Only the top offenders were banned according to Anet’s replies here on the forums. Those were players who used the exploit not ten times, not a hundred times, but thousands of times.

So, what you (and Anet, effectively) are saying is… exploit, but dont over exploit?

I can only assume that (lesser) proverbial slaps on the wrists were given to those doing it hundreds of times. You can’t expect them to lay the smackdown on every Joe Schmo that tried it though, I suppose.

afoot.6932:

Based off of how he’s told his story on Reddit, it doesn’t sound like he did anything worth being banned over. Are we missing anything, ArenaNet?

Aside, if it is unclear whether an exploit is actually exploit, maybe it’d be a better idea to send players an in-game warning asking them to cease and desist instead of permanently banning them? I appreciate that you’re dedicated to fighting exploits, ArenaNet, but it’s more important to communicate and be transparent with your stakeholders.

Sure as if he’s gonna tell you he did it 1000 times of course to make his point valid he’ll say he did only less than a hundred times BS

A.net has the hard facts enough said !
also even if he did it 100 times if I was A.net I’d ban him as well !
doing it 10 times I can understand but by than you should’ve noticed the recipe is utterly broken and that if you continued to profit from it you’d get in trouble.

Think back to the karma exploit issue after all the drama was said and done on reddit the worst offenders were shown the numbers and the why they were banned essentially, most of these people take to reddit to discredit the game by talking lies out of their backsides, and most are naive enough to believe them.

I feel sorry for both the guy that posts on reddit and the readers that actually believe his *BS

Really guys? We already have one thread on this, take it there.

As sad as the story is something tells me he did it more than 100 times or so nobody would say “yea i did it 15,952 times and i didnt think it was bad.”

Calamus.5487:

Patch problems, don’t ban players that were smart enough to profit from your mistakes.

I am just appalled at this.

You are indeed over-reacting.

This is no different than banks exploiting regulatory loopholes starting in 1990s resulting in what we have today.

The situation here is this: If there were no law against murdering, would you murder people?

After the massive banwave with the karma exploit I doubt that anyone would knowingly exploit and risk a ban. I wouldn’t want to risk all the time and effort I put in creating my characters over a few hundred golds. Sure it’s a lot, but not worth it.

First I heard about it was a thread on this forum saying: “How to use 1 ecto and make more”, or something. Sounded like a regular thing, never once did the word ‘exploit’ pop in my mind.

Also, the way this guy tells the story is exactly how I would do it too, and I’m against exploiting. Crafting items, salvaging them and then selling them back on the TP is a normal thing and not considered an exploit.

I’m glad I didn’t notice the snowflake thing, cause I would’ve made millions not knowing it was considered an ‘exploit’.

Thomassassinate.9370:

As sad as the story is something tells me he did it more than 100 times or so nobody would say “yea i did it 15,952 times and i didnt think it was bad.”

I would. Considering I crafted a few hundred rares from silk, and sold them back to the TP for profit. That wasn’t an exploit, was it? Made about 50g doing that in few hours. Am I going to get banned now?
Now it’s obviously not viable anymore, it was just a quick ‘gap’ between craft material and the crafted item. Like the guy said, after I did it (and more people caught on) the market stabilizes. This sort of thing happens all the time on the TP, any active TP trader knows this.

DancingPenguins.9875:

The situation here is this: If there were no law against murdering, would you murder people?

… maybe just a couple…?

Just to try it out.

I’ve read ANets justifications but I’m afraid to say their stance on this matter is

WRONG

WRONG

WRONG

They had dozens of ways to deal with this properly like openly stating it was an exploit when people asked on the forums. A developer even admitted at one point it wasn’t considered an exploit.

And now the bans.

That’s just bullkitten, I’m sorry.

No communication and a self-fabricated and non-obvious “exploit”….that’s on you ANet.

You failed here, you should stand up for your shortcomings in this situation instead of blaming others.

I can’t understand how a company can have so little backbone and overreact in such an exaggerated way to such an issue.

A developer even admitted at one point it wasn’t considered an exploit.

mind linking this?

Charming Rogue.8071:

After the massive banwave with the karma exploit I doubt that anyone would knowingly exploit and risk a ban. I wouldn’t want to risk all the time and effort I put in creating my characters over a few hundred golds. Sure it’s a lot, but not worth it.

First I heard about it was a thread on this forum saying: “How to use 1 ecto and make more”, or something. Sounded like a regular thing, never once did the word ‘exploit’ pop in my mind.

Also, the way this guy tells the story is exactly how I would do it too, and I’m against exploiting. Crafting items, salvaging them and then selling them back on the TP is a normal thing and not considered an exploit.

I’m glad I didn’t notice the snowflake thing, cause I would’ve made millions not knowing it was considered an ‘exploit’.

Thomassassinate.9370:

As sad as the story is something tells me he did it more than 100 times or so nobody would say “yea i did it 15,952 times and i didnt think it was bad.”

I would. Considering I crafted a few hundred rares from silk, and sold them back to the TP for profit. That wasn’t an exploit, was it? Made about 50g doing that in few hours. Am I going to get banned now?
Now it’s obviously not viable anymore, it was just a quick ‘gap’ between craft material and the crafted item. Like the guy said, after I did it (and more people caught on) the market stabilizes. This sort of thing happens all the time on the TP, any active TP trader knows this.

This isn’t someone crafting an item and selling it for profit. This was a recipe which took one ecto-based upgrade item (where other equivalent recipes required 5) and crafted an item which you can the salvage to get that upgrade item back as we’ll as ectos from the salvage itself. So you can use that upgrade item, craft and salvage for more ectos.

In essense, reliably converting a less-desired mat (mithril) into a much more desirable mat. That is exploiting, and all this revisionist history about the recipe being “legit” is really annoying me.

However, one can wag a finger at Anet for not realizing this prior to adding the Snowflake Jewelery.

Not excusing the exploiters, mind you.

But they really should’ve seen it coming miles away.

I don’t pay attention to exploits, so this has been the first time I heard about it.

I will say that this is a clear example of an exploit and I feel sorry for anyone that feels otherwise… Anything that make it far easier than other “intended” ways to obtain an item in game, unless otherwise stated (as in an event or something), is clearly something that is exploitable; if it is exploitable, then it is an exploit and thus ban-able.

I heard about the exploit only after the bans so it took me quite some time today to try and get to the facts, reading forums and reddit and I have to say… this is crazy scary.

I mean, people asked about this here on the forums, multiple times but they were ignored! Arenanet never stated that this was an exploit and they took days before disabling the recipe. And then suddenly – perma bans! Wow…

The only explanation that kind-of makes sense to me is that they were perhaps under staffed when this first came to light?

Point is, I tend to agree that this was an over-reaction and could and should have been handled differently (72h bans + stripped accounts or something). The company should actually take some of the responsibility for the bug and lack of communication/feedback instead of shifting all the blame to the playerbase in this case.

Hard to define exploits. If ANet decides their definitions, well …
But it is reasonable to be banned for losing conscience or common sense, even there is no rule about it.
If a shopping site has tagged a computer to be $5 instead of $500 which it should be, do you order 100 of that computer and insist you have the rights to receive them? Maybe you can still win by starting a law suit, but certainly you will never be welcome as a customer from anywhere.

Actually, in your example you have every right to those 100 computers and the store has no choice but to accept the blame, ship your computers, and welcome any further business from you.

The pricing is their responsibility.

Well, he was making gold… in Guild Wars 2. How dared he?

Good riddance, I say. Nobody should ever be able to obtain gold in-game in Guild Wars 2. Ever.

Latinkuro.9420:

afoot.6932:

Based off of how he’s told his story on Reddit, it doesn’t sound like he did anything worth being banned over. Are we missing anything, ArenaNet?

Aside, if it is unclear whether an exploit is actually exploit, maybe it’d be a better idea to send players an in-game warning asking them to cease and desist instead of permanently banning them? I appreciate that you’re dedicated to fighting exploits, ArenaNet, but it’s more important to communicate and be transparent with your stakeholders.

Sure as if he’s gonna tell you he did it 1000 times of course to make his point valid he’ll say he did only less than a hundred times BS

A.net has the hard facts enough said !
also even if he did it 100 times if I was A.net I’d ban him as well !
doing it 10 times I can understand but by than you should’ve noticed the recipe is utterly broken and that if you continued to profit from it you’d get in trouble.

Think back to the karma exploit issue after all the drama was said and done on reddit the worst offenders were shown the numbers and the why they were banned essentially, most of these people take to reddit to discredit the game by talking lies out of their backsides, and most are naive enough to believe them.

I feel sorry for both the guy that posts on reddit and the readers that actually believe his *BS

Really? How do you know for a fact what he said was BS? Was you there sitting beside him playing the game? Was you there watching as things progressed? No you weren’t.. You just like most of the other know it alls are making assumptions. It really amuses me how some of you people really think you know others when you have never met them.. You make these wild assumptions about someone as if you known them all your life and you really have no clue that your assumptions may be further from the truth. Don’t speak of what you don’t know. Be careful making assumptions.. for one day it may be you on the other end.. Karma bites.

I’m so glad out judicial system works the way it does and not because someone said they are innocent.

Fact is, no one but Anet and the people who got banned know exactly what happened. Anet monitors and logs everything, they didn’t just see someone had 50 items that were being exploited posted on the TP and decide to drop the ban hammer. They know who did what and to what extent and dealt with it how they felt was best.

I quoted it early and I will paraphrase it again. Anet has the right to ban anyone for any reason, or for no reason at all.

You all clicked agree when you installed the game/created your account.

Ignorantia legis neminem excusat.

Those who used the exploits are obviously going to downplay what they were doing to draw sympathy towards their exploiting ways.

To me… this means ArenaNet is really cracking down hard on clear cut exploitation of the game, sure they of missed something or there something that appeared to make the game exploitable on the part of developers but if a player runs with it rather than report and cease doing it.. then that player becomes in the wrong.

This is punishment by example. To send a message to those who might consider taking advantage of an exploit and running wild with it; so they’ll stir clear if not wishing to face severe punishment.

I think the major thing that irks people, is that while Anet could be taking steps to van the worst offenders the information they are using is unlikely to be complete.

If they are banning people for the amount of times they used the exploit, then a person could have on the last day lost gold but still be banned. No one wants to be that guy. Players are afraid that they are going to be doing something that has similar returns or effect on the game, at the time of their doing it, as other means which will lead to “innocents” caught in a crossfire.

Who knows, maybe Anet didn’t just consider the amount of times the exploit was used but also based it on the amount of gold the player gained from it. The economy is effected by a increase in ecto even if you aren’t making the same return and that’s what Anet is concerned about. They were making something out of “nothings”

When I heard about the recipe, I thought it was intended. The forums were rife with topics about t6 and glob prices and T6 prices were dropping because they had been made more available so I just assumed that Anet was doing the Karka event for Globs of ecto.

I think its reasonable to believe that some people out there might have been doing this over 100 times that could have believed that it was intentional and that since Anet was not communicating about it that it was in fact not exploit. In particular since the market had adjusted to the increased supply of globs by increasing the cost of snowflakes so profit margins were more in line with traditional profit methods.

I don’t think there is a way to say beyond reasonable doubt that some of the people who did get banned didn’t intend to exploit the game and wouldn’t have done so had they known that it wasn’t working as intended.

That’s why there is so much debate over this. No one wants to be the patsy who just happened to be at the wrong crafting table at the wrong time so to speak. This is why the playerbase is defending people who probably deserve what they got, but we can’t know for sure.

Remember the statement after the karma weapons exploit by Chris Whiteside?

“This is a first and final warning. Moving forward, please make sure you that when you see an exploitable part of the game, you report it and do not attempt to benefit from it.”

I believe those who got banned for exploiting this time had it coming, whether it was 50, hundreds, thousands of times – and yea, they’re all just as bad exploiters. Cheaters gonna cheat, exploiters gonna exploit, best get rid of those who always try to profit in shady ways. And come on, like you didn’t figure it was an exploit, how dumb are you now presenting yourself as??

The funny thing: all of “simpathysers” claim that intelligent being couldn’t help but use the market loophole (over 15 thousand times of course), still that same INTELLIGENT being was not smart enough to put 2 and 2 together and presume that this mechanic could possibly be an exploit?
Oh gimme a break.

Grazingcattle.1627:

That’s why there is so much debate over this. No one wants to be the patsy who just happened to be at the wrong crafting table at the wrong time so to speak. This is why the playerbase is defending people who probably deserve what they got, but we can’t know for sure.

People keep saying this. I wonder, do you know what the exact exploit was?

The recipe calls for 1 Exquisite Snowflake (ecto + flawless snowflake) and some mithril to create a rare snowflake jewelry (whereas all other jewelry in this game takes 5 ecto + gems to make). You then salvage the jewelry to get back that Exquisite Snowflake (since it’s an upgrade and you can get it back with high % with mystic/black lion salvage kit) + some ectos. You then use this Exquisite snowflake you got back + some more mitrhil for more ectos.

In short, people weren’t profitting by crafting somethign and selling it (legit). People were crafting something, and salvaging it because crafting/salvaging it was so ridiculously profitable due to the mistake (1 required instead of 5).

I’m actually shocked there’s this “debate” and surprised at all these sarcastic “oh noes Anet will ban me if I make money” posts that have been cropping up. This was such an obvious exploit taking advantage of a mistake.

The sort of person smart enough to abuse an economy is smart enough to manipulate people into sympathy when getting punished. Evidence: the IRL financial world.

Not saying that’s what happened, just saying it’s a one-sided tale.

So will I get banned if I salvage my rares from dungeon runs? or buying low priced 70-80 rares and getting a couple ectos from em?

Legit Question.

Hi everyone,

We have this thread going about the snowflake issue https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-Tale-of-Two-Jewellry-Recipes/page/4#post1141367, please feel free to join and leave us your feedback there.

Also, we would like to ask you all to be polite, friendly and constructive. Refrain from any kind of trolling or other unwelcome behaviour. We understand that the issue is frustrating – to some more than to others – but still, we must stress the need of correct behaviour.

Thanks for your understanding. This thread is closed.