640 replies to this topic

[XPhiler]

kaldemeo, on 03 January 2013 - 11:57 PM, said:

It is good to take the gains from these exploiters, not to ban them

For many people the rules are what can't be done. There will always be people trying to find exploits and it is only good when exploiters are making exploits public so they can be fixed quick, and the game can be made better.

Right now Anet only care about public or game breaking exploits and noob botters that gets reportet. Pro botters running dungeons and instances are left in peace. Thats the ones who need attention, not a random guy that read about a public exploit.

That wouldnt be very effective in my opinion. Thing is you cannot simply police 24/7 you can to deter people from exploiting altogether. If all you do is take away any gain they make from that exploit you'll end up with everyone exploiting anything they can find thats even remotely exploitable because all they're risking is wasting a little time. On the other hand with a permaban people will at least think twice knowing that this could lead to them lossing access to their game. Not even this seems to be enough really since even though Arenanet already made it clear how serious they were about this lots of people still tried to exploit.

[farkov47]

Seems like whiteknights haven't changed.
Four days of no dev response when being alerted by their own players on their official forums even.
And you defenders of a.net still think the banned accounts were justified?

Hahaha.
Too rich.

You gave away your rights too easily.

[XPhiler]

fatrodmc, on 04 January 2013 - 01:14 AM, said:

I think it's harsh because I can honestly say that if I had stumbled across this method for making money, I would not have thought it was an exploit.

I would have thought 'wow, this is much more lucrative than crafting everything else! I better not tell anyone'.

But that's just me. Maybe the average player is more familiar with what an exploit is...but I doubt it.

The fact its so much more lucrative that anything else like it and I better keep it secret is good enough indication that its an exploit don't you think?

If before you need to spend like say 2 hours of game play to make 5 ectos and those 5 ectos end up costing 95s and now you stumble upon a method that takes 5 mintues to do 5 ectos at a cost of 3s dont you think its pretty obvious something is very wrong?

Edited by XPhiler, 04 January 2013 - 09:50 AM.

[XPhiler]

BrettM, on 04 January 2013 - 01:19 AM, said:

It does make one wonder how QA earns their pay. It would seem pretty obvious to check a new recipe by making a few to determine if the correct mats are used in the correct amounts and then to salvage them to determine if the correct mats are returned in the correct amounts. This doesn't seem like one of those horribly tricky bugs that could slip through the best QA because the conditions to replicate it are so obscure that no reasonable suite of tests will pick it up.

QA takes time. Lets assume a team of 20 people have to test everything that wintersday provided. That means testing the toy maker dungeon with its many variations. The toy appocalyse, the 3 paths of the jumping puzzle, the I many songs in the bell music thingy, the many different present combination. Each of the I dont know how many magic snow things scatered around the world. The Snowball fight thingy. the 275 new recipes introduced for wintersday. The items you can buy off the gemshop. They have to test that the decorations in LA and PvP areas are fine. The weapon skins, the mini pets, the big scary golem airship arrival in all 5 cities. They have to test the different presents etc.. And all this in how much time? Maybe they had a week time to test all this if even that? keep in mind each of these needs to be finished by the developers before they can be tested. Not only that but some stuff is interconnected. In order to test the recipes, not just the recipes need to be in game, but all the materials and components + the products they create. Model, scripts and all.

We're seeing the one thing that went wrong which well didnt really go wrong per-se it worked well as intended but its just they didnt notice it was just way too profitable.

[XPhiler]

ViM, on 04 January 2013 - 04:40 AM, said:

Anet is always right. The player isn't. What Anet says goes, and you will like it. Even if Anet made a mistake, it is not an option to acknowledge or discuss it. It makes them look bad. So the player was wrong and Anet is always right. Period. End of discussion.

It's not like they won't care if you don't come back and purchase expansions. They know you'll buy another copy if they terminate your account. They act like they've got you in their pocket.

You're mixing differnet things. This is not a situation when only one party has to be wrong. the fact the exploit was possible in the first place is obviously a slip up by Arenanet, no doubt. That doesnt excuse people who abuse that mistake however and it certainly doesnt give them a free pass.

Red Sonya, on 04 January 2013 - 05:06 AM, said:

I'm all for the permanent ban to make an EXAMPLE out of them so others won't be so likely to exploit something without thinking of the consequences. Plus Anet already has their money for the game so why not make them buy another copy? How many do you think got perma banned?

less then 200 people. No this wasnt some big lets get more money scheme.

[XPhiler]

d_fens, on 04 January 2013 - 08:17 AM, said:

Of course nobody is perfect. However if a mistake happens, someone has to take responsibility for it and apologize, not push that responsibility on paying customers.



This is the problem with software developers. They think that software quality is QA's job. No it isn't. It's programmer's and designer's job. Peer reviews and internal testing during coding can do wonders if done properly. Big QA department is not even needed if you set up public test server. They are perfect for replicating live conditions.


Again, public test server says hello. Hell, failure we are talking about is not something that should even make it to test server. It's not something that couldn't be caught without testing environment similar to live one (number of players, high workload, etc). It was a matter of checking if salvaging that piece of jewellery returns proper materials. It's not like they added whole bunch of recipes during wintersday. Standard, well written test case should have caught that.

Come on be realistic, you make it sound like this was some huge mistake from Arenanets part that somehow injured players. The recipe was meant to be a fun easy way to get an item and it did just that fine. The problem is they made it a bit just too easy so much so it could be abused to create a ton of profit for people who abuse it. Now sure they should have forseen and addressed that no doubt but in no way did they fail their community by making it possible for them to exploit. Think about it. Imagine you're a shop owner, you go on a lunch break and you forget to lock up. Someone finds the door open, comes in and steals your money off the cash register. Are you saying if the theif is caught the owner should appologize to the theif for leaving the door open rather then prosecute him? lets be realistic shall we?

Hmm they added 275 recipes for wintersday. Thats quite a lot. not only that but new recipes is not the only thing that needed testing. The thing with this much content month after month is it must be really a nightmare to test. Keep in mind we have no clue how many bugs QA find and report back to the developers that in turn get fixed and require retesting. Dont think a public server will help. You are not going to put in a completely untested version on a public server for starters and secondly I dont think they have enough time to test / polish / push on public server before deployment. Honestly I dont know how they keep up as is.

farkov47, on 04 January 2013 - 09:46 AM, said:

Seems like whiteknights haven't changed.
Four days of no dev response when being alerted by their own players on their official forums even.
And you defenders of a.net still think the banned accounts were justified?

Hahaha.
Too rich.

You gave away your rights too easily.

How about you? do you think People who cheat should be left unpunished? do you think people who find an exploit should be left to enjoy their rewards even if it means whatever you enjoy doing becomes a lot less profitable because of that exploitation?

isnt it a lot richer to expect getting away with things because devs dont respond fast enough?

[Placebo]

JONO51, on 03 January 2013 - 10:28 AM, said:

Early on during Wintersday one of the jewellers recipes could be exploited to gain a lot of ectos through salvaging (craft, regain snowflake and potentially several ecto & repeat). It was pretty widespread for the short time you could do it, the method even being posted on the official forums. As you can see from the thread, it was stopped fairly quickly, but not before many people could use it. Well now it seems ANet have one last gift for these people, in the form of mass bans. What makes it perhaps worse is that when asked if it was an exploit, ANet didn't answer.

What's everyones opinion on this? Is a ban a fair punishment for those who did this, or should it instead be some kind of a rollback? Are you now worried about finding new ways to make quick cash after an update? This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened. Early on, the Chilli Pepper Popper and Karma weapon exploiters were banned but then unbanned with the requirement of deleting their ill-gotten gains. Should a similar thing be done here?

a ban for exploiting is fair punishment

if you see something not really normal you should ask yourself (and not Anet) ... I dont think the people who did this were unaware and even did this on purpose of exploiting so ... be it! exploit --> ban

chance to recover one's account : of course! everyone deserves a 2nd chance

[1up]

I think it's funny they all got banned because Anet is bad at their jobs. It's like putting Crack in a Crackhead's hand and saying don't smoke it. I've never seen a game so quick to ban their player base, it's pretty retarded. Other games just take the stuff and or money back and move on. Really no surprise this game is doing horrible at this point. Either get banned or people just don't want to play the game because of the bugs and failed mechanics.

[escada_assassin]

Off topic and in the same time kinda on topic : how many people that exploited the precursors got perma banned?

[1up]

escada_assassin, on 04 January 2013 - 11:08 AM, said:

Off topic and in the same time kinda on topic : how many people that exploited the precursors got perma banned?

They got their accounts back, and gave a chance to the people who didn't get banned to delete whatever they got before they got caught.

[Zan7]

1up, on 04 January 2013 - 11:06 AM, said:

I think it's funny they all got banned because Anet is bad at their jobs. It's like putting Crack in a Crackhead's hand and saying don't smoke it. I've never seen a game so quick to ban their player base, it's pretty retarded. Other games just take the stuff and or money back and move on. Really no surprise this game is doing horrible at this point. Either get banned or people just don't want to play the game because of the bugs and failed mechanics.

I think it's funny you think because there's something you can do that it's necessarily OK to do it.

Imagine you're in front of a cashier. He leaves his cash register open and turns around for a minute to check something. The money is just there to take. Is it OK to take it? Hey, it's his fault for turning around...

[pumpkin pie]

next time when you think something is ridiculously lucrative  remember the /bug and check the exploitable issue box


 Untitled-1.jpg   21.83K   52 downloads

[1up]

Quote

I think it's funny you think because there's something you can do that it's necessarily OK to do it.

Imagine you're in front of a cashier. He leaves his cash register open and turns around for a minute to check something. The money is just there to take. Is it OK to take it? Hey, it's his fault for turning around...

Stealing and exploiting are two very different things.

Edited by Chalky, 04 January 2013 - 10:27 PM.
toned down

[XPhiler]

1up, on 04 January 2013 - 11:06 AM, said:

I think it's funny they all got banned because Anet is bad at their jobs. It's like putting Crack in a Crackhead's hand and saying don't smoke it. I've never seen a game so quick to ban their player base, it's pretty retarded. Other games just take the stuff and or money back and move on. Really no surprise this game is doing horrible at this point. Either get banned or people just don't want to play the game because of the bugs and failed mechanics.

You could argue all crime is commited because the victim didnt do a good job. Bank heist, Bank didnt do a good enough job at security. Someone stole your car, You didnt do a good enough job at securing it. So should we stop punishing criminals and blame the victims for not doing their job properly?

No one got banned for Arenanet not doing their job properly. They got banned for exploiting an issue that Arenanet didnt detect / Forsee.

Big difference.

[astromarmot]

pumpkin pie, on 04 January 2013 - 06:53 AM, said:

@$#%*& i was looking high and low for this present in my mail!

next time, either you put a proper title or i must learn to read the thread before jumping to conclusion.

Perhaps you weren't as naughty as you thought?

[1up]

Quote

You could argue all crime is commited because the victim didnt do a good job. Bank heist, Bank didnt do a good enough job at security. Someone stole your car, You didnt do a good enough job at securing it. So should we stop punishing criminals and blame the victims for not doing their job properly?

No one got banned for Arenanet not doing their job properly. They got banned for exploiting an issue that Arenanet didnt detect / Forsee.

Big difference.

Not really, it's a game not a bank. People didn't commit anything, they took advantage of something. It's not against the law to exploit a game, but it's to rob a bank. You keep moving the Goal Post, and failing in your argument. If Anet would check their work instead of releasing crap, then exploiting wouldn't be a huge problem in Guild Wars 2.

Anyway... I didn't come here to destroy every noobs argument. If you didn't agree with my post I could careless, but you should learn how to run a business and programming before speaking on matters you don't understand. If Anet wants to run the game in the ground due to their shear stupidity... More power to them.

[escada_assassin]

Due to ANet's efforts to nerf every goddamn way of making gold so that it won't take 2 years of anyone's life to craft a weapon (we're talking about pixels and a game, which should be entertainment, not a job), I'm begining to support exploiters. Power to the people! XD

P.S. Some people might say that it's like in actual life : if you want a Mercedes, you gotta work for it. This is a goddamn game and noone's buying a Mercedes here or a big fancy house or an entire country or planet and this is definetely not Wall Street, nor should be. No more idiotic parallels between a game and the real world. I thought it's supposed to be a game, a mean of entertainment, not a second, third and fourth job.

[Darkobra]

farkov47, on 04 January 2013 - 09:46 AM, said:

Seems like whiteknights haven't changed.
Four days of no dev response when being alerted by their own players on their official forums even.
And you defenders of a.net still think the banned accounts were justified?

Hahaha.
Too rich.

You gave away your rights too easily.

I love, out of any of the words you had in your vocabulary, you chose "Too rich" without ANY awareness of irony.

1up, on 04 January 2013 - 12:17 PM, said:

Not really, it's a game not a bank. People didn't commit anything, they took advantage of something. It's not against the law to exploit a game, but it's to rob a bank. You keep moving the Goal Post, and failing in your argument. If Anet would check their work instead of releasing crap, then exploiting wouldn't be a huge problem in Guild Wars 2.

Anyway... I didn't come here to destroy every noobs argument. If you didn't agree with my post I could careless, but you should learn how to run a business and programming before speaking on matters you don't understand. If Anet wants to run the game in the ground due to their shear stupidity... More power to them.

I believe you should learn how business works. Those banned accounts sure as hell didn't get refunds, it fixes the economy for legitimate players and makes the game have more longevity. The people that needlessly throw out "Learn how to do this" give no education on the subject, showing just as little knowledge as they perceive the people they're accusing have.

Edited by Darkobra, 04 January 2013 - 12:48 PM.

[XPhiler]

1up, on 04 January 2013 - 12:17 PM, said:

Not really, it's a game not a bank. People didn't commit anything, they took advantage of something. It's not against the law to exploit a game, but it's to rob a bank. You keep moving the Goal Post, and failing in your argument. If Anet would check their work instead of releasing crap, then exploiting wouldn't be a huge problem in Guild Wars 2.

Anyway... I didn't come here to destroy every noobs argument. If you didn't agree with my post I could careless, but you should learn how to run a business and programming before speaking on matters you don't understand. If Anet wants to run the game in the ground due to their shear stupidity... More power to them.

No one is saying people who exploited should go to prison, obviously everyone understands there is no comparison between stealing in real life and exploiting in the game. We're just comparing the actors if you will and see who deserves what blame.

Arenanet let an exploit in the live game sure, if you understand programming / testing yourself you know thats unavoidable happens in every single game as well as in every single program ever. And I am sorry but missing the fact a recipe you provide can be missued because its cost isnt balanced with its reward if used in a certain way that isnt even directly intended doesnt make your content crap like you claim. Also how is exploiting a HUGE problem? does 3 instance in 6 months really make it a HUGE issue? Dont think so.

Some players on the other hand realized there is profit to be made by exploiting the issue that Arenanet missed. Terms of service as well as countless post by Arenanet personal said when a player comes across something like that they should report it. Even put in tools in game to facilitate making such a report. These players decided for whatever reason to ignore the warnings, to ignore the terms of service and tried to profit from the issue. They didnt do anything illegal by they did go against the terms of service. Hence they got banned.

You're arguing whatever the players should have gotten away with it because it was arenanet's responsibility to avoid the scenario in the first place. You got every right to your opinion but so do I. I disagree, Arenanet should certianly do their part and try to make sure to avoid something like this in the future no doubt but the biggest fault for exploiting lies with the exploiters none the less. Like my analogy, if a shop owner leaves the shop open when he goes on a lunch break and someone robs him the shop owner did something wrong no doubt but the person who is most to blame is still the robber and I would certianly not say the robber should not be punished because all he did was abuse a fault the shop owner did. Once again for clarity not saying exploiters commited a crime like a robber would in this fake scenario, The commit acts like you correctly state are entirely different no doubt but the actors and their basic actions are the same. Arenanet like the shop owner left a security hole open. The robber like the exploiter abused that security hole for personal gain. I dont see why just because the actual act itself is MUCH MUCH less serious somehow the blame should be shifted around.

Who says Anet are running their game into the ground by banning exploiters? Who says the majority of the players are people who want to feel safe exploiting rather then people who want to protect their game from exploits? Considering all the GOTY awards GW2 walked away with last year even some voted by players rather then reviewers / staff I am not so sure you got a valid argument there.

[XPhiler]

escada_assassin, on 04 January 2013 - 12:37 PM, said:

Due to ANet's efforts to nerf every goddamn way of making gold so that it won't take 2 years of anyone's life to craft a weapon (we're talking about pixels and a game, which should be entertainment, not a job), I'm begining to support exploiters. Power to the people! XD

P.S. Some people might say that it's like in actual life : if you want a Mercedes, you gotta work for it. This is a goddamn game and noone's buying a Mercedes here or a big fancy house or an entire country or planet and this is definetely not Wall Street, nor should be. No more idiotic parallels between a game and the real world. I thought it's supposed to be a game, a mean of entertainment, not a second, third and fourth job.

And which MMO allows you to get anything you want in a few days? Every MMO is meant to keep you playing ideally for its life time and that means it has to provide you with goals to work towards. With a pure vertical progression game thats not such a big deal because they can have you chase the best weapon for a couple of months and then just release a better weapon to cover the next 2 months. With a game thats mainly horizontal its not that easy. If you could get a legendary weapon in 2 months and in another 2 months they release yet the same legendary weapon but with the a different skin you're likely only to provide a goal for a few people who might feel like the new skin looks amazing enough that is worth 2 months to get. For the majority of the players they will have to play the game with no goal which doesnt work for everyone.

I agree with you on this should be a job but it isnt trying to be. To get your legendary all you have to do is litterally play the game. Sure you need to spend a year if not two playing the game to get your legendary as is but why should that be an issue / something a kin to work? They designed a legendary so that you essentially need stuff from every part of the game so all one needs to do is just play what they enjoy or feel like and just save the items they get from that for their legendary that is all. The fact the game doesnt make legenaries a better weapon then anything you can get in one or two days means there is really no rush to get it. If you aquire your legendary in a month what are you going to do the rest of the 9 months? quit or play the game? if the later wouldnt it be better to have something you are trying to achieve by playing the game?

[Gerroh]

farkov47, on 04 January 2013 - 09:46 AM, said:

Seems like whiteknights haven't changed.
Four days of no dev response when being alerted by their own players on their official forums even.
And you defenders of a.net still think the banned accounts were justified?

Hahaha.
Too rich.

You gave away your rights too easily.

"You gave away your rights too easily"
lol
What rights? This is a video game. You know what rights you have? You have the right to a product that appears to be vaguely as advertised, or at least as much that Anet can't be sued for false advertising, and they surely can't. That's it. After that, it's whatever Anet says is what goes.
Anet will do whatever is best to keep the game going. It's not like they're hunched over, rubbing their hands together in an evil fashion, plotting on how they can screw over their customers next. When they ban people for something it's because those people not playing is better for the game than them continuing to cause whatever damage they caused.

I would agree some of Anet's bans have quite silly. I don't think people should've been banned at launch for converting karma into gold as it says nowhere in game that karma is not to be converted into gold, but if people are effectively duplicating ectos, well then you should have enough sense to say "F***ING DUH".

Edited by Gerroh, 04 January 2013 - 01:12 PM.

[BrettM]

No one is saying the robber shouldn't be punished if he took advantage of the door the clerk left unlocked. But the clerk knows darned well he did something stupid, and I bet his boss and the insurance adjuster aren't going to be very thrilled with him. The clerk is going to take some degree of punishment for his mistake, even if it's just his own feeling of shame. Furthermore, the unlocked door may be taken into account by the judge when he's deciding on the appropriate punishment for the robber, so the contributory fault of the clerk is not completely ignored by the law.

No one is saying the exploiters shouldn't be punished for taking advantage of the recipe. The question is whether the punishment they received is excessive given some culpability on the part of ANet in creating the situation. I tend to agree with drax that a permaban goes too far.

[Hector]

Gilles VI, on 03 January 2013 - 10:36 AM, said:

And how would they need to fix it?

It's a free market, if anything it's the fault of the brainless people who do exactly what the smart people anticipate.

Woah woah woah... How is it a free market? It's in a VIDEO GAME, BRAHOOO. Anet COULD fix this but they won't so basically your economy will always be controlled by people willing to exploit other people or who just exploit the mechanics of a simple market place. In fact, Anet seems to reward them by letting them do so with no consequence. Have fun with all that.

[Edit] The fact that people are arguing about the validity of the bans in this case is a pretty good indicator that GW2's economy is borked beyond repair already.

Edited by Hector, 04 January 2013 - 02:34 PM.

[Gilles VI]

Hector, on 04 January 2013 - 02:30 PM, said:

Woah woah woah... How is it a free market? It's in a VIDEO GAME, BRAHOOO. Anet COULD fix this but they won't so basically your economy will always be controlled by people willing to exploit other people or who just exploit the mechanics of a simple market place. In fact, Anet seems to reward them by letting them do so with no consequence. Have fun with all that.

[Edit] The fact that people are arguing about the validity of the bans in this case is a pretty good indicator that GW2's economy is borked beyond repair already.

How is trading goods an exploit?
And how does it being a videogame rule out a free market?

And as I said before, the only way they could fix people powertrading would be to make everything soulbound on purchase or increase taxes (both seem very unlikely).

[XPhiler]

BrettM, on 04 January 2013 - 02:06 PM, said:

No one is saying the robber shouldn't be punished if he took advantage of the door the clerk left unlocked. But the clerk knows darned well he did something stupid, and I bet his boss and the insurance adjuster aren't going to be very thrilled with him. The clerk is going to take some degree of punishment for his mistake, even if it's just his own feeling of shame. Furthermore, the unlocked door may be taken into account by the judge when he's deciding on the appropriate punishment for the robber, so the contributory fault of the clerk is not completely ignored by the law.

No one is saying the exploiters shouldn't be punished for taking advantage of the recipe. The question is whether the punishment they received is excessive given some culpability on the part of ANet in creating the situation. I tend to agree with drax that a permaban goes too far.

Well we have no idea the kind of flakk QA got over this. I am sure Arenanet were not happy about having to ban people, it costs them a lot of money to do it, they loose potential revenieu from the banned person and creates lots of negative publicity.

As regards the punishment itself, yes you're right it is excessive, I would rather it was something else but unfortuniately it cannot be something else. Thing is this is not just about punishing people its about trying to tackle the exploitation problem. You want people to report exploits not using them. Nothing you do short of banning people will have any effect on that and even then as we have seen the effect isnt 100% either.

If arenanet took away their profits, Nearly everyone who came across an exploit would use it and I mean everyone. Its natural, if you're caught you dont really loose anything except the time you used to exploit and if you're not caught well you profit.

If they take away everything the character owns people will just leave a character to do the exploiting.

If they delete all your characters but leave your account, people will just buy a second account and leave it just for exploiting. May seem far fetched but $50 gets you 50g. one exploit you get away with could pay for the investment leaving everything else to pure profit.

This is unfortunately the only way to truely stand a chance in detering people

[d_fens]

The only thing left for those banned ppl (if they are EU citizens) is to get a refund. ANet terminated their account and game service under terms of EULA, which has no power over EU citizens. Since they paid for service and are not getting it, they can get a refund.
They would do much better with rollbacks.

[Hector]

Gilles VI, on 04 January 2013 - 02:50 PM, said:

How is trading goods an exploit?
And how does it being a videogame rule out a free market?

It is an exploit when power traders drive the price of certain goods through the roof for their own profits. If that is not an exploit of a market system then I don't know what an exploit is.

As to my first point, this is a "market" in a video game. Anet can change whatever they want to to fix that problem instead of banning a few people here and there for taking advantage of mistakes that they have made. It doesn't make sense. Give them temp bans and roll backs and fix the real problem with the economy.

I think we can see how bad they are at managing an economy from GW1 and they seem to have learned nothing between that game and this one. And I mean nothing.

[Gilles VI]

Hector, on 04 January 2013 - 05:20 PM, said:

It is an exploit when power traders drive the price of certain goods through the roof for their own profits. If that is not an exploit of a market system then I don't know what an exploit is.

Driving the price up = market manipulation. And there can nothing be done about that (there isn't even anything wrong with that, those people take a risk, sometimes it pays of, sometimes it doesn't), unless Anet wants to go put up max prices for certain items (which would be utterly crap imo).

Exploit is where people use a bug in a game to acquire more wealth than other players (the karma items that were extremely cheap, the bone weapons that had a higher chance of getting pre-cursor, and now the recent exploit where people farmed hundreds & hundreds of ectos)

What is the real problem with the economy then, because I don't see one.

[Hector]

Gilles VI, on 04 January 2013 - 05:27 PM, said:

Driving the price up = market manipulation. And there can nothing be done about that (there isn't even anything wrong with that, those people take a risk, sometimes it pays of, sometimes it doesn't), unless Anet wants to go put up max prices for certain items (which would be utterly crap imo).

Exploit is where people use a bug in a game to acquire more wealth than other players (the karma items that were extremely cheap, the bone weapons that had a higher chance of getting pre-cursor, and now the recent exploit where people farmed hundreds & hundreds of ectos)

What is the real problem with the economy then, because I don't see one.

I know the difference. Thanks.

In any other freaking market on the planet price manipulation between knowing parties is very illegal and a huge problem.

The problem is that Anet designed the game around a stringent market place where most people have no money and the people that got on the ground floor can manipulate things to keep things that way. Sort of like how our economy IRL is now set up. No upward mobility.

I guess if you design your game around the fact that you want to squeeze gold out so you can sell gems then your plan is going accordingly. Problem is that this is not fun at all and kind of shitty. We were warned by some naysayers when the store was announced but most of us (me included) were just happy enough to get a new GW that we glossed over it. Months into the game and we can see they were right. Game design leans heavily towards selling gems and totally away from just fun content.

But hey, if you got the cash to buy gems and are so inclined then more power to you. DRIVE THOSE PRICES UP UP UP! WEEEeeEeeEE.

Hahahaha

[Runkleford]

I hate cheaters and I think they deserve any ban they get. However, I find little difference between harming the economy with exploits and harming the economy by "legitimate" means. Yes the difference is that one deserves a ban while the latter would not but both are detrimental to the average player. If I'm trying to buy a specific rune only to find out that someone has bought them all out and relisted them for more than twice the price, it matters little to me whether it was a legitimate tactic, it still hurts me. I either have to wait out a week or so for the prices to drop back down to normal prices or get ripped off.

This actually happened when I tried to get Runes of Melandru a month back or so when someone bought them all out to relist them. It took almost 2 weeks for the price to level back down. I saved myself from getting ripped off of 5 gold but I had to wait so long. 5 gold may be chump change to a lot of you but as someone who only played a few hours a week of PVE this is a big chunk to me.

So I really don't care who is and isn't getting banned or for what reason because who knows anymore. It's all so inconsistent. It just looks like ANET picks stuff to call an exploit on a whim rather than with any logic. Not to say that this snowflake thing isn't an exploit but it's hard to distinguish this from other "legit" tactics out there. But hey, I guess this game is a gamble in more ways than one.