640 replies to this topic

[raspberry jam]

XPhiler, on 04 February 2013 - 12:16 PM, said:

I agree with you that defining what an exploit is. It can be a bit hard to tell when something rewards more then what developers intended. Arenanet know that and thus never went against people when exploits can be a bit ambiguous. They only went after cases when such a situation was obvious. Most of the game rewards approxmately 1g per hour of play. If you crafted this exploit one by one (the most inefficient way to do it) and salvaged it one by on and stopped to sell 1 ecto every 5 salvages you would end up with 2 ecto for like 30 seconds work (I am being generous here) that means about 60s for 30 seconds. This means playing as inefficient as possible would earn you 72g per hour. Do you really think there is any question if this is an exploit or not?

Sure, hey people you all loose 2 days worth of progress because Rasberry jam thinks its better for the game if everyone suffers for what these exploiters did. Expect this to happen again since exploiters didnt really loose anything and are sure to try again. I know well a rollback would fix the problem but a rollback isnt feasable it would annoy everyone people that did nothing wrong included and what for so that exploiters are free to exploit whenever they feel like it?

Lol check with CCP about that. The faction warfare exploit has been there since faction warfare was introduced so it took months. I was personally aware of some exploits that ran for years. Just cause this one exploit quickly become public knoweldge it doesnt mean they all will.

Because Anet have a vested interest in having no exploits regardless if people are free to exploit or not. Thats plain obvious, what do they gain with exploits in the game? nothing, what do they loose? more money made by exploiters means less gem purchases, people leaving the game cause no one likes to play a game ripe with exploits, exploiters get bored of the game quickly (what do you play for when you have everything ?)

Sure if you sell the box and then you have less bandwidth usage you make more profit but you're completing ignoring the fact that whoever got banned got a refund hence then didnt get extra profit from them because they got the money from the box and saved the bandwidth they'd use on top of that no. They gave him the money back, lost the money for the bandwidth he used from the moment he bought the game until the moment he got banned and also whatever credit card / bank charges that where incurrent at the sale and for the charge back. So your statement is completely wrong on all counts. Banning these players wasnt an extra profit for Anet because of saved bandwidth, it was a cost nothing else.

No you havent not once and you cannot because its absurd. Banning exploiters shines a spotlight on the fact you have an exploit and only developers can create exploits. I have yet to see anyone claim the exploit was the fault of whoever got banned but please feel free to look around and find me a single post were someone states the exploit was the fault of whoever got banned.

I don't think earning 72g per hour is an exploit; it is following the rules of the game.

I'm not suggesting a rollback. I was merely saying that it is possible. What should be done is to eelete the exploiters' profits if you have to; to the market, removing all their possessions is the same thing as banning them.

I know, for example the Zaishen chest exploit in GW1 existed for a very long time. However, it had almost no result to the economy; if it had, it would have been detected and patched out.

No, as long as people believe that the fault of exploits lay with the playerbase, ANet have no problem with them. They are put out there, and then they are fixed. If they had a profit motive of putting out less bugs, we'd see less bugs in the game.

The banned people got a refund on their gems, not on their box purchase.

No, rants on boards about how the game is full of exploits, shine the spotlight on the exploits in your game. That is why bans happen - the developer don't want to admit that it was their fault that the economy took a hit. Instead, they blame players.

[Gli]

raspberry jam, on 04 February 2013 - 11:51 AM, said:

I have explained several times how banning exploiters make it look as if the exploit was the fault of the playerbase instead of the fault of the developer.

You haven't explained any such thing. You've spouted nonsense and ignored the fact that there are two separate issues.

• ANet introduced a possible exploit. They fixed it.
  
• Some players took advantage of the exploit. They were banned.

There's no causal relationship between the two. ANet didn't cause people to exploit, exploiters didn't cause ANet to introduce the exploit. Accidentally creating an opportunity does not take away the responsibility of those taking advantage of that opportunity.

"banning exploiters make it look as if the exploit was the fault of the playerbase instead of the fault of the developer" is a ridiculous notion.

Earlier in the thread you took the stance that (I'm paraphrasing here) "if there's ever an exploit, there will be some people exploiting, so ANet is always the sole party to blame for any exploiting going on", is actually insulting to exploiters. You imply they have no free will and culpability for their actions. Even if I were an exploiter, I wouldn't want you to champion me, because I wouldn't like it if someone painted me as an automaton on an inevitable course of misbehavior.

[raspberry jam]

Gli, on 04 February 2013 - 12:44 PM, said:

You haven't explained any such thing. You've spouted nonsense and ignored the fact that there are two separate issues.

• ANet introduced a possible exploit. They fixed it.
  
  
• Some players took advantage of the exploit. They were banned.

There's no causal relationship between the two. ANet didn't cause people to exploit, exploiters didn't cause ANet to introduce the exploit. Accidentally creating an opportunity does not take away the responsibility of those taking advantage of that opportunity.

"banning exploiters make it look as if the exploit was the fault of the playerbase instead of the fault of the developer" is a ridiculous notion.

Earlier in the thread you took the stance that (I'm paraphrasing here) "if there's ever an exploit, there will be some people exploiting, so ANet is always the sole party to blame for any exploiting going on", is actually insulting to exploiters. You imply they have no free will and culpability for their actions. Even if I were an exploiter, I wouldn't want you to champion me, because I wouldn't like it if someone painted me as an automaton on an inevitable course of misbehavior.

ANet didn't cause people to exploit, but in a population on the size of a million players there will always be people prepared to exploit something like this. In other words it's the same as the handing out dynamite sticks example. Dynamite is dangerous and there will be people blowing themselves up. We've been through this already.
It has nothing to do with free will, it is mere statistics. Even if you don't exploit there are a thousand others who will.

And I do not champion exploiters, but the playerbase itself. I don't care about exploiters; I do care about decreasing the amount of bugs. Better QA procedures will make that happen.

Edited by raspberry jam, 04 February 2013 - 01:37 PM.

[XPhiler]

raspberry jam, on 04 February 2013 - 12:37 PM, said:

I don't think earning 72g per hour is an exploit; it is following the rules of the game.

I'm not suggesting a rollback. I was merely saying that it is possible. What should be done is to eelete the exploiters' profits if you have to; to the market, removing all their possessions is the same thing as banning them.

I know, for example the Zaishen chest exploit in GW1 existed for a very long time. However, it had almost no result to the economy; if it had, it would have been detected and patched out.

No, as long as people believe that the fault of exploits lay with the playerbase, ANet have no problem with them. They are put out there, and then they are fixed. If they had a profit motive of putting out less bugs, we'd see less bugs in the game.

The banned people got a refund on their gems, not on their box purchase.

No, rants on boards about how the game is full of exploits, shine the spotlight on the exploits in your game. That is why bans happen - the developer don't want to admit that it was their fault that the economy took a hit. Instead, they blame players.

this is not about earning 72g an hour, this is about what consitutes "generate in-game benefits without the risk or time expected by the game's designers". There are legitimate ways how to earn 72g in an hour, even in a second if you sell say a precurser (though technically unless you're really really lucky if you factor time to aquire precurser with income it would be far less then that. In any case it is pretty obvious that an income of 72g an hour goes being what game designers expected. This is obvious when you compare different game play mechanics. How much do you earn playing in the open world, harvesting and selling what you gathered, crafting, dungeons, WvW, FoTM etc.. Doing these activities earns you in the range of 1g - 3g. 72g an hour is a completely obvious anomaly. That satisfies that part of what makes something an exploit. What about the first part "An exploit is the misuse of a software feature or bug in a way that allows a player to generate" here you need to ask yourself the question is crafting items and salvaging intended to make tons of profit? obviously no since salvaging gives you a fraction of what you put in. Here it behaved different it actually gave you over 2000% of what you put in which makes it an obvious bug. Even if you want to argue that somehow this wasnt to be considered a bug, one would no fully well that this operation shouldnt not generate 72g an hour because no other crafting / salavaging operation comes even close to that. Not only that but it was obvious that this was just meant to be a cheap way of crafting stuff for a holiday event (this is because the recipe used 5x less material and the rare material was very easy to aquire unlike other cases btw if you're asking)  Thus repeating this operation over and over would still be misuse of the feature.

Deleting the exploiters profit is a joke. It will acomplish nothing. Exploiters will just try again next time they have an oportunitey. Damage to the economy would be done anyway since you cannot delete the profit of those people who profited off the exploiters profit.

One. No one feels the exploit is the fault of exploiters, please find me a single person who thinks that, never seen that anywhere. Secondly you're wrong even if somehow people would think its all the exploiters fault exploits exist Anet would still suffer for them. People quiting because of it, refunds, banning players thus shrinking your gem market, profit infused in the economy results in less people paying for gems with real money since they can use the gold generated thanks to those exploits, Bad publicity, Bad publicity for people complaining about the market crash resulting from the abandonce and monopolies profit from the exploit will create. Plenty of stuff Anet have to loose if exploits make it into the game. I dont know why you think that Anet only have to fear people thinking exploits is their fault and their fault alone (which people already do but anyway) what would that change for them?

Wrong, they refunded both game and gems
http://www.reddit.co...an_full_refund/

Some quotes:
After reading this I checked my bank account and I also got a full refund back.

yesterday BOOM full refund on everything gem purchases and all

One player posted:
"Also got banned, got my $20 in gems back on the same day he did. (I bought the gems during the first week of the game so it seems like it's not just recent gem purchases) Still no refund on the account yet however, that will probably be given back to all the
exploiters in the next few days according to the support ticket replies."

later on he posted an update:
"They are almost to nice here. I will be getting back $80 account + 20 in gems, I'll probably get the game again when it goes on sale for $30-$40 If I ever decide to come back."


Satisfied? Can we stop the they did it for profit argument now? There is no doubt in my mind it cost them much more banning people then let it slide.

Dah, maybe because it was really the exploiting players fault that the economy got hit? The exploit itself didnt damage the price of ectos, players abusing the exploit generating 270k ectos and selling them all at once undercutting each other damaged the economy. Anet just failed to prevent it by detecting the exploit before release, anything else its whoever exploited responsability and not Arenanet's

[XPhiler]

raspberry jam, on 04 February 2013 - 01:36 PM, said:

ANet didn't cause people to exploit, but in a population on the size of a million players there will always be people prepared to exploit something like this. In other words it's the same as the handing out dynamite sticks example. Dynamite is dangerous and there will be people blowing themselves up. We've been through this already.
It has nothing to do with free will, it is mere statistics. Even if you don't exploit there are a thousand others who will.

And I do not champion exploiters, but the playerbase itself. I don't care about exploiters; I do care about decreasing the amount of bugs. Better QA procedures will make that happen.

fine, there will always be players that exploit, some of which will find it hard to control themselves and unless Arenanet find a way to become omniscient there will always be an exploit that escapes into the live version so what options do Anet have? Remove those players who cannot control themselves and try your best to allow as little as possible exploits getting to the live version. Thats preciselsly what Anet did. They even gave those players full refunds which was a very nice gesture thats as far as i know unpresidented. They just did the best thing possible for everyone. Exploiters who cant refrain themselves have to go for the good of the game and other players because like you say no matter what you do they will still most likely do it again next time. No amount of QA is going to ensure no exploits but the bad publicity banning creates will make sure you try to avoid that scenario again. Giving refunds to those who exploited is a consolation price at least they're free to go play another game if they're short on money.

Great so do we all, but allowing exploiters to go about unpunished will not reduce bugs and it will certainly not benefit honest players. So I think you're championing the wrong cause here.

[raspberry jam]

XPhiler, on 04 February 2013 - 01:40 PM, said:

this is not about earning 72g an hour, this is about what consitutes "generate in-game benefits without the risk or time expected by the game's designers". There are legitimate ways how to earn 72g in an hour, even in a second if you sell say a precurser (though technically unless you're really really lucky if you factor time to aquire precurser with income it would be far less then that. In any case it is pretty obvious that an income of 72g an hour goes being what game designers expected. This is obvious when you compare different game play mechanics. How much do you earn playing in the open world, harvesting and selling what you gathered, crafting, dungeons, WvW, FoTM etc.. Doing these activities earns you in the range of 1g - 3g. 72g an hour is a completely obvious anomaly. That satisfies that part of what makes something an exploit. What about the first part "An exploit is the misuse of a software feature or bug in a way that allows a player to generate" here you need to ask yourself the question is crafting items and salvaging intended to make tons of profit? obviously no since salvaging gives you a fraction of what you put in. Here it behaved different it actually gave you over 2000% of what you put in which makes it an obvious bug. Even if you want to argue that somehow this wasnt to be considered a bug, one would no fully well that this operation shouldnt not generate 72g an hour because no other crafting / salavaging operation comes even close to that. Not only that but it was obvious that this was just meant to be a cheap way of crafting stuff for a holiday event (this is because the recipe used 5x less material and the rare material was very easy to aquire unlike other cases btw if you're asking)  Thus repeating this operation over and over would still be misuse of the feature.

Deleting the exploiters profit is a joke. It will acomplish nothing. Exploiters will just try again next time they have an oportunitey. Damage to the economy would be done anyway since you cannot delete the profit of those people who profited off the exploiters profit.

One. No one feels the exploit is the fault of exploiters, please find me a single person who thinks that, never seen that anywhere. Secondly you're wrong even if somehow people would think its all the exploiters fault exploits exist Anet would still suffer for them. People quiting because of it, refunds, banning players thus shrinking your gem market, profit infused in the economy results in less people paying for gems with real money since they can use the gold generated thanks to those exploits, Bad publicity, Bad publicity for people complaining about the market crash resulting from the abandonce and monopolies profit from the exploit will create. Plenty of stuff Anet have to loose if exploits make it into the game. I dont know why you think that Anet only have to fear people thinking exploits is their fault and their fault alone (which people already do but anyway) what would that change for them?

Wrong, they refunded both game and gems
http://www.reddit.co...an_full_refund/

Some quotes:
After reading this I checked my bank account and I also got a full refund back.

yesterday BOOM full refund on everything gem purchases and all

One player posted:
"Also got banned, got my $20 in gems back on the same day he did. (I bought the gems during the first week of the game so it seems like it's not just recent gem purchases) Still no refund on the account yet however, that will probably be given back to all the
exploiters in the next few days according to the support ticket replies."

later on he posted an update:
"They are almost to nice here. I will be getting back $80 account + 20 in gems, I'll probably get the game again when it goes on sale for $30-$40 If I ever decide to come back."


Satisfied? Can we stop the they did it for profit argument now? There is no doubt in my mind it cost them much more banning people then let it slide.

Dah, maybe because it was really the exploiting players fault that the economy got hit? The exploit itself didnt damage the price of ectos, players abusing the exploit generating 270k ectos and selling them all at once undercutting each other damaged the economy. Anet just failed to prevent it by detecting the exploit before release, anything else its whoever exploited responsability and not Arenanet's

I don't see how repeating it over and over is a misuse. Repeating any profitable content over and over will yield you significantly more money than standing in LA and just chatting to people. % of profit over the norm is a very strange argument for this to be misuse. It was done according to the rules of the game. That these rules were mistakenly written just means that a mistake was made, and ANet should take responsibility for that.

Yes, exploiters will try again. Or actually, if you delete their entire set of possessions (leaving them naked, gearless, with 0 coins) they might think twice.

Exactly, ANet loses if exploits make it into their game. Their way of combating that loss is to ban exploiters, which is a clear message that "look, what happened was the exploiters' fault".

Hmm, I see. Well, they seem to only refund the box cost in some cases; others have been banned and only the gems were refunded.

No, it does not cost more. If they did not ban exploiters, then they would get a reputation as a company that allows exploits to happen, and that is massively damaging. The only way out of that is to make sure that exploits don't enter the game. Which is what I want, and should be what you should want too. But it is not... Why?

XPhiler, on 04 February 2013 - 01:48 PM, said:

fine, there will always be players that exploit, some of which will find it hard to control themselves and unless Arenanet find a way to become omniscient there will always be an exploit that escapes into the live version so what options do Anet have? Remove those players who cannot control themselves and try your best to allow as little as possible exploits getting to the live version. Thats preciselsly what Anet did. They even gave those players full refunds which was a very nice gesture thats as far as i know unpresidented. They just did the best thing possible for everyone. Exploiters who cant refrain themselves have to go for the good of the game and other players because like you say no matter what you do they will still most likely do it again next time. No amount of QA is going to ensure no exploits but the bad publicity banning creates will make sure you try to avoid that scenario again. Giving refunds to those who exploited is a consolation price at least they're free to go play another game if they're short on money.

Great so do we all, but allowing exploiters to go about unpunished will not reduce bugs and it will certainly not benefit honest players. So I think you're championing the wrong cause here.

QA would not ensure no exploits, but it would ensure fewer exploits. And if you ban exploiters for this, there will still be exploiters doing their thing when the next exploit hits. It is a PR move, not any real form of "law" enforcement.

Yes, it would reduce bugs, since ANet would be pressed into better QA and thereby less bugs. Note, not zero bugs, but less bugs.

[XPhiler]

raspberry jam, on 04 February 2013 - 01:56 PM, said:

I don't see how repeating it over and over is a misuse. Repeating any profitable content over and over will yield you significantly more money than standing in LA and just chatting to people. % of profit over the norm is a very strange argument for this to be misuse. It was done according to the rules of the game. That these rules were mistakenly written just means that a mistake was made, and ANet should take responsibility for that.

Yes, exploiters will try again. Or actually, if you delete their entire set of possessions (leaving them naked, gearless, with 0 coins) they might think twice.

Exactly, ANet loses if exploits make it into their game. Their way of combating that loss is to ban exploiters, which is a clear message that "look, what happened was the exploiters' fault".

Hmm, I see. Well, they seem to only refund the box cost in some cases; others have been banned and only the gems were refunded.

No, it does not cost more. If they did not ban exploiters, then they would get a reputation as a company that allows exploits to happen, and that is massively damaging. The only way out of that is to make sure that exploits don't enter the game. Which is what I want, and should be what you should want too. But it is not... Why?

QA would not ensure no exploits, but it would ensure fewer exploits. And if you ban exploiters for this, there will still be exploiters doing their thing when the next exploit hits. It is a PR move, not any real form of "law" enforcement.

Yes, it would reduce bugs, since ANet would be pressed into better QA and thereby less bugs. Note, not zero bugs, but less bugs.

Of course its misuse to repeat something in an unintended way generating abnormal profit. If a shop provides a free samples there is nothing wrong with taking one, maybe you can get away with getting a few but what if you take them all is that okey in your opinion?

Also I am not exactly sure why suddenly you're arguing that this is not an obvious exploit. Do I need to quote your early posts that said this was obvious an exploit and that both the devs that worked on this and QA should have seen that as its totally obvious? Yet now you're saying that there is nothing wrong with content that rewards 72g per hour if you do it as inefficiently as possible ? (obviously it doesnt take 30seconds to craft and salvage 5 items which is what this number is based on). Anyhow are we changing the version now to people got injustly banned for they didnt exploit? for the billionth and 1 time. Arenanet are guilty of messing up the rules, entirely true, they realised that and fixed it. Thats taking full responsability for their short coming. People found that exploit, some reported it thats taking responsability by the players. Other players decided to keep to themselves and exploit to profit as much of it while its ingame. These people decided personal gain comes before responsability and they paid the price for that its as easy as that.

Thats what every exploit is, a mistake in the rules of the game. Even using 3rd party tools to have the game play automatically for you falls in this category. A mistake in the rules applied to verify user input that arent precise enough to detect forged requests. So we should allow any kind of exploit now?

Excuse me but thats not how it went at all. Anet didnt simply do what you're suggesting "Their way of combating that loss is to ban exploiters, which is a clear message that "look, what happened was the exploiters' fault". First thing they did is fix the exploit and report it in the patch notes (that to me sends a clear message, we messed up and introduced an exploit) over 6 days later people who exploited got banned again the message here isnt like you're saying what happened was the exploiters fault. The message here is we let an exploit through and people exploited. The exploiting was the naturally the exploiters fault and those who exploited a lot got banned. I have no idea why you keep on insisting that banning players somehow covers the fact anet are responsabile for the exploit, it doesnt! the only blame exploiters get is for exploiting they dont get any blame for the exploit itself. I asked you for a single person claiming the exploit existance fault was due to the exploits and you havent pointed a single post and you will not cause no one in the world believes what you're saying.

You have any source of people not receiving the box refund? keep in mind refunds for the box were seperate for the refund for the gems so its quite possible you heard someone complain in that short period it might have taken to process the two.

Excuse me? you're saying now people think that Anet are so good that they dont allow exploits to happen because they banned Exploiters? Seriously? If anything its the opposite. By banning people the story made it to the media and more people become aware that the winterday update contained an exploit. So if anything if they didnt ban exploiters, fewer people would know about the exploit reducing the reputation damage. Hence by banning those players not only increased their monatery costs (refunds and missed business) but also increased damage to their reputation (more people aware of exploit, people like you who feel arenanet acted wrongly on the whole bit)

Who says I want exploits in the game? Of course I dont want exploits in the game, I just think be leaving players free to exploit by not banning them will have 0 effect on the quality of the game. Arenanet will always strive to make the best they can to ensure the quality of their game regardless if they ban exploiters or not.

Its not a law enforcement move, its a deterrant move. Some exploiters might feel its not worth the risk. Kinda like security cameras they dont stop any crimes from happening. They rarely if ever help solve the crime. But they still scare criminals away.

All the negative stuff from having an exploit (reputation, damage to economy, angry players, etc..) will still happen bans or not thus Anet still will press QA to make sure they miss less bugs. By banning exploiters and issuing refunds Anet is also directly loosing money over this thus if anything there is an extra incentive for them to push QA to do a better job, certainly not less like you seem to be thinking.

[raspberry jam]

XPhiler, on 04 February 2013 - 02:29 PM, said:

Of course its misuse to repeat something in an unintended way generating abnormal profit. If a shop provides a free samples there is nothing wrong with taking one, maybe you can get away with getting a few but what if you take them all is that okey in your opinion?

Also I am not exactly sure why suddenly you're arguing that this is not an obvious exploit. Do I need to quote your early posts that said this was obvious an exploit and that both the devs that worked on this and QA should have seen that as its totally obvious? Yet now you're saying that there is nothing wrong with content that rewards 72g per hour if you do it as inefficiently as possible ? (obviously it doesnt take 30seconds to craft and salvage 5 items which is what this number is based on). Anyhow are we changing the version now to people got injustly banned for they didnt exploit? for the billionth and 1 time. Arenanet are guilty of messing up the rules, entirely true, they realised that and fixed it. Thats taking full responsability for their short coming. People found that exploit, some reported it thats taking responsability by the players. Other players decided to keep to themselves and exploit to profit as much of it while its ingame. These people decided personal gain comes before responsability and they paid the price for that its as easy as that.

Thats what every exploit is, a mistake in the rules of the game. Even using 3rd party tools to have the game play automatically for you falls in this category. A mistake in the rules applied to verify user input that arent precise enough to detect forged requests. So we should allow any kind of exploit now?

Excuse me but thats not how it went at all. Anet didnt simply do what you're suggesting "Their way of combating that loss is to ban exploiters, which is a clear message that "look, what happened was the exploiters' fault". First thing they did is fix the exploit and report it in the patch notes (that to me sends a clear message, we messed up and introduced an exploit) over 6 days later people who exploited got banned again the message here isnt like you're saying what happened was the exploiters fault. The message here is we let an exploit through and people exploited. The exploiting was the naturally the exploiters fault and those who exploited a lot got banned. I have no idea why you keep on insisting that banning players somehow covers the fact anet are responsabile for the exploit, it doesnt! the only blame exploiters get is for exploiting they dont get any blame for the exploit itself. I asked you for a single person claiming the exploit existance fault was due to the exploits and you havent pointed a single post and you will not cause no one in the world believes what you're saying.

You have any source of people not receiving the box refund? keep in mind refunds for the box were seperate for the refund for the gems so its quite possible you heard someone complain in that short period it might have taken to process the two.

Excuse me? you're saying now people think that Anet are so good that they dont allow exploits to happen because they banned Exploiters? Seriously? If anything its the opposite. By banning people the story made it to the media and more people become aware that the winterday update contained an exploit. So if anything if they didnt ban exploiters, fewer people would know about the exploit reducing the reputation damage. Hence by banning those players not only increased their monatery costs (refunds and missed business) but also increased damage to their reputation (more people aware of exploit, people like you who feel arenanet acted wrongly on the whole bit)

Who says I want exploits in the game? Of course I dont want exploits in the game, I just think be leaving players free to exploit by not banning them will have 0 effect on the quality of the game. Arenanet will always strive to make the best they can to ensure the quality of their game regardless if they ban exploiters or not.

Its not a law enforcement move, its a deterrant move. Some exploiters might feel its not worth the risk. Kinda like security cameras they dont stop any crimes from happening. They rarely if ever help solve the crime. But they still scare criminals away.

All the negative stuff from having an exploit (reputation, damage to economy, angry players, etc..) will still happen bans or not thus Anet still will press QA to make sure they miss less bugs. By banning exploiters and issuing refunds Anet is also directly loosing money over this thus if anything there is an extra incentive for them to push QA to do a better job, certainly not less like you seem to be thinking.

Unless supervised, sure it is. That's why free sample handouts are usually supervised.

Ah, sorry for not being clear on that. I forgot that I was talking to what must be the most obtuse person in the entire world. That it is an exploit is (should be) obvious to the developers, not necessarily to the players. In fact the reddit post that you linked to stated that the person banned had no idea that it was an exploit.

No, third-party tools is entire different. Especially if they affect the client in ways that users can't possibly do. But that is beside the point here, since we are talking about an item crafted and salvaged.

See what you did there? You said "exploiting was the naturally the exploiters fault and those who exploited a lot got banned". But exploiting itself is pointless, since you'd be punishing people who didn't do anything - what you want to punish is the damage done to the economy. If there were no such damage, there would be nothing to hand out bans for.
And by banning players, ANet puts the responsibility for the damage done onto the players.

Of course, a friend of mine. He didn't buy the game directly from ANet, he bought it in a store, so no refunds for him.

No, if they did not ban, people like yourself would feel that it was ANet's fault. So they do massive profits in banning. Do you honestly think that a for-profit company would do anything unless there was profit in it?

I am saying that you want exploits (and other bugs) in the game. If you didn't want that, you'd be insisting on actions that improve QA instead of simple banning of players. See, if ANet can get away with just banning players, we'll keep seeing bugs pop up when they could have been avoided. And that is horrible.

And you want that to happen.

[Red Sonya]

<sup>If I leave my door unlocked to my jewelry store is it still not stealing if someone goes inside and takes something? Am "I" to BLAME?? No not at all. Just like in real life people know what's right and wrong. Even an idiot would know it's wrong to go inside someones place of business and steal from them. Forrest Gump would even know that. Thus Anet has done nothing wrong, they left the door unlocked and open is all that's not a crime. The CRIME was the many who went inside and STOLE the merchandise away and laughed and laughed and told their friends and then cried and cried when they were found out.

Punishment was justified, case closed......</sup>

Edited by Ethereal, 04 February 2013 - 09:26 PM.
fixed font

[Millimidget]

XPhiler, on 04 February 2013 - 02:29 PM, said:

Of course its misuse to repeat something in an unintended way generating abnormal profit.

So now we're back to having to divine the intentions of Anet developers?

XPhiler, on 04 February 2013 - 01:48 PM, said:

Great so do we all, but allowing exploiters to go about unpunished will not reduce bugs and it will certainly not benefit honest players.

Wasting time banning players and refunding them for abusing a erroneous recipe does not address the myriad of bugs still in the game, or the half-dozen (at least) major issues the game faces.

The game has bigger issues, which by all appearances they're ignoring in favor of junk like this ban wave.

Edited by Millimidget, 05 February 2013 - 11:45 PM.

[Jump_N_Move]

The only reason the exploiters got bans is because the economy is tied to the gem store. Its in their best interest to just ban and never look back, heck even by giving refunds its almost like they are asking you to come back. They have no obligation to refund that money. And in the case of hard copies they can't refund that money. Theys musts protects theirs precious gemstores.

[OriginalSinX]

People know when they are doing right or wrong, lets them deal with consequence, seems realistic and fair.

[ReMarkable91]

This topic is still going pwehh..

OriginalSinX, on 05 February 2013 - 11:38 PM, said:

People know when they are doing right or wrong, lets them deal with consequence, seems realistic and fair.

Well I can honnestly say I had no feeling what I was doing was wrong but my case is sepperate from the 199 others.
Main frustration remains the support denies to help me =S I ask simple questions like why orichalcum(No proffit no price changes) got punnished the same as the Mithril version. Or what would have happend if there was no mithril version and only orichalcum. They say they can't say and won't let me ask the development team/guy who was reponsable for it. But they (unasked) refunded me the 105 euro for the game and gems. So I got over it moved on playing other games now and from time to time checking stuff on my friends account who never plays.

It was like a casino and there was a gang of 199 man who found a way on the internet that there was an new christmas slot machine broken , that would give you a jockpot every 5 turns easy way to make $ or something. And I also was there that day because I am addicted to gambling sitting on another new christmas slot machine that was not broken , but in stead of checking wich slot machine actualy was broken they are saying: check the cameras everybody who played at least 100 games on an new christmas slot machine should go be arrested and go to jail for life!
It was a new machine new rules and because I love slot machines and am really intrested in the buisiness I decided to check the win/lose ratio , there was nothing weird to make me think I should go to the casino tell them about the new machines. but I still got punnished.

[XPhiler]

Millimidget, on 05 February 2013 - 11:35 PM, said:

So now we're back to having to divine the intentions of Anet developers?

Wasting time banning players and refunding them for abusing a erroneous recipe does not address the myriad of bugs still in the game, or the half-dozen (at least) major issues the game faces.

The game has bigger issues, which by all appearances they're ignoring in favor of junk like this ban wave.

When you compare something like any activity you do in the game and see it rewards 1g-2g per hour with something that rewards 1g in a few seconds and you come to the conclusion that 1g per second is not something the devs intended its not called divination it is called common sense.

Lets put it this way, if you work and at the end of the month you receive a slightly larger wage you might think your boss gave you a bonus. If you receive 60x the usual amount it doesn't take mystic powers to realize there definitely has been some mistake right? same here! I am sorry but this how am I suppose to know what is legitimate and what is not is just an excuse to get away with exploiting. The difference is so large its entirely obvious that its not intended.

no, banning people and refunding them will not fix existing bugs. Leaving them, free to exploit will not fix bugs either though so I dont see how that factors in this discussion really!

What makes you think they're ignoring bugs in favor of banning people? That same update that introduce that exploited had over 300 fixes in it. And the bug that caused the exploit itself was one of 5+ fixes on that day. (2 days after the exploit made it into the game)
Which part of that is like you say apparent they're ignoring bugs?

[XPhiler]

ReMarkable91, on 06 February 2013 - 01:49 PM, said:

This topic is still going pwehh..



Well I can honnestly say I had no feeling what I was doing was wrong but my case is sepperate from the 199 others.
Main frustration remains the support denies to help me =S I ask simple questions like why orichalcum(No proffit no price changes) got punnished the same as the Mithril version. Or what would have happend if there was no mithril version and only orichalcum. They say they can't say and won't let me ask the development team/guy who was reponsable for it. But they (unasked) refunded me the 105 euro for the game and gems. So I got over it moved on playing other games now and from time to time checking stuff on my friends account who never plays.

It was like a casino and there was a gang of 199 man who found a way on the internet that there was an new christmas slot machine broken , that would give you a jockpot every 5 turns easy way to make $ or something. And I also was there that day because I am addicted to gambling sitting on another new christmas slot machine that was not broken , but in stead of checking wich slot machine actualy was broken they are saying: check the cameras everybody who played at least 100 games on an new christmas slot machine should go be arrested and go to jail for life!
It was a new machine new rules and because I love slot machines and am really intrested in the buisiness I decided to check the win/lose ratio , there was nothing weird to make me think I should go to the casino tell them about the new machines. but I still got punnished.

Because ultimately you exploited. Exploiting doesnt mean you have to make a huge profit / even a profit at all. You were unfortunate enough that orichalcum prices negated the profit made from the extra ectos.  Be honest here why did you create 200+ items / salvaged them if not because someone told you that there was an exploit there that can make you tons of money and you tried it out?

If I go rob a store but I am unfortunate to get there 5 minutes after someone from the store took the money of that week to the bank and walk away with just $10 I am still guilty of robbing a store.

[Coren]

It's not a question of can you, but should you. I admit I was about to try it but held back realizing how fishy it seemed and would obviously be removed. I mean come on, generating infinite gold is an obvious exploit.

Whether it's ANet banning people because of their own negligence or not is not the point. It was an obvious exploit an measures had to be taken.

[raspberry jam]

Coren, on 06 February 2013 - 03:11 PM, said:

It's not a question of can you, but should you. I admit I was about to try it but held back realizing how fishy it seemed and would obviously be removed. I mean come on, generating infinite gold is an obvious exploit.

Whether it's ANet banning people because of their own negligence or not is not the point. It was an obvious exploit an measures had to be taken.

I disagree.

[Coren]

raspberry jam, on 06 February 2013 - 03:34 PM, said:

I disagree.

From your various quotes I kind of had that vibe yes ^^.

A rollback would've been unfair on the rest, as you mentioned, but by doing this ANet promotes a no BS policy I can only encourage, even if the original problem is their fault. It's just common sense. If you want to play with fire, don't complain if you get burned.

[ReMarkable91]

XPhiler, on 06 February 2013 - 02:24 PM, said:

Because ultimately you exploited. Exploiting doesnt mean you have to make a huge profit / even a profit at all. You were unfortunate enough that orichalcum prices negated the profit made from the extra ectos.  Be honest here why did you create 200+ items / salvaged them if not because someone told you that there was an exploit there that can make you tons of money and you tried it out?

If I go rob a store but I am unfortunate to get there 5 minutes after someone from the store took the money of that week to the bank and walk away with just $10 I am still guilty of robbing a store.

Why are u conviced that I tried to make an huge proffit oreven tried to exploit. My point is that it was not obvious for me that it was an exploit. I even had good reasons to even believe it was intended(Orichalcum/Glob economy was fcked up since karka update). Beside crafting something to only salvage it has been an major part of the game since release and that an event items doesn't have to be same in required mats/price as the normal also has been proofed in previous events.

And your point of why I even created 100 + (was around 100-150) is valid. This was my only mistake and I admit it. The reason is that I wanted to find out 2 things. If this way gave an higher chance on proffit that with the original 80 rare from 15 t5 mats recipe wich is legit and therefor thought this was legit(around the same proffit chance base so). And 2nd because wanted to finaly find out that avarage glob drop per exotic salavage. I allways believed it was not that much higher if any higher then rare. Well it was 1.2 so better then 0.9 but it was an costy research =/.

It was more an wrong place wrong time thing then that I am actually an criminal/exploiter. Too bad an epic game as gw2 has such sh1tty support wich denie to help loyal costummers and just sent them 105 euro too make them stop complaining or something..

[ReMarkable91]

XPhiler, on 06 February 2013 - 02:16 PM, said:

Lets put it this way, if you work and at the end of the month you receive a slightly larger wage you might think your boss gave you a bonus. If you receive 60x the usual amount it doesn't take mystic powers to realize there definitely has been some mistake right? same here! I am sorry but this how am I suppose to know what is legitimate and what is not is just an excuse to get away with exploiting. The difference is so large its entirely obvious that its not intended.

(2 days after the exploit made it into the game)

Funny how in this post you tell me it was wrong to ban me. Because I wasn't getting even close to 60 X my normal wage. So there is just no way I could have seen anything was wrong. I have to agree that people who used mithril and didn't make proffit should have had enough waking up calls to realize it was bugged. Such as the price of mithril going up by 1000 % and an snowflake costing 30 S + couldn't smell good. But in my case it couldn't.

Besides why people keep saying 2 days in here , oke it was 2 working days but there was an hole freaking weekend inbetween. And in that weekend ANet employeer were online checking it out. Not that hard to fix it from home I think (or at least disable it or make an statement on twitter/facebook any freaking forum about it).

[Gli]

raspberry jam, on 04 February 2013 - 01:36 PM, said:

ANet didn't cause people to exploit, but in a population on the size of a million players there will always be people prepared to exploit something like this. In other words it's the same as the handing out dynamite sticks example. Dynamite is dangerous and there will be people blowing themselves up. We've been through this already.
It has nothing to do with free will, it is mere statistics. Even if you don't exploit there are a thousand others who will.

And I do not champion exploiters, but the playerbase itself. I don't care about exploiters; I do care about decreasing the amount of bugs. Better QA procedures will make that happen.

• "in a population on the size of a million players there will always be people prepared to exploit something like this."
  
• "any complex piece of software that's not used to perform critical processes will have bugs in it."

If both of these problems are true, it makes sense to work at solving both. I.E. banning exploiters and fixing bugs.

Screw the ridiculous amount of words wasted on this. There's really no more to it.

[raspberry jam]

Coren, on 06 February 2013 - 03:52 PM, said:

From your various quotes I kind of had that vibe yes ^^.

A rollback would've been unfair on the rest, as you mentioned, but by doing this ANet promotes a no BS policy I can only encourage, even if the original problem is their fault. It's just common sense. If you want to play with fire, don't complain if you get burned.

I encourage a no BS policy, but I also think that using the software as-is isn't BSing.

Gli, on 06 February 2013 - 04:07 PM, said:

• "in a population on the size of a million players there will always be people prepared to exploit something like this."
  
• "any complex piece of software that's not used to perform critical processes will have bugs in it."

If both of these problems are true, it makes sense to work at solving both. I.E. banning exploiters and fixing bugs.

Screw the ridiculous amount of words wasted on this. There's really no more to it.

But regardless of how many exploiters you ban, your player population will be on the size of a million players, and thus if the first statement is true, you'll have potential exploiters both before and after the bans. The only way to make sure that you won't have exploiters is to ban so many that you significantly reduce the size of the player population, which likely would be highly damaging to profit.

Seriously for every player who got banned there probably are a thousand players who would have exploited enough to get banned if only they had known about the method.

[XPhiler]

raspberry jam, on 04 February 2013 - 02:56 PM, said:

Unless supervised, sure it is. That's why free sample handouts are usually supervised.

Ah, sorry for not being clear on that. I forgot that I was talking to what must be the most obtuse person in the entire world. That it is an exploit is (should be) obvious to the developers, not necessarily to the players. In fact the reddit post that you linked to stated that the person banned had no idea that it was an exploit.

No, third-party tools is entire different. Especially if they affect the client in ways that users can't possibly do. But that is beside the point here, since we are talking about an item crafted and salvaged.

See what you did there? You said "exploiting was the naturally the exploiters fault and those who exploited a lot got banned". But exploiting itself is pointless, since you'd be punishing people who didn't do anything - what you want to punish is the damage done to the economy. If there were no such damage, there would be nothing to hand out bans for.
And by banning players, ANet puts the responsibility for the damage done onto the players.

Of course, a friend of mine. He didn't buy the game directly from ANet, he bought it in a store, so no refunds for him.

No, if they did not ban, people like yourself would feel that it was ANet's fault. So they do massive profits in banning. Do you honestly think that a for-profit company would do anything unless there was profit in it?

I am saying that you want exploits (and other bugs) in the game. If you didn't want that, you'd be insisting on actions that improve QA instead of simple banning of players. See, if ANet can get away with just banning players, we'll keep seeing bugs pop up when they could have been avoided. And that is horrible.

And you want that to happen.

Are you serious?

Every statement seems just plain wrong. First one. The samples. Supervising the samples isnt a means to make taking all the samples wrong, its a means to stop those who intend to abuse from the samples. Hence supervisor or not, taking all the samples is wrong. Its isnt written anywhere but it doesnt have to cause it is obvious because people are intelligent enough to recognise the intent behind that sample and intelligent enough to know taking all the samples goes against that intent.

Sure an exploit can be obvious to a developer but not to a player. However this wasnt such an exploit where a player might have been confused. As for the person who posted on reddit, ever heard of the word lying? go look it up if not. This exploit gave a return of over 60x the normal rate (and thats being very conservative) How can someone not notice an abnormality with a 6000% increase in reward? its like arguing that at the end of the month you got 60x the normal wage and thought it was normal. its absurd!

This is an interesting twist now. So you're saying anet should ban people based on damage (which I dont agree, akin to being caught and not being caught, the amount of damage you did should not factor on if something is wrong or not.) Obviously a bank robbery is still a bank robbery irrespective if you walk away with $10, $100, $1000, or $1m. Also note you dont go to jail because you made $1m profit if you rob $1m, you dont even go to jail cause you did $1m damage to the bank. You go to jail because stealing is wrong and jail time is meant to reform you so you dont do that again. Then you claim that anet shouldnt ban people because it makes it sound like its those people who did the damage (which ironically is also true) What did you try to do with that statement exactly? twist anet actions into a form you can criticism them for ? I mean if you believe they should only ban people for damage how can you then in the next sentence say that banning people for damage done is wrong?

If they didnt take action against exploiters the number of exploiters would increase. People will then start feeling there is no point in playing a game that is impossible to compete with exploiters. Thus some players will leave because of that sure.

wow, using your same argument you must want major global pollution cause you never said anything about whoever pouting rivers, air etc... Please can we be serious here and not try to play with words to imply people said things they never said based on not saying anything on the subject no less. And btw you're even wrong in that, reread the thread mutliple times I said the exploit was due to an oversight by Anet, Multiple times I said I would be against Anet had they not addressed that bug. But unlike you I am a reasonable person. I dont expect them to fix everything in a day. 300 - 500 bug fixes per month is not a bad rate. To me personally they're trying and trying hard. I am also happy with how the quality of updates has improved. Lost shores was a lot worse then wintersday that was worst then this release. You seem to think that by banning exploiters they're neglecting QA, where as me personally I like to make my conclusions based on the subject at hand (seeing how the quality of the game improves month after month) rather then based on some conspiracy theory (banning exploiters means we dont care about QA)

[XPhiler]

ReMarkable91, on 06 February 2013 - 03:53 PM, said:

Why are u conviced that I tried to make an huge proffit oreven tried to exploit. My point is that it was not obvious for me that it was an exploit. I even had good reasons to even believe it was intended(Orichalcum/Glob economy was fcked up since karka update). Beside crafting something to only salvage it has been an major part of the game since release and that an event items doesn't have to be same in required mats/price as the normal also has been proofed in previous events.

And your point of why I even created 100 + (was around 100-150) is valid. This was my only mistake and I admit it. The reason is that I wanted to find out 2 things. If this way gave an higher chance on proffit that with the original 80 rare from 15 t5 mats recipe wich is legit and therefor thought this was legit(around the same proffit chance base so). And 2nd because wanted to finaly find out that avarage glob drop per exotic salavage. I allways believed it was not that much higher if any higher then rare. Well it was 1.2 so better then 0.9 but it was an costy research =/.

It was more an wrong place wrong time thing then that I am actually an criminal/exploiter. Too bad an epic game as gw2 has such sh1tty support wich denie to help loyal costumers and just sent them 105 euro too make them stop complaining or something..

So you're honestly are telling me that out of literally tens of thousands of recipes you happened to pick one that could be exploited on the only 2 days out of 180 days the game has been out and you had to do 200+ runs (Anet state that no one who exploited less then 200 runs was perma banned)  to see the return on ectos? I wanna believe you but there are 2 things that nag at me.
Timing is one of them. Why wait 180 days to run such a research but more then that why pick an expensive recipe when you could have picked any rare recipe of any profession that you could conduct the same research in at a fraction of the price? As for if you could get a higher return using exotics instead of rare whats there even to test? rare cost a fraction of exotic and drop the same ectos at the same rate. The only unknown is if maybe exotics had a bigger drop rate but do you really need 200+ runs to find that out?

I cant judge, cant say thats not really how it went honestly. But you have to agree its sounds suspicious. If I had to guess you heard someone mention there was this exploit that you could get rich from and you tried it out not realizing they were talking of a different recipe but I might be wrong.

[XPhiler]

ReMarkable91, on 06 February 2013 - 04:03 PM, said:

Funny how in this post you tell me it was wrong to ban me. Because I wasn't getting even close to 60 X my normal wage. So there is just no way I could have seen anything was wrong. I have to agree that people who used mithril and didn't make proffit should have had enough waking up calls to realize it was bugged. Such as the price of mithril going up by 1000 % and an snowflake costing 30 S + couldn't smell good. But in my case it couldn't.

Besides why people keep saying 2 days in here , oke it was 2 working days but there was an hole freaking weekend inbetween. And in that weekend ANet employeer were online checking it out. Not that hard to fix it from home I think (or at least disable it or make an statement on twitter/facebook any freaking forum about it).

I also said in multiple places that the amount of profit one made is irrelevant. If they exploited (successfully or not) then I am sorry but yes the ban was deserved. Fixing a bug like this isnt a 2 minute job. First you need to get the report and that was recieved in the weekend. Then it needs to be reproduced and analyzed. Then the fix needs to be create and tested. 2 days to issue a patch is very efficient I cant say for sure but imho they were working on it during the weekend.

raspberry jam, on 06 February 2013 - 04:19 PM, said:

I encourage a no BS policy, but I also think that using the software as-is isn't BSing.

But regardless of how many exploiters you ban, your player population will be on the size of a million players, and thus if the first statement is true, you'll have potential exploiters both before and after the bans. The only way to make sure that you won't have exploiters is to ban so many that you significantly reduce the size of the player population, which likely would be highly damaging to profit.

Seriously for every player who got banned there probably are a thousand players who would have exploited enough to get banned if only they had known about the method.

The players who would have exploited had they know about the method will be there regardless if you ban exploiters or not. Nothing you can do about that. By banning exploiters however you can deter a few of them. They will still be in game but next time if they come across the exploit they might be afraid to take advantage of it for fear of being banned. Same thing with all the exploiters that profited in limited way like just using it 50 times instead of 200+

[Millimidget]

XPhiler, on 06 February 2013 - 02:16 PM, said:

When you compare something like any activity you do in the game and see it rewards 1g-2g per hour with something that rewards 1g in a few seconds and you come to the conclusion that 1g per second is not something the devs intended its not called divination it is called common sense.

Yes, and it's awful. I'd love to see them do something to make the game more fun in this regard, as all it has done is create the motivation to exploit anything and everything possible (or abusing a broken recipe, in this case).

This ban wave won't even be very effective, given the context of non-unilateral application of the ban wave, and the continued incentive to exploit (re: worst farming I've seen in an MMO ever).

[ReMarkable91]

XPhiler, on 06 February 2013 - 05:22 PM, said:

So you're honestly are telling me that out of literally tens of thousands of recipes you happened to pick one that could be exploited on the only 2 days out of 180 days the game has been out and you had to do 200+ runs (Anet state that no one who exploited less then 200 runs was perma banned)  to see the return on ectos? I wanna believe you but there are 2 things that nag at me.
Timing is one of them. Why wait 180 days to run such a research but more then that why pick an expensive recipe when you could have picked any rare recipe of any profession that you could conduct the same research in at a fraction of the price? As for if you could get a higher return using exotics instead of rare whats there even to test? rare cost a fraction of exotic and drop the same ectos at the same rate. The only unknown is if maybe exotics had a bigger drop rate but do you really need 200+ runs to find that out?

I cant judge, cant say thats not really how it went honestly. But you have to agree its sounds suspicious. If I had to guess you heard someone mention there was this exploit that you could get rich from and you tried it out not realizing they were talking of a different recipe but I might be wrong.

It is not that strange that I found the recipe since it was a new recipe so why not check out what the new recipes offer. And I didn't wait 180 days before doing some researches , just never with exotics before. Have done the same thing with rares over a 1000 times. And I know rares are cheaper but with rares u can't find the glob rate is exotics can u? Besides after 10 salvages I kinda found out the loss or profit after 100 salvages wouldn't be that big. And with costy research I refer to the fact I got banned not that I lost 2 G in the proces(wich is nothing).

To come to your wild guess that I saw it on a forum and used the wrong recipe is an big insult. Do you realy think I am that stupid too use the wrong recipe? Then at least come with an more believable version like that i saw on forums that mithril was probaly an exploit cause too high profit so tried orichalcum cause it wouldn't be banable cause low profit... Even though it's not true if ANet or anyone would come with that statement I wouldn't be insulted.

Some1 should have found the recipe without browsing forums to be the first to find it out... So why not me.. there were only a few new recipes... In fact I tried to make my own set for my engi as I stated in my previous posts and saw it was pretty cheap.

XPhiler, on 06 February 2013 - 05:31 PM, said:

I also said in multiple places that the amount of profit one made is irrelevant. If they exploited (successfully or not) then I am sorry but yes the ban was deserved. Fixing a bug like this isnt a 2 minute job. First you need to get the report and that was recieved in the weekend. Then it needs to be reproduced and analyzed. Then the fix needs to be create and tested. 2 days to issue a patch is very efficient I cant say for sure but imho they were working on it during the weekend.

No fixing the bug took them over a week in fact. They just disabled the content on that Monday too patch it a week later. But the ANet staff members that knew and worked on it during the weekend could have atleast made a statement on forums/twitter or anything not to touch new recipes cause there might be something wrong with it and they are currently working on it? But no the decided to read the questions and denie to response to them(in-game and on forums)
And I wasn't talking about that I made no profit means no exploit , I was trying to say that I couldn't have seen it was an exploit and it was fair to have my own conclusion to the recipe(intended) as in your conclusion that 2 % more wage probaly means a bonus.

[XPhiler]

Millimidget, on 06 February 2013 - 06:26 PM, said:

Yes, and it's awful. I'd love to see them do something to make the game more fun in this regard, as all it has done is create the motivation to exploit anything and everything possible (or abusing a broken recipe, in this case).

This ban wave won't even be very effective, given the context of non-unilateral application of the ban wave, and the continued incentive to exploit (re: worst farming I've seen in an MMO ever).

Personally I think this is actually one of the best MMO in regards to earning gold. How many MMOs do you know out there where there isnt a big disparity between what a level 1 earns and a max level character earns? Rampant inflation is whats bad not a difficulty to make substantial amounts of money. Besides at the end of the day there is really no difference, money is only a representative measure of value. If it takes say 2 hrs to gather the materials to build an exotic weapon that exotic weapon will be priced a bit more from the amount of money one makes playing 2 hrs of whatever game that is. In gw2 this would be around 2g. If you play a game where a max level player earns say 10 platinum per hour then that equivalent of exotic weapon will cost 20 platinum. Its as simple as that. The problem people have is an inability to deal with long term goals. It is not that people do not make enough gold per hour for sure. If new content is put in the game that changes the gain rate of gold from 1g per hour to 10g per hour a 2g exotic will start going for 20g and everyone will remain where they were before. with a big important difference. The market between level 80 and level 1 will die. No level 80 will bother to gather low level mats and sell them cause there would be no profit to be made unlike now where even selling copper is meaningful to a level 80 character.

[Gli]

raspberry jam, on 06 February 2013 - 04:19 PM, said:

But regardless of how many exploiters you ban, your player population will be on the size of a million players, and thus if the first statement is true, you'll have potential exploiters both before and after the bans. The only way to make sure that you won't have exploiters is to ban so many that you significantly reduce the size of the player population, which likely would be highly damaging to profit.

And regardless of how many bugs you fix or nip in the bud, the game remains a complex piece of software that's not used to run critical processes, so more bugs will always turn up as the software evolves into new builds and new versions. The only way to make sure you won't have bugs or exploits appear, is to put so much work in the production of the software that it would be impossible to make a profit.

See? Both issues have the same bottom line. Which is why it only makes sense to tackle both problems in a similar, reasonable way, instead of in an unfeasible, pipe-dreamy perfect way.

If you have no exploiters at all in your population, you needn't worry about exploits. If you have no exploits at all in you software, you needn't worry about exploiters. Since both are present, you deal with both. You can't get rid of every exploiter or potential exploiter, but you remove those that you feel you must. You can't make a bugfree game, but you try to fix it as you go along. Both add to the totality of the gaming environment in their own way.

[XPhiler]

ReMarkable91, on 06 February 2013 - 06:34 PM, said:

It is not that strange that I found the recipe since it was a new recipe so why not check out what the new recipes offer. And I didn't wait 180 days before doing some researches , just never with exotics before. Have done the same thing with rares over a 1000 times. And I know rares are cheaper but with rares u can't find the glob rate is exotics can u? Besides after 10 salvages I kinda found out the loss or profit after 100 salvages wouldn't be that big. And with costy research I refer to the fact I got banned not that I lost 2 G in the proces(wich is nothing).

To come to your wild guess that I saw it on a forum and used the wrong recipe is an big insult. Do you realy think I am that stupid too use the wrong recipe? Then at least come with an more believable version like that i saw on forums that mithril was probaly an exploit cause too high profit so tried orichalcum cause it wouldn't be banable cause low profit... Even though it's not true if ANet or anyone would come with that statement I wouldn't be insulted.

Some1 should have found the recipe without browsing forums to be the first to find it out... So why not me.. there were only a few new recipes... In fact I tried to make my own set for my engi as I stated in my previous posts and saw it was pretty cheap.




No fixing the bug took them over a week in fact. They just disabled the content on that Monday too patch it a week later. But the ANet staff members that knew and worked on it during the weekend could have atleast made a statement on forums/twitter or anything not to touch new recipes cause there might be something wrong with it and they are currently working on it? But no the decided to read the questions and denie to response to them(in-game and on forums)
And I wasn't talking about that I made no profit means no exploit , I was trying to say that I couldn't have seen it was an exploit and it was fair to have my own conclusion to the recipe(intended) as in your conclusion that 2 % more wage probably means a bonus.

Actually as far as i know, might be wrong the drop rate of ecto between rare and exotic is exactly the same since it actually depends on the salvage kit. that being said there is a difference in that rare can drop a max of 3 ecto and exotic can drop a maximum of 5. Cost to benefit ratio though rare is more profitable.

Actually the senario I thought of was far less insulting that the one you came up with. I thought it was more something along the lines of hearing part of the story something akin to if you craft and salvage the new recipes you can make a ton of money as the ectos you get far outwiegh the cost. I was working under the premise you didnt know what recipe it was and not that you knew what the recipe was but still used the wrong one.

There are a few recipes? just for wintersday there were 275 new recipes added to the game how is that a few?
Anyhow I never said you're lying, its possible what you said is true and you were just unlucky. If thats the case and you truely have a history of crafting and salvaging large amount of items I would have told that to support rather then the fact you used orichalcum instead of mythril.


To be fair if you had to compare the return from an orichalcum wintersday jewel with a regular jewel the return you get even if it doesnt result in a profit it would still be far larger then 2%

lets crunch some numbers:
a typical earing required: an orichalcum hook and an orichalcum setting + 5x exquisite jewels
the 5x exquisite jewels consist of 5x ecto, 5x orichalcum filigree, 5x raw jewel

the snowflake one required orichalcum hook and an orichalcum setting + 1x exquisite jewels
the exquisite jewel required 1 ecto, 1 snowflake an 1 orichalcum filgree

salvaging the real thing gave you back 0 - 5 ecto, some orichalcum and 80% of get a jewel back
salvaging the snowflake one gave you back 0 -5 ecto, some orichalcum and 80% of getting essentailly all the jewels back.

all things being equal the snowflake one was still 300% as profitable as the real deal at least, right?

A snowflake