Neverwinter: PC

Haus

Haus

<Silver Donator>
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Yeah, I can see possibly a day rollback. But even if they do they'll have to refund any zen purchases within that time. They can remove the AD which were in the exploiters possession, but I don't see how they'll undo "cat-a-palooza". Part of me would think the only way to level the playing field would be give everybody a cat, but they love people spending money on them WAY TOO MUCH to do that.
 
kudos

kudos

<Banned>
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Funny, I was just installing this game and about to give it another shot. Now I gotta wait for these faggots to bring the servers back up.
 
Caliane

Caliane

Avatar of War Slayer
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As an aside, I think the onslaught of online games. real money transactions, etc.
These gaming companies need to change some shit.
"exploit early, and exploit often" needs to be cracked down on. Its been the mantra for too long. Too many companies have been too light on exploits. Gamers have gotten to the point, they feel like they missed out if they didn't take part in exploits. Retribution has always been far less then the advantages of taking part. they need to put the fear of bannings, maybe even lawsuits in some cases back into players(particularly real money situations). make players have to stop and think if they are really willing to take the chance.


1. Stop pretending its not a problem. Half the time companies try keeping exploits quiet. deleting threads, banning people that talk about it. Exploits often go under the radar for MONTHS before they suddenly blow up into the well known state. during that time, a select few abuse the hell out of them. and the company keeps the lid on them. to prevent a PR issue. More likely to get banned for giving details of how to do the exploit in the forums, then actually doing the exploit in most games.
2. So be transparent about them. add it to tutorial/loading menus or something. for real. If you have an online game, proper code of conduct for exploits should be part of the forced gameplay in some way. not buried into a EULA. The game should stop, and tell you. if you find an exploit, report it. discontinue that activity that caused it. or you will be subject to account forfeit. Any game with an online economy, needs to have an extra layer.
 
kudos

kudos

<Banned>
2,363
695
Caliane_sl said:
As an aside, I think the onslaught of online games. real money transactions, etc.
These gaming companies need to change some shit.
"exploit early, and exploit often" needs to be cracked down on. Its been the mantra for too long. Too many companies have been too light on exploits. Gamers have gotten to the point, they feel like they missed out if they didn't take part in exploits. Retribution has always been far less then the advantages of taking part. they need to put the fear of bannings, maybe even lawsuits in some cases back into players(particularly real money situations). make players have to stop and think if they are really willing to take the chance.


1. Stop pretending its not a problem. Half the time companies try keeping exploits quiet. deleting threads, banning people that talk about it. Exploits often go under the radar for MONTHS before they suddenly blow up into the well known state. during that time, a select few abuse the hell out of them. and the company keeps the lid on them. to prevent a PR issue. More likely to get banned for giving details of how to do the exploit in the forums, then actually doing the exploit in most games.
2. So be transparent about them. add it to tutorial/loading menus or something. for real. If you have an online game, proper code of conduct for exploits should be part of the forced gameplay in some way. not buried into a EULA. The game should stop, and tell you. if you find an exploit, report it. discontinue that activity that caused it. or you will be subject to account forfeit. Any game with an online economy, needs to have an extra layer.
Click to expand...
Why the fuck would you ever think suing your customers for exploiting virtual bullshit is a good idea? Nobody will play your game out of fear they may accidentally do something. Never mind that suing someone over a video game is fucking stupid.
 
T

TecKnoe

Molten Core Raider
3,182
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kudos_sl said:
Why the fuck would you ever think suing your customers for exploiting virtual bullshit is a good idea? Nobody will play your game out of fear they may accidentally do something. Never mind that suing someone over a video game is fucking stupid.
Click to expand...
mmmm if an individual is making money off said exploit then yes theres a reason/good idea, they are ruining the economy and shit for other LEGIT players who dont look out for broken shit and abuse it to get ahead in pixels believe it or not but most people play for fun, and d3 is a shit example but after that gold exploit put the final nail in that coffin for me.
 
kudos

kudos

<Banned>
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TecKnoe_sl said:
mmmm if an individual is making money off said exploit then yes theres a reason/good idea, they are ruining the economy and shit for other LEGIT players who dont look out for broken shit and abuse it to get ahead in pixels believe it or not but most people play for fun, and d3 is a shit example but after that gold exploit put the final nail in that coffin for me.
Click to expand...
Exploits are part of online gaming. If you cannot deal with it then don't play.
 
Qhue

Qhue

Tranny Chaser
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Latest update:

Update 4:00PM Pacific: The Neverwinter Team is working to address this issue still including a very thorough investigation. More information will come with our next update.

I can only imagine how tense that meeting is
 
D

Draegan_sl

2 Minutes Hate
10,034
3
I rooting for a complete wipe because that would be hilarious. Also would piss me off since I don't think I could level again.
 
Ambiturner

Ambiturner

Ssraeszha Raider
16,040
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TecKnoe_sl said:
mmmm if an individual is making money off said exploit then yes theres a reason/good idea, they are ruining the economy and shit for other LEGIT players who dont look out for broken shit and abuse it to get ahead in pixels believe it or not but most people play for fun, and d3 is a shit example but after that gold exploit put the final nail in that coffin for me.
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No, he's right. It's a really fucking stupid idea. It's not against any laws and you would never, ever win a retarded lawsuit like that.

I mean wow, the level of retard it takes to think its good business for a company to sue its customers because the company fucked up.
 
Ninen

Ninen

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
2,261
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Well, in a perfect world, code would be glorious and always bug free. Any bugs that somehow DID creep in, due to data corruption or w/e wouldn't be exploited by the players. And thus both sides meet in the middle.

Obviously this isn't a magically perfect world. And they can only work on the code side.

I wish to all the gods that there was a way to train your playerbase to not be asshats. But between lack ability to implement in-game controls, fear over driving away customers, general "customer is always right" United States mentality, our growing "it's only illegal if you get caught, and then you simply pay your fines and move on to your next scheme" trend; civil and civic mindedness (in games) are fucked.

still, knowing all this, it really surprises me that games don't have robust, long term logging, with automatic flagging of strange behavior. It can be as simple as "earn more than X exp/min", " X coin/hour gain", "highest/lowest auction house listing prices in the last day". It may take a week or two of tweaking the numbers so that normal transactions don't flood the flagged list, but all of those, at worst give you solid insights into how your world is working, and at best highlight potential shitstorms.

"Why are we seeing negative number bids in the AH?"
"Why are we seeing all these solo runs on top level dungeons?"
"Why are we seeing this 800000% over the average player spike in cash/hour earned for these 4 players ?"
 
D

Dahlrek_sl

shitlord
24
0
Yeah, you're almost certainly never going to see an actual lawsuit like that. If laws were broken then they might refer it to the proper authorities, who would probably not do anything. It might be fun to think about, but unless they're stealing personal information or real money (not billions of licenses for virtual money), the worst is probably a ban. In the mind of an exploiter, the ban is expected, it's just a competition to see how much you can get away with before it happens. This (and terrible programmers, producers and QA) is why we can't have nice things.
 
Qhue

Qhue

Tranny Chaser
7,506
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Ninen_sl said:
still, knowing all this, it really surprises me that games don't have robust, long term logging, with automatic flagging of strange behavior. It can be as simple as "earn more than X exp/min", " X coin/hour gain", "highest/lowest auction house listing prices in the last day". It may take a week or two of tweaking the numbers so that normal transactions don't flood the flagged list, but all of those, at worst give you solid insights into how your world is working, and at best highlight potential shitstorms.

"Why are we seeing negative number bids in the AH?"
"Why are we seeing all these solo runs on top level dungeons?"
"Why are we seeing this 800000% over the average player spike in cash/hour earned for these 4 players ?"
Click to expand...
I can only guess that Perfect World, having been at this dance for awhile now with Champions and Star Trek Online, figured that their existing infrastructure had already been tested and proven and thus did not feel the need for such analysis. Not to mention that parsing all that log data does take up more than a bit of computational resources... I could easily see that sort of parsing being the first thing that goes when push comes to shove with the contingency plan being to make sure the logs are robust for later examination in a case just like this.

Your point is quite valid though, it was only the hoi paloi getting ahold of this exploit that caused it to become a big deal in the past 18 hours. It has been around since day 1 and obviously some people had been quietly profiting from it for some time. Log analysis of this type would allow you to be a LOT more proactive rather than reactive. With a free-to-play title what risk does a given player have? Do all your hardcore exploiting on a dummy account and launder the cash through other means to get it to your real characters.
 
L

Lenwen

Silver Squire
212
0
So, I gotta ask, anyone on mindflayer got a extra cat?

On a more serious note, the people on the official forums are hilarious, especially the ones asking for a full wipe. I honestly don't think I'll bother playing again if they do wipe. I got to wonder though, what is going through the heads of perfect world or cryptic, whoever is in charge. They knew about these exploits for weeks, yet never did anything about them until now.
 
Haus

Haus

<Silver Donator>
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Ninen_sl said:
Well, in a perfect world, code would be glorious and always bug free. Any bugs that somehow DID creep in, due to data corruption or w/e wouldn't be exploited by the players. And thus both sides meet in the middle.

Obviously this isn't a magically perfect world. And they can only work on the code side.

I wish to all the gods that there was a way to train your playerbase to not be asshats. But between lack ability to implement in-game controls, fear over driving away customers, general "customer is always right" United States mentality, our growing "it's only illegal if you get caught, and then you simply pay your fines and move on to your next scheme" trend; civil and civic mindedness (in games) are fucked.

still, knowing all this, it really surprises me that games don't have robust, long term logging, with automatic flagging of strange behavior. It can be as simple as "earn more than X exp/min", " X coin/hour gain", "highest/lowest auction house listing prices in the last day". It may take a week or two of tweaking the numbers so that normal transactions don't flood the flagged list, but all of those, at worst give you solid insights into how your world is working, and at best highlight potential shitstorms.

"Why are we seeing negative number bids in the AH?"
"Why are we seeing all these solo runs on top level dungeons?"
"Why are we seeing this 800000% over the average player spike in cash/hour earned for these 4 players ?"
Click to expand...
TO put it in simpler (or possibly more complex) terms (depending on your technical forte). Have every transaction (AH, trades, Zen Store, AD store, Zen/AD and AD/Zen) generate a syslog event, funnel them all to a big ass syslog repository, then slap Splunk on it and go to town with business and behavioral analytics.
 
Cinge

Cinge

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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I'm curious why the hell you could even list something on the AH at a negative value, just makes no sense.
 
Pyros

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
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Man there's been so many largescale exploits in this game. Excluding the obvious foundry shit, there was the turn in the same quest being shared(really?) to hit 60 in an hour or two, do the same thing to get a large amount of crafting material(longer however as you need to reclear the instance but you might be able to cascade with multiple accounts), killing anything in one hit with a guardian fighter and in some rare cases a CW, which led to farming endgame bosses solo/in small groups, killing the same boss multiple time in a row without reclearing the instance(pirate king from what I've read) and now the obvious one, the AH exploit. Just needs a dupe and I think they have it all.
 
Caliane

Caliane

Avatar of War Slayer
14,715
10,295
kudos_sl said:
Why the fuck would you ever think suing your customers for exploiting virtual bullshit is a good idea? Nobody will play your game out of fear they may accidentally do something. Never mind that suing someone over a video game is fucking stupid.
Click to expand...
go to vegas. "exploit" a flaw in a slot machine and see what happens to you. its both outright illegal, and the fear of what the casino itself will do to you, is a pretty big deterrent.

no one in the scenarios are retarded. the game company is going to up and decide to sue for some guy accidentally duping once. there is no, oops, I did something illegal.
They have logs. As with GW2, when someone dupes 20000 times, then sells in on an AH. and especially when a real money AH comes into play. dont use silly strawman, of fear of accidents.

There needs to be some fear.

some serious hardline lines and bannings would be nice. most games don't even do that, and a culture of apathy, and again, the exploit early and often mantra. Gamers know they are screwed if they DON'T take part in exploits. that is a problem.
bans are not really enough though. as noted. the hardliners, don't care. either just get a new account, or move on to another game. its not like there is only 1 game around.
(which is why the hard rollback wont happen. as bad as a ruined economy is. a full rollback, everyone will just move on.)
 
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