What happens when a Senior GM says it's not an exploit

[TheDreamr]

Random EVE-O forum hopping turned up this - apologies if you've already seen it, but it's news to me.

Want to be able to magically take your ISK out of a trade window and let the other person accept without seeing what you did? Its not an exploit, according to the Senior GMs, so I will post the full details here! Have fun; it is completely impossible to avoid the scam unless the victim knows specifically what the scam is and doesn't use the trade window, or uses it in a specific manner to avoid it!

1. Go to a laggy trade hub system. Jita, Motsu, Saila, anything works. It can't be too laggy; marginally laggy is enough. Not like its hard at all to find a decently laggy system.

2. Watch local. There will invariably be someone selling valuable items, in fact, there will probably be a lot of people.

3. Convo someone selling something. Make sure you're in the "hub station" of the system so they can trade you.

4. Make an offer for it. When they say yes, open a trade window they'll put in the item. Wait a little bit, and put in the money. Say "Accept".

5. Remove the money as soon as possible after saying "accept." If you screw up, you either get the item for a reasonable price (ohnos) or you have to convo the next person.

6. If the system is laggy, the other player WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SEE that the money has been removed until after they click accept! The delay is too long for their screen to update in time... and bam, you got their item for free!

The trick is that you remove the money before they click accept, but they don't see the change in the money until after they click accept. This isn't hard at all to do with the kind of lag present these days throughout EVE. The result is that the person clicks accept to Trade A, but actually agrees to Trade B, which is not the same as Trade A (in particular, with the ISK removed).

Repeat as necessary until CCP realizes that their trade system as currently made is completely useless and miserably exploitable. Isn't it fun to scam when your victim never even sees the scam until after they accept what appears to be a perfectly valid trade? Laughing

Link: http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=517991

So far they've been rambling for a little over a day and are up to 8 pages, with a comically obvious lack of CCP response - forum mods can't close the thread because it's within all the rules, and GM's won't offer comment until they can get a "big gun" in to say whether it's an exploit or not.


You have to wonder just what is going wrong within CCP these days to produce such a slow + disorganised mess of decision making and then hide behind "we don't discuss GM actions" whenever they're asked to explain themselves.

[Fordel]

Exploit early and exploit often?  :-D

[Ratadm]

Sad that this is the only way you can get any attention a problem so that it's fixed quickly.

[Kamen]

It has finally been officially deemed to be an exploit, and the thread title changed by DS after Oveur's post at 2007.05.11 11:20:00 overruling his GM's.

Took 'em long enough.

Good news is DS and anybody else who got burned by this can repetition and get their money back now.  Additional good news is a more secure system is coming soon.

[Reg]

So it looks like Doc Twister was right all along huh?

[MahrinSkel]

He was always right.  He was just so much of a dick, you hated being on the same side with him. 

--Dave (And the fact that UO was always 6 months+ behind on fixing even the most public exploits made it all an excercise in futility)

[Furiously]

I'm not sure - I wouldn't have know I wasn't having fun due to exploits in UO if it weren't for him.

[Morat20]

I'm not sure - I wouldn't have know I wasn't having fun due to exploits in UO if it weren't for him.

The conversation doesn't get fun until you get into an argument over whether it's an exploit or a legitimate game mechanic. I found mysefl surrounded by a bunch of flaming morons who obviously can't tell the difference, and a few enlightened folks who agree with me 100%. :)

In all seriousness, I think the last massive flamefest I participated in on that sort of topic was in regards to the FD/trap PvP mechanic of Hunters back before 2.0. I simply don't play at the right levels of EVE to personally deal with the exploit/legit game mechanic.

Ship bumping -- as described here -- seems like an exploit, though. EVE's design seems to be "Inside the POS shields = 'safe'" and the bowling for battleships technique just exploiting the fact that collision seems to be resolved ahead of shield interactions.

[ajax34i]

EVE's "is it an exploit or not" discussions always get complicated by the fact that the game is PvP and CCP sometimes prefers to let the players police themselves, and so some things only get a "not nice" label, instead of an "exploit" label.

[Morat20]

EVE's "is it an exploit or not" discussions always get complicated by the fact that the game is PvP and CCP sometimes prefers to let the players police themselves, and so some things only get a "not nice" label, instead of an "exploit" label.

Yeah -- and some are grey areas. Take the freighters getting downed in high-sec by suicide Domis, because they drop stuff now. Exploit? Not nice? Desired game mechanic?

I've honestly got no idea what CCP thinks of that. On the one hand, it fits into the hard-core PvP. On the other hand, it's pushing PvP into the high-sec spaces that CCP (and EVE) needs to allow the game to continue to flourish. The original idea was that fighting in high-sec required a war-dec.

[ajax34i]

Yes, some are indeed grey areas.  And, sometimes CCP decides based on what helps their wallet, rather than based on what's morally right or fair or fun.

[Ratadm]

The freighter thing is obviously a not nice thing.  Suicide gankers in high sec have existed for a long time.  Used to be that they were a couple caracals fitted with heavy missiles.  Other incarnations have been battle ships with smart bombs.  Both those just targeted haulers generally maybe marcro miners etc.  Only thing you weren't allowed to do was recyle alts in the case of the caracals (they only took like 5 days to train up).

[TheDreamr]

As far as I'm aware freighters dropping loot had always been on the cards, but they only recently worked out how to do it without creating stupid amounts of lag or killing the node.

The original idea was that fighting in high-sec required a war-dec.

Which is still true ... except that putting a freighter flying alt into an NPC corp and using them to move cargo breaks almost all of the high-sec PvP and war-dec mechanic.

[Slayerik]

As far as I'm aware freighters dropping loot had always been on the cards, but they only recently worked out how to do it without creating stupid amounts of lag or killing the node.

The original idea was that fighting in high-sec required a war-dec.

Which is still true ... except that putting a freighter flying alt into an NPC corp and using them to move cargo breaks almost all of the high-sec PvP and war-dec mechanic.

Point goes to Dreamr.