f13.net

A lot of people are complaining about being unfairly banned, so Arenanet is going on the offensive.  They created a Reddit thread (http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/yxx3m/suspensions_for_offensive_names_and_inappropriate/) offering players to post their names and they will show why they were banned.  It's pretty funny to watch people be publicly called out.

Other side to the story though is that it seems a lot of accounts are getting hacked by gold sellers.

I love the ones where they say Name ok, Chat not ok and then post a sentence or two from the chat log that got the guy a time out.  The large number of "your account was hacked by gold sellers" responses is somewhat scary.  Thankfully I've always used unique passwords for the games I play and the forums/community sites I join.  I've always been paranoid that way.

I love the whole thing. I love them taking the offensive. I love the "oh come on, we're gamers, we can tell the difference between someone saying fuck when they get killed and someone spamming it constantly." Too many companies ignore this stuff or they retreat into legalism.

I agree about the hacks. I actually changed my email on the account as a result of the thread to one that i don't use for other games or message boards.

I think my favorite was this sarcastic post by one of the users.

There's a nice account feature now that let's you change your account name (I.e. your sign on email address). It was awkward for me during the BWE cause I was signing on with my old GW account email even though when I created my GW2 account I used a new email address.

As much as I loathe Reddit, that thread is gold.

Banned* for reporting somebody :awesome_for_real:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/yxx3m/suspensions_for_offensive_names_and_inappropriate/c5ztbq1

* and unbanned after posting to that thread

Christ I hate reddit's layout. I am sure if I frequented there it wouldn't be as bad, but damn thing is a mess.

Ok, this has me off the fence. I am buying and playing this game. This alone is worth supporting.

That thread is just awesome! I knew there was a reason I loved ANet. Out of curiosity, anyone know if Dhuum pops up and hits them with the Ban Scythe?

That is freakin' gold. Awesome on Arenanet not only for doing it, but talking like a gamer. The chat logging is just awesome. Stupid prepubescent kids  :grin:

That thread is hilarious, and a genius move by Arenanet.

They've realised that it's aggravating when the response to an offensive name/behaviour/chat ticket is nothing but "Thanks, we'll look into it".

http://www.facebook.com/GuildWars2/posts/10151088714814209?notif_t=feed_comment


On the upside, he didn't say 'would of'...

While I do find all this amazing and I totally applaud ANet for enforcing the naming code, I do think maybe they should have given people a heads up somehow. Maybe a quick note during character creation "such and such type of names will be enforced", since just about every other MMO company has been so lax on it.

Fuck that. You know that when you scream racial slurs in chat that it's not acceptable. You know that naming yourself Cockstab Rape Power isn't acceptable. Someone, someday, was going to call you on your shittiness. Other assholes being worried about their sub model too much to ban you without warning doesn't mean that basic commonsense shouldn't apply.

The rules were pretty clearly stated in the documents you were supposed to agree to before you could log in.  I'm pretty sure that one more pop up that said "We really mean it and will enforce the rules you just agreed to with an iron fist." would have been clicked through just as fast the stuff preceding it with nearly 0 impact on people's behavior.  Plus most of the dipshits are only getting 3 day timeouts, which is probably a much more effective lesson on proper naming and chat than anything that a player clicks through at the start of the game.

This is actually part of their business model- if they can find permabans for enough asshats they get to keep their $65 (plus RMTs!) and don't have them clogging up their servers or CS reporting queues. Win/Win.

The "rules" are informally in place everywhere else in ones life.

There has been a lot of scrutiny of the gaming community for sexist, racist, and homophobic behavior in the last six months. I'm hoping this marks a change for more than one game.

I welcome anything that promotes that you really can't just say whatever your want and behave however you want in an online setting.  Some shit is out of bounds.

It was hilarious seeing a guy named "mrjizzinmypants" get renamed right in front my eyes in TSW.  We were doing the same group quest in Egypt and decided to team up.  His response, "This is bullshit, they say fuck in the cut scenes!".  Yes, it's the exact same thing, dude.  Decent group mate outside of his general lack of maturity.

This is just not true at all in my experience. I report names in nearly every game I play, and they get changed.

In CoH/CoV they are/were (haven't played in a while) especially fast at this as they were sued once by Marvel for copyright and trademark infringement.

Very different stance then WoW's.  I love it.

Deleted my alt with a name which might offend a female someone who is well versed in 16th and 17th century slang just to be safe.

I had not even started doing anything on the alt but, hey. Never hurts.

 :why_so_serious:

Look, I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, I love it. But I do think that a few of the names are pretty borderline for a 72 hour ban with no warning. Yelling slurs and horrible names I am fine with. I report them my self, but I still fell one more warning window would be enough to discourage a few of the one the fence types.

If they chose the name in the first place, they either knew it was risque or they didn't have enough sense to know it's a problem.  Now they know.  They can suck it up.

They say repeatedly in that thread that they don't give 72 hour bans for bad names, the next time you log in you are just forced to change the name, then you can play.

I think if they're lenient towards borderline cases, you very quickly get a bunch of barracks lawyers trying to hover at the borderline. If anything even with a whiff of nastiness brings down a name change or banhammer, folks steer clear.

I remember back at the beginning of vanilla WoW, Barrens chat-type stuff actually could get you banned or suspended. That didn't last very long. The only problem with what Arenanet's doing is that they'll have to keep doing it steadily for a while (the banning/suspending/name changing) because the folks that think that naming themselves "Jew Death Oven" is hilarious will keep testing to see if they can get away with it. That's pretty much what has happened in any game that tries to draw the line: if you don't keep investing time and money in maintaining the line, eventually the Hobbsean Nightmare will happen.

According to this video, it's a bannable offense to buy crafting items with Karma, craft with items you just purchased, and sell the result to a vendor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxb-anRWHrA

Guy has got quite the ego if he thinks ArenaNet was actually watching his stream to detect he was using that "exploit".

More likely he exploiting one of the broken DE and was converting the karma to cash

Yeah, I doubt it. From the comments it seems that he found something that was vendoring for far more than it should have (like, obviously so) and copped a temp ban for exploiting it. That's pretty normal.

Getting six gold for spending ten thousand karma doesn't seem outragous to me.

It is, considering I had 12k karma by 50, and 1.6 gold.

He didn't get banned for using the exploit.  He got banned for revealing it.

Also more hilarity:  http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/z3pzz/permanently_banned_for_buying_a_few_21_karma/

For those who don't know the exploit was they were buying high level items for 21 karma a piece then transmuting them into legendaries.

Yeah, that figures. It wasn't "I bought karma items then salvaged them for cash", it was "I bought a blatantly bugged item in bulk to exploit a bug and I'm SHOCKED to find I copped a ban for it"

I spent about 6k karma buying shoes and salvaging them for crafting mats last night.

edit: I do like Anet's response to people going "I did it once, and ate a perma ban. You suck!", they just ask for a character name and will respond with what the ban was for. After the first thread, people seem to have stopped responding with the character names as often. I've always been leery of the "I was banned for nothing" posts, now I'm pretty much convinced they're 99% made up bullshit.

Yea nobody is admitting their player names in that thread now.   What's truly fail though are the amount of people who flat out admit they massively exploited it yet still claim a perma ban is too harsh.  Then the morons saying botting is a worse offense.

Amateurs. If you're gonna exploit, at least do it in a game where you could make real cash (D3)

That reddit thread is the most hilarious fucking thing I have read in 12 years of MMOgaming.  People just getting wrecked by Arenanet.  I love that they are coming down hard on player names, chat and exploits, about time an MMO did this right.  Love the guy who had both accounts terminated, he exploited 300+ on one and 250+ on the other lol 

Player: Hey I only did it like 60 times
Arenanet:  287

BAHAHAHAHA!

I really don't know why MMO devs haven't done this until now. It's not like 16-year old scumbag stealing Mommy's credit card to play a MMO is going to pursue legal action if the devs say in a public forum "You violated the TOS by spamming passages from 'Mein Kampf' for three hours in Stormwind last night". Instead the previous norm has been to let guys like this play the martyr on the forums for days on end, getting the whole playerbase worked up with their tale of woe.

This is how you make culture, really: by telling people what's really going on, and by sticking to your guns on enforcing the minimum decencies that you want to see.

I'm not a fan of arena.net considering anyone to have bought a single low karma item an exploiter.  That's bad, bad customer service, and is basically blaming fair players for your ineptitude.

Bugs happen. If it's a borderline case, I get it. Don't be too harsh. If it's obvious, or if you do it nearly 300 times, fuck you.

Exactly, I don't think I've seen a case in that thread where someone bought 1 item and was banned.  Maybe it happened but I tend to doubt it.  Even buying a second one to 'verify' the bug probably wouldn't get you banned, but the just testing excuse expires quickly and is probably completely dead by the time you are in the teens.

Does the whole charm/dignity/aggression stuff mean anything? I found an npc that just pumped the score of one all the way up and drained the other two.

Read the Reddit thread.The banhammer came down most unforgivingly on assholes who bought hundreds or thousands of them. As it should. In most other MMOs, even when the hole gets plugged, the people who ran the exploit hard usually not only escape a ban, they get to keep their ill-gotten gains. I remember the AC1 devs taking the position on their forums not long after launch that if you found a bad exploit, that was the devs' fault, not the players' fault, and they wouldn't punish you. Which immediately led to an epidemic of people deliberately crashing sub-servers to exploit a dupe bug, and another group of exploiters looking for roll-over bugs to get massive stacks of cash. Even when the bugs got fixed, much of that wealth stayed with the players--and it trained a whole generation of players to go from game to game looking for similar advantages. (SWG, for example, where there was a factory bug that let people hit max skill with weaponcrafting, etc., in three days after launch--after they fixed the bug, they let all those players keep their skills). But I think flagging ALL wealth gained through an exploit is a good idea--because that's the precursor to selectively rolling back all exploit-gained wealth, small and large. Which is the only way to keep people from relentlessly looking for exploits, in the end: if there's a fairly good chance that even if you're not punished, you'll have everything you got that way taken back, then it hardly seems worth the risk and trouble. It only becomes a problem if the flagging starts hitting completely legitimate transactions or activities.

Here's the post that pissed me off.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/z44ml/karma_weapons_exploit/c61b9gx

Calling those that bought one item cheaters and exploiters is horseshit.  Buying one or two of these items for personal use wasn't an exploit in my opinion, and absolutely not ban or suspension-worthy in any reasonable way.  Mentioning them in the same breath as those that bought thousands of item for resell is absurd.  

They're flagging a one-time purchase *as* an exploit. Which is true, even if it wasn't intentional. That's the point: if you say, "Ok, we won't flag any purchase under 15, just purchases over that", you know what happens? Exploiting guilds figure out what the threshold is, coordinate activities under the threshold, and recirculate or launder whatever gains they make. If you want to take money or items out of an MMO economy that you deem stem from a bug or unintentional feature, you have to flag every single copper that came into the economy through the exploit, whatever the intent or awareness behind any given player's actions. If there's an item out there that is crazy OP by accident, you have to take every single one out of the economy, even if some of the people using it are just 13-year olds who bought it because they thought it looked cool and didn't have the faintest idea it was OP or bugged.

If you want a sense of why they have to be relentless about this if they're determined to stop it, look at something like the guy who did it 1,034 times and still says it's unfair that he was permabanned. "I don't agree that first time offenses should be met with a permaban, yes. That's pretty standard in the mmo market. However, their rules are their rules, I can't argue against that," says the exploiter. E.g., this is someone who has learned that you usually get away with it, and that even when you're permabanned, if you're quick enough to launder or circulate the gains, you can usually get back much of what you stole from guildies or collaborators when you come back under another account name. I really appreciate the zero-tolerance approach here.

"If you want to take money or items out of an MMO economy that you deem stem from a bug or unintentional feature, you have to flag every single copper that came into the economy through the exploit, whatever the intent or awareness behind any given player's actions. If there's an item out there that is crazy OP by accident, you have to take every single one out of the economy, even if some of the people using it are just 13-year olds who bought it because they thought it looked cool and didn't have the faintest idea it was OP or bugged. "  

I certainly agree that they need to rectify the situation, delete purchased items, etc.  However, their tone in this case should be "We fucked up, our bad."  Instead of "if you bought one of underpriced items these you are a horrible cheater."  The player doesn't deserve to be blamed in the circumstance quoted above, nor do they deserve to be labeled a cheater if they bought one or two of these items.  

It kinda was, though. Buying one or a set of them, they were obviously not correctly priced. They were listed as 21 karma. A crude salvage kit in the newbie zones is 28 karma. It's not something you should ban for if they just bought for personal use, but they should get pretty stern warnings about abuse of bugs leading to suspension or termination.

This isn't some really odd scenario where something just happened to work out in your favor and you don't know that secretly the boss was bugged and didn't use half his abilities because you were standing on a ramp. It was blatantly wrong, and people took advantage of it.

So we're basically arguing over maybe hurt feelings. Big boy pants, wear them.

There's no bug being abused.  They were mispriced items, but it's not the job of the player to determine whether items are mispriced.  If the item was listed as 1000 karma and sold for 21, then there's a bug being abused.


I'm arguing over what I consider a disgraceful way to treat your customers.  Anyways, continue the circlejerk.

Um, an item being listed for 1/1000 of its proper cost is most certainly a bug.  If it was listed for 0, would you still say it wasn't?  It basically was 0.  I have like 5000 karma on a level 20 guy, anyone who's been catassing has waaaay more than that.

They're treating their customers as though the actions they take have an effect on others who play the game.  Because they do.  It fucks up the economy when stuff is generated out of basically thin air, regardless of if it was a dozen or a hundred, because it was multiplied by thousands of people doing it.

I personally find their reaction to this refreshing and promising instead of the usual 'blah blah we'll rollback, don't do it again'.   It was obviously wrong and it's analogous to going 200 mph on a deserted highway.  Just because no one is watching you at the time doesn't mean it isn't wrong and if you do get caught, you're damn well going to be punished.

It's telling players to think and take some responsibility for their actions.  They're being up front about it and setting expectations for the rest of the life of the game.

Go ArenaNet!  <cheerleader>

I read that suspensions were handed out to players buying > 40, and bans to players buying > 1000.  These were players likely knowing they were taking advantage of something and ran straight to the vendor, guessing there would be no real punishment.

So I have to worry about being banned for buying a single item off of a vendor now?  If you bought a hundred or whatever, fine you knew it was a bug, but you guys are going way over the line of putting the onus on the player for buying and using a single upgrade.  It's absurd that I now have to look at an npc vendor and try to figure out if arenanet fucked up or if the prices are correct.

Here are a few ways I could explain away the low price and assume they knew what they were doing, just off the top of my head.
- It is a reward for reaching a certain level.
- I unlocked it for exploring the city I bought it in.
- It is priced low because I'm only supposed to buy it if I accidently deleted or chose a different personal story quest reward wrong.
- It is temporary like all the buffs you can buy.
- Assume that the item is only cosmetic in nature like city clothes.
- Maybe it is just a transmog skin.
- There are about a hundred items in the game that when used just change your action bar, it must be priced so low because that's what this does and it is as worthless as those wooden planks I keep on accidently picking up.

This is Arenanet's mistake and banning or threatening to ban players for buying and using one item is retarded.

I think some people are misunderstanding.  They're just telling people after the fact that they know who you are and that you're expected to delete the stuff.   It's not an official warning on your account or anything.

Imagine you bought and equipped one item assuming Arenanet knew what they were doing, then read thier post.
You just called a cheater, exploiter told that you are a very bad person and that you should delete something that is a result of their mistake.  I for one would demand my fucking 24 karma back since it wasn't my error.

Also, fuck them for being so incompetent that they have to use god damn reddit instead of their own forums or the game itself.  We are expected to go to some third party website for critical news and warnings about how we might be banned due to ingame bugs?

Agreed.

I have to admit, I loved the way they were handling the CS on Reddit.  So much, that I debated checking the game out for that alone.


...until I read this, where they took a sharp 180 and floored it.  Did they hire Milo from EQ or something?

I am fine with this.  People get butt hurt way too easy.

They've done no such thing.

Christ, nobody has been banned for one item. Overreaction, thy name is internet. I can't believe we're still getting our underwear in a twist over the world 'exploit', it's 2012. An exploit does not have to be intentional to be an exploit, and an accidental exploit doesn't make you a cheater. I still don't really understand how people can have so much ego tied up in these things that they get personally insulted by these general messages.

Then again I felt and still feel that way about all the people howling about Ghostcrawler.

Straight up.

Though I completely agree with the absurdity of using Reddit as your main communication vehicle for serious shit. Seriously, get the forums up.

Exactly. Makes me wonder how much of it is tied to the Trading Post.

How it looks to me: Their shitty back end appears to be fucking everything up that's tied to accounts. Forums, trading post, guild repping/membership, etc., all probably comes down to a fucked up database implementation somewhere on the back end. Too much load for what they built, probably. That kind of thing can take a while to fix.

Yeah, and since the trading post, probably the whole gem trading interface, etc are all web interfaces I have a feeling that their web team and their game dev team are the same (especially since the forum uses game data).  Therefore it actually probably does drain resources from game dev to get the forums working efficiently.

Nobody is being banned for buying one item. People are being suspended for buying a LOT of items (as in, more than your one character could possibly use with every weapon set they can equip), banned for buying absurd amounts. The people suspended are being told to delete shit when they log back in, because it wasn't 72 hours of time out and you can keep the goods.

The items weren't a transmog, they had stats. They were clearly mispriced. This is a bug on Anet's part, and the message being sent is one that is true in every MMO ever: if you encounter an advantageous bug, report it and move on. Exploiting it will lead to punishment. This seems pretty common sense to me? I do not find an obvious bug in a multiplayer game and then camp on it for hours expecting no repercussions.

Karma exploit perma-ban changed to temp ban if you delete your ill-gotten gains and file an appeal:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/z44ml/karma_weapons_exploit/

So basically all the other vendors had prices set to normal, this ONE vendor had them set at 1/1000 of the price of all the other vendors and you think people didnt realize this?  All I want at the end of the day is people to know if they find and abuse and exploit Arenanet will bitch slap yo punk ass so think twice. 

If I had found the merchant I would have bought any usable items, feeling good that I found this cheap merchant thinking it must be a limited time merchant after an event or have a limited or random supply or something fun and different.

It wouldn't have crossed my mind to doubt the reality the game presented to me, and interpret it as a bug.  I'm not just wired that way, no matter how incredulous that may sound to some people.  I don't implicitly know exactly how the game is meant to be and hence be able to be ever vigilant to notice if the game veers from that path and is hence 'bugged'.

It's pretty blindingly obvious. If you saw a porsche labeled "$100", you'd instinctively know that was wrong. If you've been shopping for karma items since level 10 or so and they've been >20 karma for every minor thing, you'd probably think 21 karma for a level 70 rare is a BIT wrong. What is up for personal debate is if you think it's okay to exploit the bug or not.

1/10th of the normal price might be a special one-time deal but at 1/1000th of normal price (21 vs 21000) you should stop to wonder  :awesome_for_real:

It's rather like acting surprised when Blizzard nails you for buying large quantities of Sands of Time off the AH for 100g each.  If you actually have a reason to buy Sands of Time, you are most likely already going to know that the ONLY legitimate source that supplies them is a vendor that sells them for 900g each.  So you have to stop and ask yourself: Why on earth would someone auction something that costs 900G to buy for 100g, resulting in a net loss of 800g per item sold.  If that does not raise any red flags in your mind, you probably deserve to get nailed for buying Duped goods.

Same logic applies to stumbling across an obviously rediculously underpriced item on a vendor somwhere.  Especially if said item is not limited quantity.

I don't think any of us should pay the price for your inability to see an exploit though.  Call that cruel but these people were going to ruin the entire economy.  If you had gotten involved without ill intent then the ban is just your darwin award.

It is fair since you get no penalty if you delete your crap. Just do it.. delete it.. come on, you know you want to be fair, don't you?

You all are missing the god damn point.  It doesn't matter if it's obvious or not.  If you bought  more than 50 of the items you obviously knew it was bugged and they gave you a suspension, and gave you a perm ban if you did a magnatude more than that.

They didn't take any action against anyone who did 1-40 purchases.

They really don't want you getting jute. You no longer can salvage store-bought equipment or karma equipment. Also, they've nerfed a few quick-spawning mob areas I used to farm at. On top of that, you can't even trade for it since the trading post is down.

So now I've found an area where a lot of bandits spawn quickly, and once I clear it out I relog and get put on a new overflow server with all the mobs back. Expecting a 72 hour ban any minute now.

Yeah I make sure not to harvest anything in overflow because when I get into the realm I can harvest the same nodes over again and don't want to get banned because it is an obvious exploit.  Ten nodes of strawberries instead of five pfft ban them all.

Same thing with events, once I finished a defense event in overflow then got into my realm and the same event was happening.  It was obviously an exploit so I just sat there not doing anything so that I didn't get banned.  Unfortunately an aura I had on got me bronze credit so I was sure to report myself for that exploit and just sat around doing nothing until I estimated I would have earned the illegal 867 xp by questing.  I also deleted the 68 copper and bought a karma item and destroyed it to get rid of the karma I earned.  Apparently that karma vendor was bugged so I got a 72 hour ban anyways, I should have been more careful.

One time, I completed a zone to 100% and instead of all green items I got a gold.  That was obviously an error on our Arenanet lords so I reported myself and deleted the item.  Then I got extra vigilant and decided maybe I wasn't supposed to get green items either so I deleted them too.  Now whenever I get anything higher than blue I just delete them.

This other time, I received a rifle as a drop but get this - I got it off a spider I killed.  Hahahha, spiders obviously don't carry guns around (lol imagine that!) so I deleted the item and reported myself like a good little peon.

Yesterday I did a world event and at the end of a long chain we killed this shaman dude.  Everybody was happy but then this chest appeared - out of thin air mind you - and everybody rushed over to open it.  The chest was almost as big as the shaman himself so it obviously couldn't have been carried around by the shaman.  I reported as many people as I could who looted from this bugged chest but I don't think I got all of those filthy cheaters.

Being able to get full xp off of any mobs other people are fighting with just one hit is also obviously an unintended mechanic (why should I get all that xp for only doing 1% of the damage lol) so I reported the bug and now I don't use 70% of my class abilities because they are all AoE and I fear hitting a mob someone else is fighting and getting credit where none is due.

They probably were.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCocjCCMOXI&list=UUeBMccz-PDZf6OB4aV6a3eA&index=1&feature=plcp (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCocjCCMOXI&list=UUeBMccz-PDZf6OB4aV6a3eA&index=1&feature=plcp)  (if you do watch this video the whole way through, ignore the moronic north korea - america analogy for your own benefit).

Krip gets tons of views, and is worth paying attention to what he is doing if you want to catch problems with your game early and make sure they don't get out of control.  If Krip finds a glitch, 4000 people know of it immediately.  

That said, permabanning for him for a ridiculous non-ban-worthy offense probably isn't the best idea.  


I'm on your side of this fence.  Kripparian's ban is a perfect example of this insane thinking.  Buying crafting components with karma, making recipes, selling it on the vendor isn't cheating.  It's just not.  If it's not intended, that's the dev's problem, not the players.

It's not up to the player to determine some gray area of cheating or not cheating while legitimately using game mechanics.  If I find another efficient way to convert karma to gold, I shouldn't have to worry about getting banned for using it.  If I find the most efficient spot to farm any item, I shouldn't have to worry about getting banned for using it.  That's just fucking crazy.

They seem to have this idea that their economy is some perfectly crafted delicate flower that needs to be protected at all costs.

On top of that, whoever is doing the bannings remind me of heavy-handed forum mods you run into across the internet. I mean how fucked up is it that if you received a perma-ban you can beg them to bring it to a 72 hour ban by going through some long appeal process. How big are their fucking heads?

I think they had an overzealous policy enforcement team, quite possibly power-tripping in classic forum mod fashion, that was reigned in by more reasonable individuals higher up.  I suppose they didn't just want to come out and say 'Well, we went too far, sorry about that'.  Krip's ban really feels like that.  72 hour ban that was upgraded to permaban for no reason?  And then later revoked?  Hmm.  But you're right, they look either like total amateurs or like petty power-trippers.

It's clearly important to be very concerned about these issues.  The problem is they are blaming the players for their own design problems.

I don't usually get all tinfoil hat about rmt, I didn't really care about the rmah in Diablo for instance and I don't think Blizzard intentionally fucks around with things to force anyone to use it.  It was just an experiment, Blizzard doesn't need that money and it probably doesn't even cover their electricity bill.

But the gem store, this is why arenanet will be hyper vigilant about their economy, arenanet needs that money.  Their business model is to get people to buy gems, in the long term most gems will be used to exchange for gold.  If there is too much gold and especially if there are outside gold sellers it is cash out of their pockets.  They have been extremely fast about finding these things and shutting them down.  Despite how many accounts seem to have been hijacked into gold sellers I have yet to see a single in game spam in /map or /w or anywhere.

The gem <-> gold exchange really baffles me.

The way the UI works is you punch in the amount of gems you want to sell and it presents you with how much gold you'll get, or the other way around.  The UI also tells you the five day average "value", high and low. 

The bit where you as a user don't get to decide what X gems are worth when exchanging them and instead it's selected for you based on undisclosed factors (presumably at least somehow related to demand or volume, but, really who can say?) bothers me -- that's not how I expect markets to work.

I believe it is just seeded with a low value right now, the market part hasn't really happened yet because people don't have enough gold to sell.  The first minute the game was online you could exchange gems for gold even though no one had earned so much as a silver yet.  You are literally buying gold for money from arenanet right now, they just create the gold for you.

How the tide has turned. It was only a few days ago that everyone cheered them on over the name boondoggle bannings. Now they are Satan incarnate because they banned some cheaters.

I'm still cheering.

I cheer because it's exciting to see CM/GM interaction with the playerbase.  I think transparency is a good thing (and I think the Ghostcrawler beta thread is another example, albeit with a different game).

I think there's really two camps here:  people who are trying to fundamentally break the game, whether using loopholes or exploits, and those who may have experimented a time or two.  The ones who're performing gamebreaking actions receive the swift banhammer without batting an eyelash.  The others need encouragement to report game weirdness where they will be met with some kind of reward for making the game better (a.k.a. doing more QA for us so our business model doesn't suffer dysentery).

Well this is the difference between finding a bug and reporting it and finding a bug and using it for personal gain.

ArenaNet is catching people by going through transaction and chat logs. That's far more efficient and accurate than reading through forums and watching YouTube videos.

Krip is getting too big for his own good. He has value in that his testing of shit seems to find bugs and unintended things that should not be in a game, but fuckin' hell that man rambles.

Don't worry he might get banned again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbfwFUaaxgs

All I saw in that was him not understanding the mystic forge?   It's gambling and he got lucky.

So, in their zeal to stop people from making money by exchanging karma for gold, they also have made the items you craft from karma bought recipes non-salable, and non-salvageable.   :angryfist:

I'm not a developer with ArenaNet, so maybe they're privy to some super secret knowledge about things, and I'm just a dumb schmuck, but wouldn't it have made more sense just to adjust the prices on the items being sold so that it's no longer a viable method of making money, rather than making the karma recipes all but useless outside of twinking alts?  

Edit:  It wasn't even a karma recipe.  It was a recipe bought with cash.

I'm assuming (hoping?) it is just a temporary measure and they'll flip it back once they've gone through everything again and found all the loopholes.

Why would they do that? It's much simpler and cleaner to just go "Okay, this is the actual game economy and here's the karma economy and never the twain shall meet".

Is there a good facepalm gif to use on this site?    

I'll go with   :awesome_for_real:.

The most efficient method by far is prevention.  The best way to prevent the spread of game-breaking issues is to watch power gamers who stream 14 hours a day with 4k + viewers.  Metrics are fucking useless when 4000*x players know your exploit instantly due to someone streaming it.   Your metrics will only tell you that 100000 people exploited your game within 30 minutes of this guy's stream revealing it.

This is why arena.net banned krip for a non-offense initially. They are scared for good reason.

:facepalm:

If I go into the supermarket and pick up a product that is marked as $5, but I know it normally sells for $15 in other shops am I exploiting them by buying it? Is it really my responsibility to ensure that other people don't fuck things up? Or to have an understanding of their pricing scheme and business plan?

It's great they're being pro-active, and they can run their game however they wont, but calling everyone exploiters and cheaters for a fuckup of their own making is absurd.

Because it's obviously a damned bug?

Look, with your example if you bought your three gallons of cheap milk, whatever. No harm, no foul, they fucked up. If you however bought 14,000 gallons of said milk because you knew the price was too good to be accurate and then proceeded to resell them at $15/gallon, you're obviously exploiting what you knew was a mistake.

That's the part that gets it from "How should I have known" to "exploiter": you bought THOUSANDS of something you could only ever need ~5 of, and resold them for a profit. Someone who is playing normally and doesn't know the pricing is wrong would simply have bought their 5 or so and gone about their game normally. No normal person would repeatedly go out of their way to a vendor, fill their backpacks up, then port home and transmute them all, and repeat this hundreds of times.

You want to know how we can plainly call them exploiters? Because their behavior once they found the incorrectly priced items was to EXPLOIT the bug, repeatedly and with forethought.

Anet's not running around banning people for buying 5 of them for use on their characters. They were suspending people who bought dozens, and banning people who bought hundreds.

Except that they called everyone that, not just those that did it multiple times.

Also if I did said thing in reality I would likely get a promotion or bonus, while the one responsible for fucking up the price copped the heat.

If you resold thousands of something mispriced? You'd both get your milk, and be kicked out of Costco for being a shit customer.

edit: and just to be clear, buying one of them is still exploiting a bug. That's like, the definition. Anet's not stretching the language or anything and threatening to bring people up on charges here. They're punishing the bad offenders. I have no issues with that at all.

Personally, I don't even see how this is a debate. If a cashier forgets to bill me for something, I turn around and go back. That's just who I am. I want both sides of the transaction to get a fair deal. Going "HAHA, you made a MISTAKE! I WIN!" just seems petty and stupid. Especially in a freaking video game.

If a store labels a product at x price a box, where x seems cheap as hell, I'll buy as much as I feel like without regret.  It's not the customer's job to determine an adequate price for an item the store is selling.  Ever.

Sounds like the basis for making a profitable trade to me.   :oh_i_see:

I understand in an MMO you don't want your users to act like commodites traders, especially if they base their actions on your mistakes, but can you blame the user for doing what is quite natural and legitimate in most circumstances?  Finding the best return for your money isn't usually considered an exploit in reality.

What about if an automated pump at a petrol station was charging you a cent per gallon? Use as much as you want?

I don't think you can hold anyone morally culpable for filling up their tank(s).  The only reasonable, stable situation is one in where the vendor is to blame (or gain) for whatever they set up.

If there is somehow an obligation for the customer to decide whether or not they are dealing with a mistake or 'exploit', I don't see how they can certainly distinguish the cheapest gas station in town from a mistake.

Just thought this was funny.

No, you absolutely can hold someone MORALLY culpable for exploiting someone's mistake. What you can't do is hold them LEGALLY culpable.

It's ethically wrong to see a mistake and take advantage of it for personal gain at someone else's expense. If you see "Regular: 4.04, Super 0.08, Premium, 4.15" you can be entirely sure one of those numbers is nonsensical and a mistake. Hell, if you just see that the station across the street is charging four whole dollars a gallon more, you can be 99.999% sure it's a mistake.

Legally, they have to give you the gas at that price. Ethically, you're kind of a douchebag when you roll in with 14,000 gallon cans because of the mistake.

Going overboard exploiting a mistake is not something people naturally do. You do not see the ref isn't looking and stab an opposing player with a knife, that would be dickish in the extreme. We have personal limits on what we consider to be a "harmless" exploit that may vary on a case by case basis. But that does not stop it from being exploiting a mistake when you say, get charged for 3 cans of soup when you clearly have 4 in your bag and choose not to say anything to the cashier about it. Or when you go to a vendor and see something listed for 21 karma when every other vendor selling equal quality and level items next to it are 1,000 karma and in 70 levels of gameplay you've never seen an equippable item listed for less than 250 karma. The question at that point is clear for the player:

Bug report it and move on
Buy yourself the weapons you can use and move on
Buy thousands of the weapons and resell them to vendors for cash

Group A wins the ethics award and goes on with their lives
Group B exploited a bug, but did not get punished
Group C was either temp or permanently banned based on the severity

I have zero problems with making it quite clear to people that the behavior they would prefer is Group A. Just like any store would appreciate when you see $0.08/gallon gas listed on their pump, that you inform the cashier immediately so they can correct it.

I purposely used an extreme example; at that price it would be clear that it was not normal and the result of taking the petrol would cost the station owner a significant amount of money.

If you think that's ok then fine. However gw2 is anet's game and there are a lot of people happy with their approach.

I don't understand the whole getting offended on behalf of a bunch of cheating exploiters thing.  :grin:

I only piped up because AreaNet decided to include the people who had only bought one item in the "cheating exploiters" group. I have no problem with demonising the others.

Your fundamental assumption is that it is the consumer's job to determine that there was a mistake.  Perhaps, in obvious cases, you may think it clear that there was a mistake.  But I totally disagree.  For example, the price for premium goods may have been brought down below the price for 'average' goods.  How would the consumer know?  Should they just guess, and then decide that based on a certain differential of profit that they are immoral?

Because, for instance, Krip never cheated, and only exploited if you also exploited by farming the most efficient money spot in WoW.

No-one gives a shit about those that abused this bug to extreme levels.  Its the way that Anet phrased their reproach that triggered many slippery slope warning signs.  Yes this particular bug on the face of it was pretty obvious but what about those that aren't so obvious in the future?  Am I still going to be labeled a dirty exploiter and possibly banned because a good farming site I found was 'obviously' spawning mobs to quickly, or a certain mob was 'obviously' dropping too much loot or countless other scenario's.

Holy retarded failing to get the point

I was making a point.  You didn't get it.

I do in fact make the fundamental assertion that we as customers should have the critical thinking skills required to say "hey, this behaves nothing like I've been told it should behave. I should ask someone why."

If I see a Prius priced at $40,000, then I see a brand new Porsche priced at $10,000, I can employ the critical thinking skills required to say "huh, that's not right", the same as seeing a gallon of milk for 1/10th the price of the ones next to it without a giant SALE sign attached explaining the reason.

The consumer can make an educated guess that something seems wrong, or too good to be true, and inquire with someone who would be in a position to know (the sales staff) to verify the odd information. The immorality comes from recognizing the error and deciding to capitalize on the mistake. That's the "haha, you fucked up, SCORE ONE FOR ME!" mentality that is immoral. Now, it may be entirely encouraged in our economic environment (if this happened on the stock market for example, a company would quickly be out of business due to people pouncing on it), but I tend to hold Humans to a higher ethical standard than Stock Brokers.

Buying one blatantly obviously mispriced $0.01 gallon of milk is exploiting an error. It makes you an exploiter. However, the severity of the punishment is pretty much based on the volume and forethought. Bought 1? You exploited, but it was our mistake. Oh well. Bought 10? Dude, not cool, take a time out. Bought 14,000? Hi, you're the kind of person they'd rather not have in their private shopping community.

In all these cases they were exploiting a bug. Hell, watch the Xcom stream and for whatever reason it gave one side in a multiplayer match two turns in a row. The person simply passed their second turn because taking advantage of the obvious bug would be EXPLOITING and CHEATING. You may take offense at the words, but I'm very sorry to inform you that they're appropriately used. Someone who runs across the street is technically breaking the law. Most of us don't care, but it does mean that calling us lawbreakers in a statement about jaywalking would be accurate.

Did anyone we know or even remotely believe and or give a shit about get banned for 'exploiting' one item? I have a feeling the answer is no, but hurf durf.

No but it's more fun to act like that's what happened.

The last two pages have made me think I have something broken in my brain because I understand the cashier making a mistake and seek to correct it. Is this not what I'm supposed to do in life?

Politics thread >>>> 50 mi.

 :grin:

Yes, you have something wrong in your brain because that's not what we're talking about.  We're talking about the cashier fucking up, giving you twenty five cents too much change which you didn't notice because only old ladies check that they receive the rights coins, and then she calls you a filthy cheat who tried to short change her.

Is it really that fucking hard to understand?  Nobody in the God damn thread is defending people who knowingly did this.

Again, imagine you unintentionally bought an item that was underpriced and then read what arenanet calls you:

Sooo, if Amazon priced a notebook for 10 instead of 1000$ dollar by mistake it would be an "exploit" to say 'great' and order 20 of them? 'Cause that's what I would do.

And.. I have no issue with that statement.  If you have those items in your inventory, they were obtained improperly. They should be deleted.

I'm saying there is no punishment being handed out for doing this NON maliciously, just a warning. And that is entirely fucking appropriate.

This isn't "lady gave you 25c too few", it's "I bought 18 bags of groceries and was charged $7." The price was not off by a bit, the items were cheaper than any other item on any karma vendor in the game, to the tune of costing 2% of their appropriate cost. Think about that: the price was wrong by NINETY EIGHT PERCENT. If you can't figure out that the pricing being 98% cheaper than everything else on the vendor for identical items seems wrong, you need to get your head checked.

Which pretty much means everyone who purchased these knowingly did so with the wrong price attached. And happily walked away with their shiny new item and wasn't punished in any way beyond a stern letter that makes UN stern letters seem mean.


I think the entire disconnect in this thread is a giant gulf of what is appropriate behavior from people. When something is blatantly obviously mispriced (not 5% off the equivalent item next to it, but 95% off of the equivalent item next to it) it's pretty hard to say "how should I have known!", and it's very hard to say "hey, how DARE you give me a minor warning that I shouldn't exploit obvious bugs!" without seeming like your end goal is to provide a framework that you should indeed be allowed to exploit bugs without punishment. Exploiting bug = bad. End of story. This would only be a bad thing for ANet if they were banning people for using the bug once with some stupid zero tolerance rule. Instead what they're doing seems entirely reasonable. The only appropriate action when you discover a bug is to report it.

and Calapine: yes, if Amazon priced a brand new laptop computer at $10, it would be exploiting their error to buy it. It's kind of one of the the definitions of the word. The context in which it's being used is: "to take advantage of (a person, situation, etc), esp unethically or unjustly for one's own ends"

When you buy that mispriced item for $10 when it's supposed to be $1000, you're costing SOMEONE $990 for your own personal gain. That's the unethical part. It's entirely legal (they listed it, they have to sell it, at least in the US), but it's decidedly 100% unethical.

Well, we clearly have different opions about exploit. For me examples of exploits are: using Hacks, usings bots/macros if forbidden, duping items, using game mechanics in a way that is explicitly forbidden (eg. it's stated you mustn't attack melee mobs from a location they cant reach you. If not forbidden I'd list that under creative use of mechanics).

I'd personally never cheat in a multilayer game, a) out of fairness b) would not risk a ban. But, if there was a situation like you descibed: A vendor selling an item extremly cheap, I'd buy tons of it, and neither would I feel "guilty" nor would I expect to be banned for this.

"Creative use of mechanics" is exactly the same thing as an exploit. Exploit to me always carries the hidden modifier of "a loophole". Buying all those items is exploiting a loophole. It's just what the word means.

They should roll back all transactions on that item at that price if it's such a big deal.

They claim to have the logs, just do it and be done with it.  It was their pricing error, let them fix it to teach their QA people how NOT to do things in the future.  Insulting people for buying one item is pointless.

(edit: caps, wharrrrgarbl)

Yeah I don't know why they didn't just do that in the first place, the 'just delete the items guys' thing is the part that strikes me as unprofessional. I guess it means they can't actually do that kind of mass rollback, which, yikes.

Well, the dictionary meaning of exploit gives:

"to use selfishly for one's own ends: employers who exploit their workers." which doesn't make any sense in a computer-game context. (A guildleader could exploit the guildmembers, but that's nothing bannable.) IMHO exploit regarding games has a similar meaning to 'illegal' in real life. Something breaking the law / EULA. Of course there is a grey area, but it has to be clear to the player. Example: A broken buy-back feature that gives you back the item you sold, but doesn't deduct the funds received. Pretty easy to guess that's a bug.

Actual example: Bug in Fusang (TSW) that lead to everyone being rewarded twice as much tokens on capturing a facility for a few days. Should players that made sure to PVP extensively during that time be banned? What about players (like me) that didn't even notice the rewards were off?

Edit (didn't see replies): Yes, a rollback would be fair. Both in GW2 and the TSW example I just listed.

It came off to me as more of a "you know what you did, you fix it" decree rather than something that is technically not feasible for them.

Re: the TSW thing, I think there's a big difference in player culpability between a bug that happens as a result of normal gameplay, where you'd have to actually not play the game to avoid it, and one that only comes into play when you take a specific action, from a specific merchant, etc., as the GW2 one did.

There is a reason these laws exist.  Its because customers have to be able to trust that an advertised price is real.  The obligation is on retailers to double check their prices or suffer for their lax practices.  Similarly players should be able to expect that the variables the game presents are real.

But the example is getting stupid, anyone that thinks its unethical to cost a npc vendor thousands of karma is way too deep in their role-playing.

The problem with the removal of the items is that the people dont Have those items anymore, except for the people who bought them to use them, only boguht a few of them or so

Everybody else turned those weapons into mats, into other stuff using the forge, i don't even know all the things that are possible.... So it's not just "delete these identities from accounts" it's slightly more complicated than that. Issuing a rollback would affect much more than the specific items, regardless of how careful they'd go about it tbh.
So you want to screw everybody over because a few (well, a few thousand) people were greedy assholes?

I hate this thread, everything after the funny reddit part.  One of the funding drive levels should be the ability to nuke a thread from orbit.  I'll give another $50 on top of the $75 I already gave if any mod dens this pig.

I hope everyone heavily into the hurf of the durf has deleted the game from their hd. Because this is the dumbest complaining I've seen in a year of dumb complaints around here.