Regarding the article about exploits
Before I write this, I urge you to consider a few facts. I was there when soldiers used the TMS-exploits on Juggernauts. I knew it was an exploit, I knew that it couldnt possibly supposed to work like that - I reported it and sat there watching soldiers getting level 50-150 in days. Most of these walk freely among us now. I was there reporting a bug that made people invulnerable to melee-attacks, making them ultimate killing machines, we (me (Shaur), Mynerva, Vesarius and Tailon) reported this together back in the old days. Nothing happened. We reported two people for this and we actually even got blamed for using this bug the very first time we reported it (even though we did not, we only knew THAT it worked, now HOW).
I dont exploit, I dont like people who do, as anyone that has teamed with me in the "old days" will remember (Anyone in the "present day" knows I hate exploiting and if they are naturally they keep their mouth shut because I will report it). I would kick and ignore people from teams for saying "Yeah, I was on the Jugg bandwagon, my only regret is I jumped on it too late". And I probably wont make any friends posting this here.
Before you answer to this, I will tell you - yes, I will nitpick and pry and try to 'bend' your reasoning here. You must understand - if there even a slightest hesitation about what a rule is, people will want more information, information you say you will not give them. I'm sure I will come off as bitter and *****y. I am not bitter, I just happen to have very strong feelings about the subject of "exploiting" and "fairness"... And I'm sure I will get nitpicked back on for this, since its a controversial subject - and I highly suspect that Funcom and me disagrees completely or at least to a great extent upon what is exploiting (or rather the FC-definition of exploiting), and also what is customer service(as opposed to players serving Funcom). I'm certain there will be discussions like this:
"The rule is 'dont kill neutrals'."
"Not even if they try to kill you?"
"Well, obviously if they try to kill you first, you can..."
"No - you just said that is against the rules"
"But ofcourse you have to understand th.."
"No - the rule is 'dont kill neutrals'."
"But... I didnt mean it like that."
"Tough luck - the rule is 'dont kill neutrals'. End of story."
Which is what I am trying to get through here - the whole point of this is : "If you intend to have rules about this, you must enforce them to the last dot. No exceptions. None whatsoever. For no reason. Ever." But we all know it doesnt work like that - humans arent robots like that. Which is why things will never be fair. But they sure can be a lot more fair than they are now.
I am also writing this because there is not even a hint of any "talk about this article" link to the board.
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Definitions of an exploit
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You will have to write down the definition of bugs a LOT more tightly than that. Here - I will give you scenarios which will ban 50% of Rubi-Ka in one fell swoop...
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"The definition of bugs like this is: a bug that grants the user unnatural or unintended benefits in game"
A player new to the game enters Rubi-Ka, picks a character and decides to play the game. Nothing to it really, nothing unfair about this. Player decides to play a nanotechnician. Another player decides to be a bit nice and help this new player. The players profession is a metaphysicist. This player equips the new player with enough NCU to hold something called Mochams and implants. This is no hard feat, in fact, today - getting enough NCU to hold Mochams is extremely easy with the introduction of special NCU-giving items (which can be found in abundance) and armor. This will effectively make the new nanotechnician able to level to.. I'd be prepared to say something around level 50 in one day, providing he gets mochams, say.. 4-5 times.
"Unnatural benefits" I would definately call it that. If you do not classify having 200+ Matter creation at level 10 an unnatural benefit, I dont know what to tell you, I think that if you dont, you are simply a hypocrit. Also, it makes me afraid of buffing people with mochams. Next scenario...
A player decides to go out exploring, taking on a mob that he normally cannot beat (IE : "much higher than you"). Passing by is a doctor who decides to stay and help the poor character getting maimed, so he helps him solo it, then buffing him with an extra 800 or so HP (which can be many times the players actual HP).
"Unnatural benefit" again. Helping out - yes it is, but it is ALSO, most definately an unnatural benefit.
Player is in a mission, this particular player happens to be an engineer. Suddenly he gets aggro from three mobs. He knows his pet can take these down, however, he is not able to tank them himself, and runs. By doing this, pathing hooks the mobs into a door, and the engineer is safe letting his pet tank for him.
"Unintended benefit" indeed. I'm sure there are people out there using petpathing against mobs, I have already reported one case like this although granting the player two very coveted rewards - and its still in there, after roughly 2-3 months.
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Reporting Exploits
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Are you asking the people of Anarchy Online to stop whatever they are doing, get time and date, playfield and a step-by-step description of an exploit they encounter and email it ? Why is there a /petition exploit << in there if those reports arent looked at? What if you cant show it unless its in the game? Do you mean GMT or local time? Define.
Personally, I will continue reporting exploits/exploiters via /petitions, because that means I can continue playing and when the GM shows up, THEN take time off to answer questions. I will not write a single email to anyone if the person involved has no will to talk to me about the findings while I am in game and able to show them. I am not Deep Throat, this is not the X-files. If the GM's and ARK's do not log exploits or send them from receiving a petition about it (something cathegorized as a high priority) that is not my problem. I am not here to make things easier for Funcom like that when there is the venue of petitioning... I do realize that I must report any exploits, and I do so (and urge others to do so as well) but I will do so using the more obvious approach and know it has been looked at by one person rather than get an automated response. I think I speak for everyone on Rubi-Ka about this.
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Rewards for reporting
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No, I never gave, nor will I give an item to any player as a reward - exception: chocolate cake when I'm in a good mood. But seriously, there are players who received for instance a first and last name change from me for being very good in reporting exploits, others received a height change (to one of the existing 3 sizes in AO), fatness change, some tokens or a face-change, etc. as a reward and acknowledgement for their help. I highly appreciate the help from players and this is one way to show my appreciation besides thanking them with words.
Please read what you are writing. "No I never gave anyone anything.. oh, except for chocolate cake.. oh.. and ofcourse a namechange ... and there was a couple of times I allowed them to change their face.. oh yeah.. and height.. er.. okay.. and weight as well.. okay - there were some tokens as well... but apart from THAT I never gave anyone anything".
I'm sure that sounds great to all the people that reports exploits and dont get anything at all? I said once in a post from me that if I treated my real life job as Funcom does, I would only care for a select few of my students, the ones "I like". Didnt you always hate the teachers pet? Especially so if the teacher would have given them a chocolate bar I will venture. Also, I would like to point out that while you say "namechange" - this can now be petitioned about and be done pretty much whenever you want to, its not a complez procedure - I do believe what you are referring to is giving out actual titles like "Lady", something that no longer happens, I have been told (I posted about this too actually, because I dont find it particularly fair that you will reward someone for following the rules - it would be like giving out titles for zoning. You are supposed to report exploits, its a rule. When I posted this I got flamed as "ah... he's just p-oed he doesnt have a title". That wasnt the deal at all, I am perfectly happy with the name I have in the game - it was a question of fairness, nothing else).
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Serious / Not Serious
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"First off, note that we have different levels of exploits according to their seriousness."
Define. What is serious and what is not? Is powerlevelling serious? How many levels a day is powerlevelling anyway? Is getting more XP per mob serious? Is titlefarming serious? Is duping serious? Who decides this? One person or "depends on who is on the job". Has this too anything to do with quote : "when I'm in a good mood". God I hope not. I'm sure there are at least guidelines for it, so post them and follow them. I'm sure I come off as rather -nalretentive and Judge Dredd-ish with this, but rules are made to be followed. You dont see people going "Its okay, I just killed him a little bit" and getting away lighter with it.
Also, something to think of - if you want a step-by-step guide on how to exploit, you better be prepared for people exploiting quite vividly to test these (repeated offenses considered serious). Even if they report it, you will see a multitude of offenses on their logs. I will give you an example.
Player accidently stumbles upon a way to dupe something really valueable. Player has no idea how he did this, only that it had something to do with bags and the bank system. Player tests this a couple of times to make sure it IS an exploit. As I'm sure you know - this will have to include tests with him zoning, relogging, trying again, doing it while someone is trading with him, doing it while its laggy, while its not, while he has items with specific attributes in the bag, with diffrent bags... The log will not show this. The log will only show the player exploiting his brains off before reporting the bug thus making him look like an opportunist.
"If we have proof that the character abused a bug the next step can be (according to the severity of the exploit) - an e-mail notification about what happened and the chance to comment on the accusation (minor exploits, account most likely not suspended"
To the best of my knowledge and from what I've read from people actually being banned or suspended, nothing about "what happened" has been reported, in fact - it seems to us, the general population, that these players receive no information at all about what they were doing wrong, thusly rendering them completly unable to answer. You might also want to think about the phrase "most likely" there. Up to people's personal whims again?
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"If it turns out that we made a mistake, the account will be re-opened and the time the account was wrongly closed will be reimbursed in most cases."
This is simply untrue. I wont mention the particular players name in here, since apparently every single post doing so immediately gets erased - I will instead say that anyone interested should look to the NT-community and ask about which person I am referring to. This person did infact do nothing wrong, and has not yet been reinstated. Of course - you added "most cases" there at the end rendering that part of my reasoning useless - again - its up to FC's personal whim to ban anyone they see fit...also:
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"We have the express right to close any account, for any reason, to protect the integrity of the game."
You have no idea how afraid I am of that sentence. That is.. beyond comprehension. I can draw parallells to this sentence alone that would.. I probably cant even make the comparison here on the board or I will get banned. Intergrity of the game to me is fairness, not paranoia.
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What happened to player X?
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No comment whatsoever on this. You should under no circumstance give out this kind of information. On another note, it seems like players do this by themselves at any rate, so it doesnt matter too much. Your whole point here though is good.
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I only exploited to make you aware of this
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Definately this is without a doubt the lamest exscuse ever.
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Why are some exploits not fixed immediately/earlier?
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I will agree to that it takes time to fix exploits. It shouldnt take months to do it however, especially if the exploit is a big one. I have reported, like I said, a n exploit that will grant you two extremely coveted items and this has yet to see a fix. On the whole I feel exploits are taken care of, but too late, and the people that has been using them are not, or at least extremely seldom, even warned. You do realize that by even saying this on the board, I probably have a lot of people going to give me tells along the lines of "why did you have to say that on the board?! You know I used the TMS exploit!" (and so on) when they see this. Guys - you know you were exploiting, and I do remember me saying so to you. If this doesnt make me look like a Brutus, I dont know what will.
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Final words
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"We're very happy that so many players enjoy Anarchy Online and we do our best to ensure you all an enjoyable gaming environment by catching exploits and exploiters. We want you to have fun and I hope this article will be helpful in understanding some of the ways we make that happen"
In fact, this article has made me afraid of ever finding another exploit by mistake, buffing low level characters with mochams, or even levelling with them, because who knows - you might be in a bad mood and decide my haircut is atrocious and ban me for it. Quote : "We have the express right to close any account, for any reason, to protect the integrity of the game."
Re: Regarding the article about exploits
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Originally posted by Twicer
I am also writing this because there is not even a hint of any "talk about this article" link to the board.
That's because exploits and Customer Service is not a topic on this bulletin board. That's also whay I'm closing this thread now. Please take the discussion to another bulletin board (and feel free to drop me a link), or e-mail. Allowing these discussions now will simply make it impossible to enforce the rules later.
I'll reply to some of what you write right away though.
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"Unnatural benefits"
The last one you mention is a bug. The two first ones are not, and thus not exploits. Some contacted me claiming Grid Armor had to be an exploit even, as it was an unnatural benefit. It's of course not.
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Why is there a /petition exploit << in there if those reports arent looked at?
That is mostly intended for exploits where somebody needs to be caught in the act. Reporting an exploit can be done at any time, out of game. You don't need to stop playing and log off immediately. Just send an e-mail later. :)
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If the GM's and ARK's do not log exploits or send them from receiving a petition about it
They do, of course. :)
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Please read what you are writing. "No I never gave anyone anything.. oh, except for chocolate cake.. oh.. and ofcourse a namechange ... and there was a couple of times I allowed them to change their face.. oh yeah.. and height.. er.. okay.. and weight as well.. okay - there were some tokens as well... but apart from THAT I never gave anyone anything".
The question was about giving out items, i.e. giving benefits that grant an advantage in game-play. One exception was stated, and some cake is hardly worth kicking up a fuzz about.
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]Define. What is serious and what is not?
Why? So people can think "hm, if I do this, I'll only get a warning, so it's not a big deal"?
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This person did infact do nothing wrong, and has not yet been reinstated.
Not discussing specific cases, but I hardly think you know all facts in the case.
To finish off; by your wording you seem to be talking to Genevra, Funcom, or both. If you expect to talk to us, contact us. This bulletin board is mainly for player to player communication, and addressing somebody in a place they might not even look is bad form, imo.
That said, my invitation for a discussion by e-mail stands. I'm available per e-mail and private messages, though I'm also busy, so don't expect 4 exchanges per day. ;)
