2 uniques in bank: exploit?

[______________Mandor]

I know people that have been banned for this reason without getting any "adequat notice".

Want names ?

[Nostra343]

edit: Switched ontopic/offtopic paragraphs around .


ON THE TOPIC:

Oh, and I gotta check about 50 bags of stuff now... I can never remember which items are NODROP, which UNIQUE, and which are both... nor what/how many I have in the bank in the first place. I'm sure I'm no the only absent-minded player who keeps all the junk s/he ever finds ...

btw, now don't get me wrong, I'm speaking as a fellow pragmatical programmer - make sure you keep thorough logs before the patch that handles the UNIQUEs. Historically speaking, chances are that all heck will break out and the ARK's are gonna be pretty busy... it's not impossible to imagine a few glitches as well, as players have traditionally been, um, "innovative" in using/placing items in ways that designers haven't thought of .
I'm just getting a tingly danger-sense thinking of spiders or crawls that will go over the database and start deleting items based on some sophisticated heuristic .

----------------------------------------
OFF TOPIC

No, I'm gonna delete posts, and ban people, calling me a liar when I tell the truth.

If you have a problem with that, please say so.

yo... /me raises hand

um, I'm sure you meant it in a different way then what I interpret it as...

you're the community guy... that makes your job harder and puts you in a more of a spot then any other single poster on the boards, for sure... but it is your job, eh? And I know you get training (some of which you'd probably rather skip) on how to handle "problematic cases" (pretty much all of us at one point or another).

My idea of a community / customer service representative is a guy who reasons, diplomatically, and disproves people that are mistaken... not bans them.

You'll be called liar a lot - and I'm sure you have been in the past - I know I have when I've performed semi-similar duties... some people are malicious, some obnoxious, some simply don't have the facts or are mistaken, some need to cool down because they feel they've been injured... and I'm sure at SOME point in your career somebody will call you a liar and be right - nobody is 100% perfect.

Delete a post for profanity of course; move it if it's in the wrong place... but somehow banning a person because you feel they insult your personal honour seems unprofessional. If they're wrong, show how they're wrong and the judgement of their peers will hopefully make them reasonable again.

and also remember, as you often point out, you yourself don't always have all the facts .
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[Springygirl]

sshhhhhhhhhhhh ...leave Cz alone!

[Snuble]

I'm getting worried here... Recently started to look at the sneaky ways of the game So I buy a cloaking device. Hmm... it requires concealment??? Okay, run to another shop, buy a low quality level one, and w00t it work

Now of course its not even close to pushing my concealment borders, so I shop yet another one... And looks at the description, an realizes that oooops, there is now 3 unique items in my inventory... On the word of someone more wise then me, I delete the two I didn't want asap

[Paffy]

So it was ok to ban one without giving proper warning and then change the ruling?

You had one second of clarity and realized that by enforcing the rule of which you banned one would mean that you would need to ban half your player base and decided to change the ruling.

How about unbanning the poor person who got to be the test subject before you came to your senses?

Happily there is a choice for those who dont mind playing fantasy (and who cares anyways since thats where AO is/is heading) and its name is Acheron's Call 2.

Has better graphics than AO, better code than AO and already has more content in beta than AO after one year. They also have one successfull MMORPG under their belt and know what they are doing and improving upon old.

No, you wont see me in SWG or Neocron (dont like em) but you _WILL_ see me in AC2, most likely allied to Dominion.

Zarch and da chars

You want content and quests? Go see AC2

[gnuman]

So this is the Customer "We don't Care". You ban a person, change the policy and refuse to fix the wrong doings with lame excuses.

You are ready to ban half of AO because of YOUR bugs in AO. Well, good luck Funcom - it is your own grave you are digging.

Remember players are paying for your service. Not for you to use your powertrip. You know the strongest personalities are the ones who realise that they did wrong and tries to fix it. The ones coming up with new and even lamer excuses to cover up the whole thing are a sad sad person.

Good luck Funcom. You still got a lot to learn a lot about how to treat your customers. Screw one innocent person and all the friends of the person is going with him/her.

[assassimon]

I have 3 Senior Omni Intern-Op Coats I got them as boss loot at diffrent times, put them in bags with all other junk and put the bags in bank.

I checked all bags afew days ago and saw that I had 3 coats...

I have only put them in bank without doing anything special, exactly same as the person you banned did.

He put unique items in bank, not in any special way, just put them in bank..

Almost every AO player have 2 of same unique item in bank.

Have you checked your own bank Cz (if you even play the game, doubt many at FC play) you have 2 coats, 2 iq rings, 2 of any unique item there?

I think all people that play see how stupid this is of FC to ban a person, change the policy right away after and say they won't ban people for it and then not lift the ban...

Perma ban a person for having 2 unique items in bank won't exactly give you more customers.

[gnuman]

and let me quote from IRC:

[13:39] <Noer> so now that you wont unban Demios. Are you making it equal for all and ban everyone on same conditions?
[13:39] <Cz|busy> I believe so.
[13:39] <Cz|busy> It's of course a matter of severity.

So everyone who are hurt by Funcom's crappy unique code or a servercrash so an item got duped will be banned - unless they go bankrupt.
Well, GG Funcom - I hope you realise what you are about to do.

[Shadelore]

So this means I have to about make a DB over the content in my numerous bags in bank, where I am sure there is severeal double uniques I havent noticed due to items getting/ungetting unique etc last year, so I can keep close track over what I got, otherwise I will be banned...Along with everybody else who have played a while...

What do u suggest we do, sift our banks and delete everything that there is 2 of?

That would be fair enough, but how about you give some notice about things like this before you starting banning my friends, which is the main reason I play..?

I, as a paying adult customer would appreciate to be see some mature way to approach these matters. It is not fun when you wonder is your account will be banned next time you log on for having 2 cloaking devices(are they unique now) or something.

I admit this sounds a bit crass, but I feel the need to be a tad crass by seeing things like this happen, so please forgive me, nothing personal.

[Shadelore]

I think its seriously about time to leave soon, and leave this to ppl who havent had all the bad experiences thrown at them...

[Zeronx]

I must agree.....I am not sure how you ment your "Banning people for calling you a liar" statement. In my honest opinion from being in the real world myself.....that is BS ! Banning someone because you don't like what they have to say ? That is a little abusive of power and I know that several who have read it already are wondering what else do they have to tread on egg shells for so as to not offend you Cz ? YOU are in this position to listen to the customers, and to be constructive in the dealings with them. If you cannot handle that ( and yes I know you have to put up with alot of crap) then it is probably time for you to pass this off to someone else that is not as burned out.

You are in a business ! If you cannot supply adequate information and response to the questions and needs of your customers then those customers will leave to someone who can. I am not sure about the whole situation on the banning of this person, but if they were banned for only the stated reason that we have been given then MANY people are going to be upset ( more than there are now ) as you do not ban one person and then say "oops we made a mistake..our bad...we won't do it again" and not try and FIX the mistake.

I am not meaning this to be a direct attack on anyone, but am only stating my observation of the dealings here and why I and others feel very disturbed about such handling of a "unique" situation =)~

Zeronx

[____________Meligant]

I got like 12 cloaking devices in the bank. Ban me? How else do we save new ones for later? How the hell do we get a new one in a mission without deleting the old?

I thought the "unique" tag was so you couldn't HOLD and USE 2 uniques on your character (in bank not counted on purpose)? Is this still not the case? If it is not here is my list of things to un-unique.

1. MA Attacks
2. Cloaking Devices (fix the swap "exploit" first)
3. Just about everything else in the game

PS - Please define (or redefine) what the FC definition is for the Unique Tag and what it is suppose to a) Do and b) imply.

Thanks.

[gnuman]

What does unique mean?

Does it mean this item is the only item on this server of this kind? Does it mean I am a unique person if I got this item? Does it mean I can only wear one of these items? Does it mean I can only own one of these items? Well, I got an idea what it is SUPPOSED to mean. But how can we be sure? It has never worked EVER, and it has never been explained. Its just a flag on the item.

Just like the special flag. Anyone know what that means?

Its a flag in the database, you can't expect people to know what they mean. And you can certainly not expect people to accept that you ban people on it when you never explained the flag and when it never worked.

Your socalled workarounds to have more than one unique on you is to store it in bank. Well, boohooo - I must say. Thats one big nasty exploit. How dare people store their items in their bank. You realise that most people actually have more uniques in their bank now because your code never worked?

Hell even your ARKs don't know what is going on.
http://www.tpg.dk/download/iq1.jpg
http://www.tpg.dk/download/iq2.jpg
ARK is confirming it is allowed to have 2 unique rings on. 1 week later Demios got banned first accused for duping. When that didn't stick, then banned for having multiple uniques in bank and something duped and then last it got changed into just banned for having multiple uniques in bank.

Okay, you made a mistake. But covering up with new and more silly reasons to keep that ban is a total joke.

The solution is simple and everyone will be happy:
- Explain to everyone want you mean by unique.
- Announce that you are going to fix the unique-code in an upcoming patch.
- Announce that violating the unique-code when it actually works will get in problems.
- Unban the people you ASSUMED would know what you internally know about the items.

Is it really that hard to eat this burned cookie? Is it that hard to admit a mistake? Is it that hard to correct what is wrong? You saw how this is concerning the community on IRC today.

[______________Shatai]

Originally posted by Meligant
I thought the "unique" tag was so you couldn't HOLD and USE 2 uniques on your character (in bank not counted on purpose)? Is this still not the case? If it is not here is my list of things to un-unique.

1. MA Attacks

Just have to make a point here, MA Attacks were "un-uniqued" a couple of patches back. You can have as many different qls of an attack as you like (or can carry) now. They're still NODROP though.

[_____Poweredge|vault]

I'm in full support of Noer.

As a side issue, I also did a bit of thinking into the times taken for players to "self-apply" the unique item problem. This is all hypothetically speaking.

Lets us say for example that there are 150 slots in the bank. Each slot can hold a bag that contains 24 items. This make a nice total of 3600 items.

Now lets say that it takes 1 second to look at an item and decide if it's the same as the current unique item that you hold. That means that 3600 seconds will pass before you know whether or not you have a version of the unique you are wanting to check. That's ONE HOUR.

Taking this one stage further. Lets say that you want to transfer this unique item over to an alt. In theory, you'd have to check to see that the unique didn't exist in your bank first (before you pick up the item), the player you're passing it to has to make the same checks, then the alt has to make the same check again.

This theoretically means that a transfer of a single unique item may take as long as THREE HOURS.

Don't flame this, as it is purely hypothetical, but given the instant knee-jerk reactions of several of FC's trusted "Sploit Police", you would be up for banning from the time you looted the item, up until you removed a duplicate from your bank.

I also spoke with Cz at some length about the fact that I "could" be banned in the future, not that I want to, or that I have ever (knowingly) exploited. I was told that if a situation arose where I didn't act fast enough to resolve a unique-clash, that I may be banned. (He couldn't confirm that I wouldn't if such a case arose).

This leaves me and many many others with the horrible thought of the Sploit Police tackling them for something that should have be resolved on both a code-level and a community level. I don't want to have this black cloud following me around, in a game that I love to play. Given that 14.5 will introduce the unique tag to more popular items that current circulate the population, this could turn out to be a nightmare. It's like an inverse-lottery... it could be YOU.


All I ask is this of FC. Do NOT ban people for duplicate unique items, until the following conditions have been met by yourselves:

1. The community has a document that states the true meaning of the word UNIQUE when applied to items.

2. The coding has been amended/fixed so as to allow players not to have to deal with something that can and has resulted in people being banned (unknowingly I may add).

3. When existing items are given the new tag, something is put in place to allow the current player base to react to making themselves "on-side" with the Sploit Teams. This has to also apply to people that have spent time away from AO, and may or may not know that items within their banks have now been made UNIQUE. Nothing worse than coming back to the game to find yourself banned for not doing anything.

You have to take responsibility for your actions FC. People are upset at the fact that an active and constructive member of the community has been banned, but they're more upset with the way you went about it, and the lack of grace shown by people that know, it seems, less than the players themselves.

I can see this one turning into an NS Mk2 moment again... someone is going to have to learn from their mistakes.

[Kinkstaah]

I dont agree.

Banning someone that you said you wouldnt ban someone for is pretty much lying in my book.

In terms of severity, Deimos has several Dragon armor items for a guild. Actually, pieces of armor that will be made UN-UNIQUE in 14.5

In terms of severity, thats not very severe at all, and we should all be very scared, or amused.

[_____Poweredge|vault]

Originally posted by Mike "Kinkstaah" Bond
I dont agree. ...

With what happened, or with Noer?

[Mercatura]

FC slaps the unique tag on far too many items without rhyme or reason.

The only clearcut item I can think of is tokens.

People could wear 2 iq rings before, why was this nerfed? Forget that "intended" BS which is usually spewed out, plenty of people made it to 200 with them on.

The real genius was slapping the tag on a tradeskill-created set of armor.

[engelstein]

Originally posted by Dscaper
I'm in full support of Noer.

As a side issue, I also did a bit of thinking into the times taken for players to "self-apply" the unique item problem. This is all hypothetically speaking.

Lets us say for example that there are 150 slots in the bank. Each slot can hold a bag that contains 24 items. This make a nice total of 3600 items.

Now lets say that it takes 1 second to look at an item and decide if it's the same as the current unique item that you hold. That means that 3600 seconds will pass before you know whether or not you have a version of the unique you are wanting to check. That's ONE HOUR.

Taking this one stage further. Lets say that you want to transfer this unique item over to an alt. In theory, you'd have to check to see that the unique didn't exist in your bank first (before you pick up the item), the player you're passing it to has to make the same checks, then the alt has to make the same check again.

This theoretically means that a transfer of a single unique item may take as long as THREE HOURS.

Right. And I suppose you always plan for the worst? Do you wear a helmet to bed so you don't hurt yourself if you fall out at night? Do you shower sitting down so you can't slip? Do you never go up stairs, because you can fall on your way down?

I've got *no* items in my bank. Let's say the person I'm passing it to doesn't have any either. Or the alt I'm passing my unique item to. So checking for unqiues would take, let's see, no time at all. I guess it's all right then with the uniques in bank issue.

Don't flame this, as it is purely hypothetical,

Hypothetically, I'm providing constructive criticism. I can spout off hypothetical situations until I turn blue in the face-and that's fine, if a little noisy for those around me. But when you drag in an absurd situation and try to make it support your argument...well, you can smack your square peg all you want, but it *just won't fit* in your round hole.

[Octo]

Ok starting to ban when people have more uniques in their inventory (bank, inv or equipped)? Then PLEASE consider doing this in preparation BEFORE you start doing this:

1. Make a small check each time a character logs on for unique items in ALL Inv's. If there are more than one instance of any item, automatically list that items to the user and request that the player remove one of the instances. Its VITAL that the check lists the actual item in question, and not just states: "You have several instances of an object with attribute UNIQUE. Please remove one (or more) of the instances." If there are more than one item, list all items as a separate warning.

For example: "You have several instances of: "Bracers of Reflection - Energy". Please remove one (or more) of the instances".

2. Set a grace period after implementing this, in which you will NOT ban anyone for having more than one instance of any unique item. 1 or 2 weeks for example.

3. Keep the check in for some months, then remove it later on if deemed "not needed anymore".


And why do this? Because ALOT of the characters have a filled bank with bags, containing hundreds of items. It would take alot of time to check all the items for the unique attribute, and then check the rest of the bags to see if they got more than one. Lately there have been, and will come, changes to the attributes of items to UNIQUE. You CANNOT expect the players to check their bank of ALL their characters each time a patch comes along. Its simply not an acceptable solution from the players point of view. As goes for myself, I got about 15 characters spread over 2 accounts over 3 dimensions. Many of them have limited inventories, but what you are in fact doing here is forcing me to log on every char at every patch to see if you changed attributes on my items.

Seriously.... Can you see the problem?