Blatant lies

[Swing]

Has anyone ever lost items or money due to a bug? I know I have. And whats the Funcom 'party line' on this? "Im sorry, we cannot reimburse your items". The given rationale for this policy is that FC dosent have the ability to effectively search thier own logs.

Now, a large and far-ranging credit-exploit has come to light. Seems there was some kind of bug with the taxation system for guilds, and some cunning folks (quite a few, it seems) figured out how to make a bundle on it. Sad thing, but there it is. And whats Funcom's response to that? Let me quote:

"We are now in the process of cleaning up the world of these credits. We know who did it, we know how they did it, and we know when they did it."

The artical goes on to say that:

"We have already begun the process of tracking the credits as they've progressed from character to character."

Now let me get this straight. FC can track every single credit in the game, the times thoes credits were generated, and who recived them, but they cant discern where a vanished backpack went to? A backpack is a phisical item, while a credit exists only 'on paper', so to speak. I find it =very= hard to belive that FC has the ability to keep track of virtual cash, but cannot do so with phisical objects.

This is intolerable. I have been a loyal subscriber to this game since release, but behavior like this is extremely hard to swollow. Im not saying that folks who abuse the system should not be penalized. I =am= saying that people that have legitimate problems with reimbursment and similar customer-service issues should be treated like the valuable customers they are. And it is quite apparent that Funcom has the ability to do so, but chooses not to.

[psycluded]

A backpack is a phisical item, while a credit exists only 'on paper', so to speak.

Whoa. Who's having problems with reality here? Have you been playing AO too long? I think so.

First of all, physical items are tracked as object variables, most likely, and when one of them gets dropped out of the mapped array that is your inventory, or out of one of the nested arrays that are your backpacks, well, it's hard to keep track of all of that on the thousands of database recods (characters) that are active on the two dimensions. With all of the operations being performed on those arrays when you move things around and perform actions on them, it's no wonder that every once in a while one of the pointers gets corrupted and gets deleted.

Credits are a different thing. Guess what? That's just a floating-point variable in your player object. Easy to track and log, and probably takes up very little space in server logs.

This is all conjecture, of course, from one game programmer looking at the game from the outside. From what I hear, the Development Team at FC is working on a reimbursement tool for ARK, and once that's finished, it will probably be a little while before they implement it, since they'll probably have to work out procedures for it. When they finally get it in-game, that'll be a great day for both ARK and the denizens of Rubi-Ka.

In closing... hit http://www.gamedev.net and read. Until you can tell me you undestand and can do half of what is detailed in tutorials on that site, don't complain about what is 'easy' to do and what is not inside of a game universe.

[Guilou]

The problem is that when you lose a backpack, it doesn't threaten all the game's economy.
I don't say that they shouldn't have a reimbursement policy but i understand their priorities.

[________________Nazu]

Good point.

On the other hand, it took EQ 2 years to establish a reimbursment policy. Since CZ said it was #1 on the 'Honey Do' list, hopefully we won't have to wait that long.

[________________Nazu]

"We are now in the process of cleaning up the world of these credits. We know who did it, we know how they did it, and we know when they did it."

Where did you read this?

[Guilou]

http://www.anarchy-online.com/conten...articles/4180L

[Mercatura]

I sure hope they keep track of credits as integers and not floating points.

[______________Nianna]

Just because they have logs does not mean that it is actually time-efficient to parse those logs and reconstruct and track a player's equipment. They may even have to write custom scripts to do it on a case-by-case basis right now. If something takes too long to do they cannot do it because they'd have no time to do the other things required to maintain the game. I think they said they have reimbursement high on their list and they hope to develop tools to do it automatically and efficiently. In the meantime we are basically out of luck when we lose stuff. It sucks, but this is not really radical and substandard treatment. I've experienced the same in many other MMORPGs.

[Aqua]

among other reason listed above, it could also be that they just don't have the resources to track down every backpack a player looses, but when there are possible billions of false credits out there that could effect the way the game is played long into the furture they have to act.

~aqua

[______________Rogoff]

Just because they have logs does not mean that it is actually time-efficient to parse those logs and reconstruct and track a player's equipment. They may even have to write custom scripts to do it on a case-by-case basis right now

perhaps a custom script the first time. Maybe even the second. By the fourth time the thing should be parameterized, by the tenth it should have a simple UI on it.

I'm having a hard time imagining a log format that records enough information to be useful, AND is that hard to parse.

[______________Nianna]

If it records a lot of information it would take longer to parse. I didn't say it would be hard to parse, just that it may not be time-efficient. If it takes 20 minutes to search this gigantic log you are talking about an enormously time consuming task if say 20 people out of 5k+ (0.05%) lose an item in each crash. On top of those 20 they would have 50 people that forgot they put an item in a bag and thought it was lost too so the log would have to be scanned for nothing. Funcom would also have to answer numerous emails of people claiming they are wrong and they screwed up and probably have recheck some of them because people just wont take no for an answer.

[assassimon]

They have never said they can't reimburse items, only that they won't cuz it takes to long to check all logs.

This money exploit is very serious so I bet FC think it's worth the time it takes to track it down.

Good job FC, for once

[ryokucha2]

Originally posted by Azzazzimon
They have never said they can't reimburse items, only that they won't cuz it takes to long to check all logs.

And this is why there is a montly fee, Im sorry to disagree, no length of time should matter, again if this was a free game I would be more inclined to agree. Sure this money exploite is bad to everyone and I want them to find who did it, ban them or whatever they have to do, but the point is, many times they say they cant look up logs, there is no way to track items, exp, credits. We all know thats not true, but we all give up hope once we lose something to game mechanics.

I even lost something last night, stupidest stuff, but stuff they knew I would have and would be no reason to petition about if i didnt have. But of course the short answer was, no we cant do it. I dont really accept that answer, but there isnt much I as a player can do about it. Sure its a long process, but its not our fualt the game has bugs we have no control over.

In the end all I want is a real reimbursment policy, the current one of, sorry we cant do that, is not what we are paying for. If its to long to check logs, well then find a way to make it faster, hire people that just check logs. If it cost more money a month, say a dollar for the secuirty knowing, that if my "Stuff" ever manages to escape my grasps, that they will seriously take their valueable time to check the logs, then reimburse said stuff, well then I'm all for it.

Well I had more to say but I lost the words in a server crash, petitioned about it, but there is nothing they can do about it, sorry, good luck, and have a nice day. /wave /teleport

[Khaln]

Originally posted by Tekhead
Has anyone ever lost items or money due to a bug? I know I have. And whats the Funcom 'party line' on this? "Im sorry, we cannot reimburse your items".

Actually, when I lost my TT, the GM who answered my petition told me to wait a few minutes. Then he told me to check my inventory. He replaced it.

[______________Nianna]

What's a TT?

I lost my Pioneer Backpack and they basically told me "tough luck". Never did get it back.

[Khaln]

A Torturing Tool.

[______________Nianna]

Ahh, I see. Its nodrop which is probably the reason you got it back even though the official policy is that they don't reimburse items lost due to crashes or bugs. Since its a nodrop item they can just check the last backup from your character and if its there then you should still have had it. For items that you can trade or drop you could have just given it to someone else then claimed it disappeared. They might be able to tell the truth by analyzing their log, but that takes a lot more time than looking at an old save file I would think.

[thresholdrpg]

Funcom slipped up.

Their lie about not being able to reimburse was totally blown when they arrogantly admitted they have logs of everything.

[secondkenlon]

Yo, Cindrax, dismount from the high horse.

We've *always* known that they had logs.

We've *always* known that it is possible for them to trawl through them for information.

Arrogantly my arse.

Sheesh.

[Nullifax]

No the problem is that they have no way of tracking these credits down. They are totally clueless as to who exploited except in blatant cases like Cloudeh's, where someone goes from broke to billionaire in less than a day.

Fact is they are just taking a look at how much you have now, and how much you used to have and looking at the ones who've gained way too much. They might catch like 4 or 5 people. But fact of the matter is, this exploit was so unbelievably simple to do that there are literally HUNDREDS of people out there who used it. Many did so sparingly and judiciously so that they wouldn't be easily caught. Funcom won't catch these people. They are telling the playerbase that these exploiters are being banned only to give people a false sense of security.

The exploiters are still out there and they will stay out there. The GMs are too busy handling petitions of "so-and-so called me a bad name" and "that person was mean to me in the arena" and "whatshisname stole that kill from me" to actually find any exploiters. This game was headed into the dumper to begin with, all this exploit does is speed the journey a little.