Not offering a satisfactory solution is also going to equal less $ for Bioware. Possibly more impact than banning the cheaters ( only they know the metrics of who cheated and what contribution they paid into the game ).

Ya ya...so will lack of content. Not even Bioware's corrupted metrics will be able to differentiate who quit over lack of content vs. lack of punishment for the cheaters. Hell, they'll probably misread these metrics as people quitting because they wanted more story anyway...

Would a guild suffer reprimand if a member of their guild used exploited credits to buy things for the guild, even if they didn't know a guild member exploited? It would be entirely unfair to ban by association, most will agree I'm sure.

I doubt the guild would be punished, but I believe anything the exploiter gave to the guild (conquest win, deco items, donations) should absolutely be revoked.

If you accidentally did it once, you should get the benefit of the doubt. Play a game enough, move enough stuff around, and there will be random mistakes. Twice, maybe.

 

All companions at rank 50 from that? Oops, we accidentally your account - the mods.

I feel those who have done it once or twice on accident or to just see if it really worked, but didn't buy anything and destroyed the barter items should not receive any punishment. However those who used the exploit and did buy things should receive punishment ranging from 3 days to 3 months depending on how many times they did it along with removal of any credits/currencies/items gained from the exploit. Those who did it and got their companions affection up should have that affection set back to 0 and some ban time. Those who ruined the market or exploited for mass amounts of things should receive perma-bans.

Wait... wait! Are you saying...

 

That you're a Vampire Illuminati that CAN'T COOK PANCAKES?

 

*cries in agony*

Oh, I make excellent pancakes - but I'm the (relatively) young one

Would a guild suffer reprimand if a member of their guild used exploited credits to buy things for the guild, even if they didn't know a guild member exploited? It would be entirely unfair to ban by association, most will agree I'm sure.

I seriously doubt they have the time and resources to do more than run a script to identify exploiting accounts, and remove currency and items from those accounts.

Tracking items bought with exploited currency and or the credits generated from the selling of exploited items beyond the exploiting account becomes orders of magnitude more difficult, significantly more prone to error, as well as delves into ascertaining intent, which is always difficult.

Which is why this type of exploit should never be allowed to exist for any length of time, and why if this were real life (since so many people keep wanting to equate exploiting a video game to stealing in real life), anyone harmed by this exploit could make a claim that Bioware was grossly negligent and therefore liable for damages.

How about an answer for a different question. Why is it that everytime there is a major content update, there is an exploit caused by it, that goes unchecked for weeks? Does BW no longer have anyone that QC's the game? Is CS down to a 1 person staff, so they never see the exploit being reported?

I suspect this is a large part of it. Since 4.0 launched I have submitted 53 bug reports, 1 of which is personally effecting one of my characters (missing the purple triage adrenal recipe and can not relearn it through RE.) The ticket I submitted for it is still open while the 52 other /bug reports I submitted took 2-3 before they were closed.

What BioWare needs to do I think is not only incentivize people to play on the PTR but also get multiple teams of FANS to play on the beta servers and allow those fans to copy their characters back to live servers on beta ends.

Some players don't just have a reading comprehension issue, they have an issue understanding how the real world works - especially for-profit corporations.

 

While they can, should, and most likely will ban egregious exploiters (most of which used throw away accounts anyways), they absolutely have to temper any decisions on actions against their revenue.

 

Only someone totally clueless about how the real business world works would expect to see permanent bans for anyone and everyone who participated.

 

I know I wouldn't if I were in management at Bioware, as I can imagine telling EA corporate that revenue is off for SWTOR because I banned paying customers who exploited a bug would not be good for my career.

 

All the corporate finance people I've ever dealt with acted like Pauly in Goodfellas...

 

You are clueless exploiters are very small and i bet they do not buy squat in Cartel items,,,what they have done is destroy the game economy,,they all need to be banned.

I can't believe what i read here sometimes,,you think these exploiters are the saving grace of the game? wow.

You are clueless exploiters are very small and i bet they do not buy squat in Cartel items,,,what they have done is destroy the game economy,,they all need to be banned.

 

I can't believe what i read here sometimes,,you think these exploiters are the saving grace of the game? wow.

Here you go Sathid.. *hug*..

[*]Resetting of all Influence gained with Companions

[*]Resetting of all influence gained with Base Commanders

and with the record for the most meaningless non-punishment was set today

Those things take forever and are quite costly to get to 50 now.

Those things take forever and are quite costly to get to 50 now.

That doesn't matter. It does nothing to add to the temporarily banned state of the account. It's one thing to take away their game time. That's the thing closely associated with an exploit. You should also remove those credits and the influence which was gained by fraudulent activity.

However...

Removal of all credits

Removal of all commendations

Resetting of all Influence gained with Companions

Resetting of all influence gained with Base Commanders

is simply too much. No other MMO developer in history will ever go this far, they know it hurts them way too much. You cannot take away legitimately gotten stuff from an account without feeling major consequences to your image. The issue here is that the steps mentioned above do nothing at all to add to an already lengthened ban.

You can remove all ill-gotten items and ban them for a period of two months. That's enough time to ponder their behaviour. The ill-gotten influence has been removed, resulting in no gain, while at the same time giving the person the opportunity to come back and play it right this time. I'm not saying some damage hasn't been done, but that's it. Just like our justice system. At least here in Europe. Our system isn't mean to condemn criminals and lock them away forever, it is a system targeted to rehabilitate criminals into society.

You'll just create a paranoid climate around this game if there's always a chance for all your stuff to be removed when accidentally stumbling upon an exploit. Yes, this has been proposed by some.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiE4CJ7D0C8

Bioware is essentially doing the 4th sketch here. They are, once again, applying punishment completely disporportional to the crime.

People here are complaining that this is just a slap on the wrist. That is what a temporal ban should be. A simple reminder not to do it again. Do it again? Then you perma-ban them. This is a sledgehammer approach once again. Bioware has no idea about moderation.

Hey folks,

 

Here is the first update on use of the stacked item sale exploit. As of this afternoon we have sent out our initial set of warnings, suspensions, and permanent bans for accounts participating in this exploit. I say initial, because it was important to action the accounts and prevent any further damage to the economy.

 

During their suspension time we will be continuing to investigate any account involved, and taking further action based on the egregious level of the offense. These actions can include:

• Further suspension time, up to and including permanent ban
  
• Removal of all credits
  
• Removal of all commendations
  
• Resetting of all Influence gained with Companions
  
• Resetting of all influence gained with Base Commanders
  
• Removal of items purchased or gained via exploit
  

 

Although you may hear that many people participated, it was rather a small group who were very egregious in their actions. In the future, I hope we see even less individuals using exploits, and simply just report them to the team. Thank you to the majority of you who reported it to us and avoided its use. I will continue to provide updates as I have them.

 

Thanks!

 

-eric

eric, is it possible to answer a question? Someone is sending me and others in my guild exploited items from characters that are named similar to ours. This person has sent stacks so far to more than one person. CS isn't being helpful so far, can you assure us that this won't affect us? So far we deleted the mails containing the items, but this person or persons seems rather adamant on getting us banned.

Thank you to the majority of you who reported it to us and avoided its use.

Honestly, what are people still doing in this game?

That doesn't matter. It does nothing to add to the temporarily banned state of the account. It's one thing to take away their game time. That's the thing closely associated with an exploit. You should also remove those credits and the influence which was gained by fraudulent activity.

 

However...

 

 

 

is simply too much. No other MMO developer in history will ever go this far, they know it hurts them way too much. You cannot take away legitimately gotten stuff from an account without feeling major consequences to your image. The issue here is that the steps mentioned above do nothing at all to add to an already lengthened ban.

 

You can remove all ill-gotten items and ban them for a period of two months. That's enough time to ponder their behaviour. The ill-gotten influence has been removed, resulting in no gain, while at the same time giving the person the opportunity to come back and play it right this time. I'm not saying some damage hasn't been done, but that's it. Just like our justice system. At least here in Europe. Our system isn't mean to condemn criminals and lock them away forever, it is a system targeted to rehabilitate criminals into society.

 

You'll just create a paranoid climate around this game if there's always a chance for all your stuff to be removed when accidentally stumbling upon an exploit. Yes, this has been proposed by some.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiE4CJ7D0C8

 

Bioware is essentially doing the 4th sketch here. They are, once again, applying punishment completely disporportional to the crime.

 

People here are complaining that this is just a slap on the wrist. That is what a temporal ban should be. A simple reminder not to do it again. Do it again? Then you perma-ban them. This is a sledgehammer approach once again. Bioware has no idea about moderation.

Nah, it's fine. Not everyone will get hit that hard:

During their suspension time we will be continuing to investigate any account involved, and taking further action based on the egregious level of the offense. These actions can include:

Nowhere does it mention getting the whole list dumped on them is a certainty, and frankly, loosing all your stuff seems a much better deterrent than a ban. Nobody that gets hit hard, like this, exploited "by accident".

As always, I hope to hear some real reports from banned players before I have a opinion on this but I hope this was handled more severely than previous exploits. Especially players who exploited a lot or took part in previous exploits should be permanently banned. And the good thing is that this will get rid of a few credit farming bots along the way.

Removal of items purchased or gained via exploit

Hope this includes unlocked decorations because those are one of the more expensive items affected by the exploit and it would be unfair if players got to keep their decorations once their suspension time is over.

is simply too much. No other MMO developer in history will ever go this far, they know it hurts them way too much. You cannot take away legitimately gotten stuff from an account without feeling major consequences to your image. The issue here is that the steps mentioned above do nothing at all to add to an already lengthened ban.

I disagree, there needs to be a strong punishment to dissuade players from exploiting. Players could get infinite credits and items with this exploit, and just a few days suspensions won't mean much for them.

Ya ya...so will lack of content. Not even Bioware's corrupted metrics will be able to differentiate who quit over lack of content vs. lack of punishment for the cheaters. Hell, they'll probably misread these metrics as people quitting because they wanted more story anyway...

You may not know this as you may have never unsubbed but you get an area to put quite detailed feedback when you unsub.

More often than not those unsubbing will go to the trouble of putting in exactly why they are quitting ... of course it doesn't take up people who just plain don't renew their sub but it's something at least.

Not sure if people would purely quit over the lack of punishment ... honestly I don't give a crap myself because those that ruin the economy around these sorts of bugs ( those that do it so much it generates just ridiculous amounts of income ) are going to be pretty sure of themselves in how they launder the credits and based on just some quick thought process you can see really simple ways to do it that Bioware aren't going to risk bans etc. over incase they get innocent players ( again ). In short - they aren't going to be punished to begin with because they won't get caught.

I am adding this to the list of my reasons for unsubbing is how it was handled ... left so long, they spent more time policing people saying "I think something fishy is going on here" than they did policing the damn exploit itself. EVen though it was all over the net and in game chat later on for anyone to see.

I did have another interesting thought though that might at least not ruin the economy so much as it will hurt gold farmers etc. who didn't exploit and that's that anyone hoarding credits from this to sell are going to keep the gold selling prices super low thereby hurting gold sellers which is a bonus. It will probably also hurt BW as more people buy credits as opposed to packs but that's their own damn fault.

My point being if that's the case then there wouldn't be quite the huge impact upon GTN pricing as one might think from this sort of exploit ... time will tell I guess.

Oh and also anyone think thy are outright lieing when they said the gold etc. packs were removed because of this new pack? Sounds like utter b.s. to me and I believe the removal is more in light of this exploit ( why hurt your purchasing market by removing popular products after all and attempting to "force" people to buy other times ? )

I can only assume because of the skyrocketing prices of these packs and buying them, opening them and hoarding their contents was a great way to launder those credits. Tin foil hat perhaps but meh.

You are clueless exploiters are very small and i bet they do not buy squat in Cartel items,,,what they have done is destroy the game economy,,they all need to be banned.

 

I can't believe what i read here sometimes,,you think these exploiters are the saving grace of the game? wow.

I can't believe how poorly some people are at reading comprehension.

In my post you quoted, I clearly stated exploiters should be actioned, and only suggested that EA / Bioware would need to consider the value of an account against the exploit in determining what action to take, not that they should take no actions.

If as you stat, the only people who exploited were those that do not contribute to this game's revenue, they will most likely ban them permanently.

However, if some of the people who exploited are subscribers and CM customers and thus contribute to this game's revenue, then suspensions from the game are more likely as EA / Bioware will want to retain them as paying customers.

Simple business logic - totally baffling I'm sure for those incapable of grasping EA is a for-profit company which earns money by providing SWTOR as a paid service, and thus filters decisions against impacts to their finances.

That doesn't matter. It does nothing to add to the temporarily banned state of the account. It's one thing to take away their game time. That's the thing closely associated with an exploit. You should also remove those credits and the influence which was gained by fraudulent activity.

 

However...

 

 

 

is simply too much. No other MMO developer in history will ever go this far, they know it hurts them way too much. You cannot take away legitimately gotten stuff from an account without feeling major consequences to your image. The issue here is that the steps mentioned above do nothing at all to add to an already lengthened ban.

 

You can remove all ill-gotten items and ban them for a period of two months. That's enough time to ponder their behaviour. The ill-gotten influence has been removed, resulting in no gain, while at the same time giving the person the opportunity to come back and play it right this time. I'm not saying some damage hasn't been done, but that's it. Just like our justice system. At least here in Europe. Our system isn't mean to condemn criminals and lock them away forever, it is a system targeted to rehabilitate criminals into society.

 

You'll just create a paranoid climate around this game if there's always a chance for all your stuff to be removed when accidentally stumbling upon an exploit. Yes, this has been proposed by some.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiE4CJ7D0C8

 

Bioware is essentially doing the 4th sketch here. They are, once again, applying punishment completely disporportional to the crime.

 

People here are complaining that this is just a slap on the wrist. That is what a temporal ban should be. A simple reminder not to do it again. Do it again? Then you perma-ban them. This is a sledgehammer approach once again. Bioware has no idea about moderation.

Sure you can. You look at the account, look how much it cheated, look at how much it has contributed financially to the game ( CC , Sub ) and if the later isn't of much value you punish the hell out of it to get them screaming and moaning on forums etc. to deter people from doing it again.

They don't do it wholesale of course but when you selectively punish people heavily in the hope they get vocal about it then it's not going to drive people away it's going to make them get a sense of justice and more importantly hopefully put people off doing similar actions in the future.

Who those scapegoats will be? ... Usually reddit etc. will tell.

I didn't care, or even know, for that matter. I have had no incentive to play this game outside of my team's scheduled weekend raids.

 

Honestly, what are people still doing in this game?

Enjoying the level sync you were such a proponent of I imagine.

and with the record for the most meaningless non-punishment was set today

You couldn't be more wrong. There's significant economic impact to Influence 50 and having accounts out there with 20 alts with 6+ max Influence companions would have been a serious issue from this exploit. It needed to be part of the solution, so bravo.

I can't believe how poorly some people are at reading comprehension.

 

In my post you quoted, I clearly stated exploiters should be actioned, and only suggested that EA / Bioware would need to consider the value of an account against the exploit in determining what action to take, not that they should take no actions.

 

If as you stat, the only people who exploited were those that do not contribute to this game's revenue, they will most likely ban them permanently.

 

However, if some of the people who exploited are subscribers and CM customers and thus contribute to this game's revenue, then suspensions from the game are more likely as EA / Bioware will want to retain them as paying customers.

 

Simple business logic - totally baffling I'm sure for those incapable of grasping EA is a for-profit company which earns money by providing SWTOR as a paid service, and thus filters decisions against impacts to their finances.

So, you are saying that whales will get off lightly if they happen to be one of the more egregious exploiters simply because they drop stacks of cash on the game? I'm sorry but the idea of that is sickening to me. If anything, banhammering a couple of whales would go a long way towards making it clear that cheating and exploiting of any kind will not be tolerated no matter who you are.

Does BW have the balls to do it? Would we even know if they did? We may never know the answer to either of those questions. I would hope BW would have the stones to back up their policy with action. I'd also wager if a whale (or whales) were to be heavily actioned (all credits etc wiped) or permabanned, they would go public somewhere with cries of "You can't do this to me! I spend thousands of dollars on packs every day!!!!" I would welcome the chance to laugh at them.

I would also give Bioware an epic high-five for having a spine and showing some integrity. It's a lot easier to support a company like that with my sub fee than one who lets people slide simply because they choose to throw cash at them.

Those things take forever and are quite costly to get to 50 now.

You couldn't be more wrong. There's significant economic impact to Influence 50 and having accounts out there with 20 alts with 6+ max Influence companions would have been a serious issue from this exploit. It needed to be part of the solution, so bravo.

a serious issue?

you're joking, right?