I did read the OP in minute detail...

I understand the difference between "ban" and "suspend"; but; BIOWARE has chosen to use ban instead of suspend when referring to actions taken against level 1-39 players who farm loot containers in Ulum. If there is any confusion they should use suspend and not ban like they have been doing.

I can't make it any clearer then that.

You should try reading what you quote. It CLEARLY says #1 noone was banned. Second it says they were doing activites which are considered exploits. You think to yourself why ONLY ilum? Because they can flip and loot chests they arent supposed to be able to loot that much. So Id suggest you go back and re-read the thing becuase you obviously dont understand what you quoted.

Banned, is the "exact" word BIOWARE has been using when referring to people they they took action against for looting containers....people are not lieing; they are repeating what BIOWARE has said...The "EXACT" same word is being used in emails that BIWARE has been mailing players that they have taken actions against for looting containers.

 

Instead of using "suspended" BIOWARE chose to use the word "banned"

 

The focus should not be on a word, but, instead the actions taken against people looting containers when they haven't done anything wrong.

 

Once again I want to make perfectly clear that I'm not talking about people who exploit bugs or hack the game , but instead people who fly over to Ulum, and farm containers for credits.

You have no idea what you are talking about look:

They also warned and temporarily suspended - but did not ban - a smaller number of accounts for activities on Ilum that were decided to be game exploits.

They didnt even ban the exploiters! I really wish you people would try reading the stuff I really do. It gets frustrating that you keep saying this lie about people being banned for looting containers. NOONE WAS BANNED PERIOD not even the exploiters. So where in this do you read they banned people simply for looting a container?

If you don't like the rules the pandas are that way. --->

Do you have a reading issue? No where is there a rule that says you can not loot a box, nor does say it that because the Dev's are thicker than 2 planks and make such a stupid mistake its OK to blame it on the players!!

For crying out loud why did they not put these mobs right next to the box, then the issue would never had arisen, idiots is the only word that springs to mind.

If they're exploiting a BUG in the game, they should be banned. The bug should be FIXED, and it will no longer be an issue ever again. If they're banning people, but not fixing or removing the thing they banned for, that is unacceptable.

 

The only RULES in an MMO should be those enforced by the game code. If you do not want higher level characters killing lower level characters, do not make it possible. If you do not want low level characters farming chests, do not make it possible.

 

I assume an account camped low level characters at each chest and would log them in exactly at the respawn time. If this is the case, make the respawn random? Spawn a monster near the chest to defend it? Fake rules that are enforced by customer service staff and not development and game code are the worst idea ever. There is a profanity filter for a reason, a spam filter, and other filters. There is an IGNORE feature. If some idiot wants to use profanity in chat and spam you... you have the tools to resolve it yourself. Customer service should not be involved in it at all.

They weren't banned outright. They were warned, and if they continued with the same behavior and were banned it's their own fault. BioWare and their CS handled it as expected. As stated, it takes time to implement a permanent solution. The temporary solution was to warn people that if they continued using the exploit they would be suspended or banned. An issue that effects the service of the customers should absolutely involve customer service. If someone spams me (say a gold or credit farmer as it is) you can bet I'd ignore them, but I'd also report them for the ToS violation. You can't preempt that action using the ignore feature.

In all fairness though, I think from what I have heard from friends in the game that the Slicing nerf put into place a few patches ago makes using slicing to gain money through Slicing missions fail every time now. I know a number of people that have dropped Slicing all together now and went with something that could use rather than a credit gathering crew skill. Spending 2000 credits on a mission to only get back 1700 from the lockbox just makes no in-game financial sense.

 

Mind you, this is hearsay for me. I am an artificer/treasure hunter/archeologist on my toon and I LOVE it. :-)

Slicing still has monetary gain, just not the ridiculous amount it used to. It doesn't fail every time. They just lowered the amount of credits received. I'm a lvl 400 slicer and it's well worth it. It doesn't give just a lockbox either. There are mission/crafting schematics. Plus augment missions too. The only missions I ever failed were orange one's as I was leveling the skill. I have yet to fail now that I hit lvl 400.

You are right about getting less back sometimes, but the key is sometimes. Over an extended time you end up gaining more than you lose. I was at 30k credits about an hour ago and now I'm at 36k (sending my crew on missions while I watch NetFlix).

Do you have a reading issue? No where is there a rule that says you can not loot a box, nor does say it that because the Dev's are thicker than 2 planks and make such a stupid mistake its OK to blame it on the players!!

 

For crying out loud why did they not put these mobs right next to the box, then the issue would never had arisen, idiots is the only word that springs to mind.

Just to point it out again. BioWare warned people for their actions before instituting any further punishment. BW never blamed anyone and said they were working to fix the issue. They are allowed to amend the ToS at any time, and felt that this was an issue so they took the appropriate action. Don't take it so personally man. That is unless you were someone who was warned what you were doing was considered a game exploit and repeated behavior would result in suspension...

if you don't like the rules the pandas are that way. --->

qfe

Really, if you don't like it, move along.

This game is intended for the enjoyment of everyone. If BW decides arbitrarily that you are bringing down the fun of another person or group of people, I hope they warn, suspend, ban you.

I've been warned in WoW, EQ, and SWG about metagaming. I even got my sub account and my friend's main account 3 dayed for 'killing more than 1000 mobs an hour' or something like that. I was not afk, nor was my friend, no bot was used, but they felt I was playing outside of the way the game was intended. Your precious Blizzard did this.

qfe

 

Really, if you don't like it, move along.

 

This game is intended for the enjoyment of everyone. If BW decides arbitrarily that you are bringing down the fun of another person or group of people, I hope they warn, suspend, ban you.

 

No. If you don't like something you kick, scream, protest, revolutionize or do whatever you can to change it.

I'm sick of the weak people getting their way. If I swear and someone is offended I shouldn't have to stop swearing, they should learn to ignore the swearing, accept it or f.. off.

Dumb people offend me but I can't go kill everyone I find unintelligent.

No. If you don't like something you kick, scream, protest, revolutionize or do whatever you can to change it.

 

I'm sick of the weak people getting their way. If I swear and someone is offended I shouldn't have to stop swearing, they should learn to ignore the swearing, accept it or f.. off.

 

Dumb people offend me but I can't go kill everyone I find unintelligent.

If you could, you would have to start with yourself. You have zero logic and even less compassion.

Your swearing does not effect me, you spam camping something until it is unusable by anyone else does. You destroying the economy by 'cheating' the game, again, does.

But back to your, lack of, logic. Just because you want to swear, does that make it okay to do so? How does it make you any more right than the person who doesn't want to hear it. Say 500 people don't want to hear it but 10 do, is it fair for the 500 to put up with your intolerance? Is your right to swear more important than someone else's right not to deal with your mouth? I like your 'my way or highway' attitude, and I'm just saying, 'Please, the interstate runs both ways, help yourself.'

Back to OP. Thank you BW, I fully support the way you are trying to make the game fair for all.

-Flent

This thread is absolutely insane.

This.

Maybe I'M insane, but here it goes:

I honestly don't understand why this explanation from BioWare is such a major issue with people. Players were "systematically and repeatedly" performing actions that BioWare felt would cause harm to the vast majority of players in game. Notice they said it was a relatively small number of accounts doing this. Now, in an MMO that has TONS of players, for a small number of accounts to do something that would hurt the global economy or the enjoyment of the game in general for most people, wouldn't it have to be something BioWare considers fairly serious?

Imagine you've just finished constructing a nice hotel or apartment building. It's taken you a long time, and a lot of hard work and effort has gone into it. People are beginning to stay there and settle. Now imagine someone found a flaw in the foundation, but instead of bringing it to your attention they starting hammering and chipping away at it, threatening not only the building but the safety of everyone inside. And after repeated warnings to stop, they keep doing it. Wouldn't you call the authorities and have them stopped?

Nowhere did they say you can't make as many credits as you want or kills tons of mobs for drops or fun or whatever odd pleasure you get out of killing tons of mobs. Systematically exploiting the game regardless of warnings to the contrary is simply not allowed and hurts everyone.

BioWare knows about the exploits and is working to correct them, would you prefer they allow the repeat offenders to keep exploiting and make it worse for everyone else? Stop being short-sighted. Don't do it. End of story.

And if you simply don't agree with the rules BioWare has instituted IN THEIR OWN GAME, then move along. These are not the droids you're looking for.

/END RANT

This.

 

Maybe I'M insane, but here it goes:

 

I honestly don't understand why this explanation from BioWare is such a major issue with people. Players were "systematically and repeatedly" performing actions that BioWare felt would cause harm to the vast majority of players in game. Notice they said it was a relatively small number of accounts doing this. Now, in an MMO that has TONS of players, for a small number of accounts to do something that would hurt the global economy or the enjoyment of the game in general for most people, wouldn't it have to be something BioWare considers fairly serious?

 

Imagine you've just finished constructing a nice hotel or apartment building. It's taken you a long time, and a lot of hard work and effort has gone into it. People are beginning to stay there and settle. Now imagine someone found a flaw in the foundation, but instead of bringing it to your attention they starting hammering and chipping away at it, threatening not only the building but the safety of everyone inside. And after repeated warnings to stop, they keep doing it. Wouldn't you call the authorities and have them stopped?

 

Nowhere did they say you can't make as many credits as you want or kills tons of mobs for drops or fun or whatever odd pleasure you get out of killing tons of mobs. Systematically exploiting the game regardless of warnings to the contrary is simply not allowed and hurts everyone.

 

BioWare knows about the exploits and is working to correct them, would you prefer they allow the repeat offenders to keep exploiting and make it worse for everyone else? Stop being short-sighted. Don't do it. End of story.

 

And if you simply don't agree with the rules BioWare has instituted IN THEIR OWN GAME, then move along. These are not the droids you're looking for.

 

/END RANT

Yep, some people are just nit-picking drama queens. This forum, especially general is swarmed with them.

Basic math of one of the chest in ilum that you can farm.

Average money gain per chest? 2,300 to 4,700 credits

Average vendor money for greens? 1,000 to 3,000

So at the worst you make, 3,300 best? 7,700 or so.

This chest respawns every 10 minutes.

So lets do the math.

At worst? it is 475,200 credits for a day of farming,

At best? it is 1,108,800

yeah no that should never be allowed.

At worst? it is 475,200 credits for a day of farming,

At best? it is 1,108,800

 

 

yeah no that should never be allowed.

if someone can manage to farm all that in one day from a chest without using any programs/exploits, as boring as it is... then they deserve every credit, and a new title to show off their achievement!

besides you can make MORE credits and XP in a shorter time by farming space missions constantly.

3,237 credits and 5,275 xp every 4 minutes and 3 commendations doing sullest interception.

so by your math, i could also make 1,165,320 credits - 1,897,920 xp - 1,080 fleet commendations. per day farming 24/7. without a single break.

as you can see by doing space missions i would be making TONS more then chest farming, and fleet commendations can be used to buy even more items to sell for more credit gain.

there is really no reason to complain about people who want to farm chests.... it looks like no matter what you do in this game, you will be making credits, some methods are better then others.... and security chests are very low on the list.

SWTOR is my fourth mmo. My first mmo was Final Fantasy XI. I joined AFTER Square Enix finally officially cracked down on Real Money Traders (RMT) as they are called in that game. Still, I frequently ran across RMTs in that game when I was trying to camp a rare mob or just get drops off regular mobs to get gil.

The biggest fault I find with most of those arguing that BioWare did something wrong is that most of you don't seem to realize that people who exploit like this often aren't people at all. Most of the time in Final Fantasy XI I could not get the rare elite (Notorious Monster) because the RMT wasn't a real person to begin with, but a BOT. Before I could even SEE the mob, the computer playing the RMT character already knew the mob was popping and wham, it was dead. I do NOT have the quick reflexes that a computerized bot has, and never will.

So did they have an unfair advantage over me? Hell yes they did, because they were using illegal tactics to farm what I was farming honestly.

Most of you are assuming that those who were farming chests in Ilum were real people. If I know gold sellers, and trust me I had plenty of experience running into them in Final Fantasy XI, where they nearly destroyed that game's economy, they were using bots. The most effective way to open and repeatedly open, in mass, chests and loot them, is with bots, period. This is what I suspect was happening in SWTOR and why SWTOR banned people for exploiting the game.

Stop assuming those using this exploit were real people, if they were going to these extremes there is every likelyhood that it was a computer looting those chests you're so upset about and feel they have every right to loot.

I'd like to see you stand at a chest as it pops and have to race against a computerized bot to get the loot from a chest, then maybe you would understand truly just how difficult those that exploit the game make it for me and my friends to enjoy said game.

Second, a smaller number of accounts were warned or temporarily suspended for exploiting loot containers on Ilum. To be completely clear, while players may choose to travel to Ilum earlier than the recommended level (40+) and may loot containers if they can get to them, in the cases of those customers that were warned or temporarily suspended, they were systematically and repeatedly looting containers in very high numbers resulting in the game economy becoming unbalanced.

Every day there are low levels on Ilum, farming containers. They are still there, every single day.

What's the point for me to fight and fight and get loot, when someone can place a level 12 on a planet and macro it looting a container ?

I mean... how long does it take to see where a level 12 loots containers on Ilum and just place some mobs next to them ? Say, 20 minutes ?

Please, take this issue serious! It unbalances the economy and is probably pretty easy to fix.

It should be if you are below level 45 you can loot 5 boxes a day then the game wont you get anymore for the day.

This way you are an appropriate level for the area and people cant farm.

I don't need 100% of the facts to form a valid opinion.

 

I know what BIOWARE employees have been posting here in the forums and combined with what I've seen/read in actual emails that BIOWARE is sending to players that they have banned; I can in fact make an articulate and valid post about it.

 

People are being banned for looting containers when they aren't exploiting bugs or hacking the game in order to loot said containers.

For the love of god, Bioware did not ban anyone!

And these people you'r assuming got BANNED were most likely bots or EXPLOITING the respawn mechanic on the chests.

Again just so you can get it inside your head .. BIOWARE DID NOT BAN ANYONE..

I see a lot of you are posting flaming ignorance and even some are spewing stupidity.

Ok, go back to the first page of this thread and re-read it, ten or fifteen (thats 10 or 15) times if you have to.

IT IS NOT COMPLICATED.

GOLD FARMERS GOT BANNED.

EXPLOITERS GOT WARNED.

SERIOUS EXPLOITERS GOT ****TEMPORARILY**** SUSPENDED.

If you have *NOT* been WARNED, or SUSPENDED, you weren't EXPLOITING and shouldn't PANIC.

If you *HAVE* been WARNED, or SUSPENDED, be a grown up and quit crying. You *could* have been banned. (I would have banned you)

If you have been banned for selling credits, you can go ahead and die. The TERMS OF SERVICE clearly stated to you when you signed up that selling credits for REAL MONEY was a violation of the agreement and that you would be banned.

NOBODY HAS BEEN BANNED FOR LOOTING A CHEST.

I don't see a problem here if it was not real money trading. The ingame economy wouldn't suffer from this, things would balance out with time, the market (just like the game itself) is still young and prices still vary extremely at this point.

One can go to a planet, survive local dangers, get to location with loot, then take that loot. They all had their own dangers and used the proper game system in place. Many seem to call these exploiters while I say those are just envious.

Is the situation fair? Well as for the ability to do so or even being banned for it I am truly not sure if it is or not. However, while the idea to level-lock certain planets to deny a certain level and lower to even go there sounds like a good idea at first it is actually pretty terrible. The game is already overly restricted and railroaded.

I see a single fair method to fix these "problems", and by "problems" I mean the very foundation of how the chests and nodes work right now. Instead of denying people of certain levels to get to certain locations, fix the whole loot system, and make it so that nodes and chests reward you in the scale of the character level.

So what if a level 11 character goes to Illum and sneaks past elite mobs? So what if he reaches mentioned nodes and boxes? If the system would be changed according to my suggestion he would only find in said boxes and nodes loot that is appropriate for level 10-15 anyway. This would also make it worth for higher level characters to still go back to old/low level planets and fully explore them.

My concern isn't even that with chests, compared to beta their respawn time got drastically lowered and the worth of loot is weaker too in most cases. What I think is a greater issue is that the XP gained from space missions kills the proper questing sequence, I myself love to do them 3-6 times per day but I hate that they give XP at all, I would rather have them give double credit amount alone. While XP can mess up a lot of things, even if one has a lot of credits he can still just use items correct for his level or craft it away.

Back to the issue at hand. In my honest opinion if the players just used the game mechanics given possibilities I would call them not exploiters but clever. If the developers have a problem with the current situation then they should amend it. The talk about "proper gameplay", "too many credits compared to level" or "legitimate playing" and whatnot just scares me. I just started to learn how the ingame market works with my crafter, and if you label merchant players exploiters you could just as well label every single real-life trader that too, because getting cheap goods then selling it for extra profit is the basis of trade.

As said, through this realization you can call every single merchant an exploiter for them wanting to turn huge profits. You could just as well call every single crafter or gatherer of various professions ingame the same too, not just slicers. Slicers don't really create anything, they are not necessary for any other skill profession either, the sole flavor/benefit of taking that skill was until now either the wish for RP flavor or because it was actually profitable to just take some credits up lying around. This (or maybe even higher) amount of profit can however be just as simply with selling any kind of crafted or base resource goods on the market.

Anyway, I would rather see proper improvements and bugfixes instead of these things. I want to be able to choose texture/details and color for crafted clothes and armor, the ability to name and rename items, and the option to hide/unhide headgear of companions (one by one not just all together). Ah, did I mention the ability to be able to show and use a helmet without also getting the modified character voice with it? I nearly never use helmets shown because they look either horrid on the character, want to show my characters face, or in many cases because I just hate the changed voice that the helmet "provides". If I could have my normal voice I would more often choose to show a few of the headgear.

I won't even go into details why I think armor restrictions other than light/medium/heavy are absurd and should be removed, different classes for some stupid reason already show the same armor differently sadly.

Being here I also have to report a bug (IMO): Noticed on Vette, that when I bought a diadem-like light armor specified helmet (due to how it looked like) when it got equipped both that and the default twilek headgear (accessory) showed up at same time what looks bad together.

Suggestion to solve this: First and foremost make it possible to hide/unhide helmet for companions (case by case), then have the actual gear (like the mentioned diadem) override/hide the default headgear. I understand this could conflict somehow with cybernetic implants and such so coders should be careful about that too.

EDIT: for those who actually cared about what I wrote and read it, my apologies for possible typos. I am not american (not even in terms of the continent) and am tired.

Sigh*

Yea gold farmers are the biggest issue this game has right now. I can't fathom why you would waste man power, and time to deal with this sort of problem when your game has severe issues that need attention. Animation/Cast time issue should be your number one priority but here you are banning gold farmers because thats a huge problem. Who gives a rats *** about people selling credits. How about you fix the latency issues, or the quest log issues, or the hard mode loot issues, or interface issues, or the stupid bug that dosnt give you credit for pvp matches won to complete dailys and weeklies, or the weird no credit for dark side point/light sight point issue, or any other issues. You know how blizzard gives you those surveys and ask you about customer service. Don't give those out for customers to fill out, you won't like the results.

I don't see a problem here if it was not real money trading. The ingame economy wouldn't suffer from this, things would balance out with time, the market (just like the game itself) is still young and prices still vary extremely at this point.

 

One can go to a planet, survive local dangers, get to location with loot, then take that loot. They all had their own dangers and used the proper game system in place. Many seem to call these exploiters while I say those are just envious.

 

 

Is the situation fair? Well as for the ability to do so or even being banned for it I am truly not sure if it is or not. However, while the idea to level-lock certain planets to deny a certain level and lower to even go there sounds like a good idea at first it is actually pretty terrible. The game is already overly restricted and railroaded.

 

I see a single fair method to fix these "problems", and by "problems" I mean the very foundation of how the chests and nodes work right now. Instead of denying people of certain levels to get to certain locations, fix the whole loot system, and make it so that nodes and chests reward you in the scale of the character level.

 

So what if a level 11 character goes to Illum and sneaks past elite mobs? So what if he reaches mentioned nodes and boxes? If the system would be changed according to my suggestion he would only find in said boxes and nodes loot that is appropriate for level 10-15 anyway. This would also make it worth for higher level characters to still go back to old/low level planets and fully explore them.

 

 

 

 

 

My concern isn't even that with chests, compared to beta their respawn time got drastically lowered and the worth of loot is weaker too in most cases. What I think is a greater issue is that the XP gained from space missions kills the proper questing sequence, I myself love to do them 3-6 times per day but I hate that they give XP at all, I would rather have them give double credit amount alone. While XP can mess up a lot of things, even if one has a lot of credits he can still just use items correct for his level or craft it away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to the issue at hand. In my honest opinion if the players just used the game mechanics given possibilities I would call them not exploiters but clever. If the developers have a problem with the current situation then they should amend it. The talk about "proper gameplay", "too many credits compared to level" or "legitimate playing" and whatnot just scares me. I just started to learn how the ingame market works with my crafter, and if you label merchant players exploiters you could just as well label every single real-life trader that too, because getting cheap goods then selling it for extra profit is the basis of trade.

 

As said, through this realization you can call every single merchant an exploiter for them wanting to turn huge profits. You could just as well call every single crafter or gatherer of various professions ingame the same too, not just slicers. Slicers don't really create anything, they are not necessary for any other skill profession either, the sole flavor/benefit of taking that skill was until now either the wish for RP flavor or because it was actually profitable to just take some credits up lying around. This (or maybe even higher) amount of profit can however be just as simply with selling any kind of crafted or base resource goods on the market.

 

Anyway, I would rather see proper improvements and bugfixes instead of these things. I want to be able to choose texture/details and color for crafted clothes and armor, the ability to name and rename items, and the option to hide/unhide headgear of companions (one by one not just all together). Ah, did I mention the ability to be able to show and use a helmet without also getting the modified character voice with it? I nearly never use helmets shown because they look either horrid on the character, want to show my characters face, or in many cases because I just hate the changed voice that the helmet "provides". If I could have my normal voice I would more often choose to show a few of the headgear.

I won't even go into details why I think armor restrictions other than light/medium/heavy are absurd and should be removed, different classes for some stupid reason already show the same armor differently sadly.

 

 

 

 

Being here I also have to report a bug (IMO): Noticed on Vette, that when I bought a diadem-like light armor specified helmet (due to how it looked like) when it got equipped both that and the default twilek headgear (accessory) showed up at same time what looks bad together.

Suggestion to solve this: First and foremost make it possible to hide/unhide helmet for companions (case by case), then have the actual gear (like the mentioned diadem) override/hide the default headgear. I understand this could conflict somehow with cybernetic implants and such so coders should be careful about that too.

 

 

 

EDIT: for those who actually cared about what I wrote and read it, my apologies for possible typos. I am not american (not even in terms of the continent) and am tired.

No, I did not take the time to read your post, because the first sentence of it made me understand that you did not take the time to read anything the OP said or any legit comments made on the past 105 pages.

-Flent

This is yet another fine example of why sandbox mmorpgs are better than themeparks.

Themepark developers are like liberals - they feel the need to control every aspect of the player's enjoyment and control the way the game is played. They want to have control of the players from birth to death.

Sandbox developers are like conservatives - they simply create an enviorment and allow the players, and the game, to evolve naturally.

I'm paying a monthly fee - if I want to stand in one place for 24 hours a day and loot containers that are lootable - then that's what I want to do. I personally wouldn't want to do this - it seems boring as hell. But you see, this is a themepark on rails where the players have no control.

Quite obviously that is not what he said by a long shot. How do you get that from they were banning people for selling credits?

Read. The. Whole. Post. You just look stupid.

Some were warned/suspended for the DEGREE to which they went to illum pre-40 and farmed things. It was stupid. It is stupid. If they don't want people pre-40 doing it, level lock the planet, or level lock the nodes. If you can do it through the game mechanics (and this is definitely NOT an exploit, you went to the planet, you harvested resources, what is exploiting about that?) then it is ludicrous to expect players to divine this weird interpretation of the ToS. If I had been suspended for this, I think I might be suing BW. (And yes, there would be a cause of action, I am a lawyer, don't argue about that, don't even worry about it.)