To all those who "dont give a damn".

Let me get something straight. If this ... situation is fine with you than you can have, as I like to say sometimes, a flag in your hand and an anchor in your ***.

Its absolutely OK to have your own opinion.

But. Do not try to impose that "ALL is ok aptitude" of yours to all those who really cares.

The problem is the exploiters that weren't idiots were using a dummy account to generate millions of credits and spreading those credits to other accounts (guildmates, friends) in many small transfers. You can't ban people for receiving credits in the mail. They didn't exploit anything.

The damage is done, there is literally nothing BioWare can do to fix it.

To all those who "dont give a damn".

Let me get something straight. If this ... situation is fine with you than you can have, as I like to say sometimes, a flag in your hand and an anchor in your ***.

 

Its absolutely OK to have your own opinion.

 

But. Do not try to impose that "ALL is ok aptitude" of yours to all those who really cares.

You make no sense. At all. First you say if someone isn't agreeing with you that this is a massive problem, one that causes gnashing of teeth and screams of agony at the injustice of it all that they are somehow incorrect. Using a pretty stupid analogy, no less. Then you say that it's ok to have a differing opinion.

The problem is the exploiters that weren't idiots were using a dummy account to generate millions of credits and spreading those credits to other accounts (guildmates, friends) in many small transfers. You can't ban people for receiving credits in the mail. They didn't exploit anything.

 

The damage is done, there is literally nothing BioWare can do to fix it.

They sort of can, assuming they go about it the way Blizzard did. Gold and items that were gained by exploitation or illegal activities were removed from all participating characters many times in WoW, even stuff sent through the mail. It's all tracked.

... there is literally nothing BioWare can do to fix it.

are you sure about that?

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=120099

"It's important to remember that our Terms of Service team is extremely careful and thorough in their investigation of any potential exploit or unusual activity in-game. Working closely with the development team and using extensive metrics based on player activity, they are able to determine what is normal player activity, what is unusual and what is exploiting. Our goal is always to ensure a fair game experience for all players while also protecting the rights of individuals, and if people are disrupting the play experience for others action will be taken."

Bingo! Now I'm 100% sure that is our situation!

 

What I personally like to see:

1. Temporary/Permabans to exploiters (really people, you should've known what you're doing in advance), theirs throwaway and main accounts.

2. Withdrawal of all illegal creds from circulation.

Option 2 seems to be the only fair way to go, and best for the economy. If there is a huge amount of accounts who did this, the credits they made illegaly is going to ruin the ingame economy for a long time. The team that works on dealing with these who also have the opportunity to ban accounts that broke the Terms of Agreement, would also be able to withdraw stuff from a players account on every character i suppose. They could even filter any character with a high credit balance and investigate those, and ofc then rule out those who made lotsa credits the hard way, legally, but delete all the credits from those who didnt. If they do not remove those big amounts of credits from the game, the economy in game would be completely ruined.

To all those who "dont give a damn".

Let me get something straight. If this ... situation is fine with you than you can have, as I like to say sometimes, a flag in your hand and an anchor in your ***.

 

Its absolutely OK to have your own opinion.

 

But. Do not try to impose that "ALL is ok aptitude" of yours to all those who really cares.

Seriously

get a life

The first patch broke the slicing skill.

The second patch broke exploits.

The third patch broke more exploits.

 

Eight hours every time, at least, to resolve... NOTHING of the game itself. I don't care about exploits. I care about trying to play and if i can't harvest anything and Bioware is more troubled about the exploits... we've a problem. How many players are affected by the exploits? And how many about the lots of bugs?

More work for the players please.

Our valued customers may dislike most of our half rushed game but at least they will not be exploiting it and it will die due to its sucking as a MMO and not the exploiters. This is the way of the Jedi "We suck but at least we don't exploit."

May the force be with you.

You make no sense. At all. First you say if someone isn't agreeing with you that this is a massive problem, one that causes gnashing of teeth and screams of agony at the injustice of it all that they are somehow incorrect. Using a pretty stupid analogy, no less. Then you say that it's ok to have a differing opinion.

Too Funny!!!!!

I want these cheaters banned, if not I want to see their characters deleted.

Anything less is BAD management and will reflect POORLY on your company Bioware.

You need to set an example NOW, before your gain a reputation of encouraging cheaters.

1. They will not tell us about individual issues, though the EULA dictates the consequences.

2. They can only withdraw those credits if they are still on the exploiters in either cash or goods 'stolen'. If they are already in circulation, they can't do anything about it. They cannot take credits from people who might have inadvertently benefited.

I want these cheaters banned, if not I want to see their characters deleted.

 

Anything less is BAD management and will reflect POORLY on your company Bioware.

 

You need to set an example NOW, before your gain a reputation of encouraging cheaters.

Agreed, and they need to post a public reply letting the community know what action, in aggregate, has been taken against the exploiters and the credits that were introduced illicitly into the economy.

If bioware does not provide its community of some type of public response, and actions taken, to this issue then I wash my hands of this game.

They already did. Please check the stickies.

are you sure about that?

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=120099

 

"It's important to remember that our Terms of Service team is extremely careful and thorough in their investigation of any potential exploit or unusual activity in-game. Working closely with the development team and using extensive metrics based on player activity, they are able to determine what is normal player activity, what is unusual and what is exploiting. Our goal is always to ensure a fair game experience for all players while also protecting the rights of individuals, and if people are disrupting the play experience for others action will be taken."

 

Bingo! Now I'm 100% sure that is our situation!

So a random account that no one plays on gets banned while all the people with millions of credits are scot free. Yeah, BioWare would accomplish a lot. They can only ban the account that exploited.

I think some of you guys who are claiming the servers are ruined need to get a grip. i heard the # 20 million used so i will assume that is in the ball park of what was gained from the exploit. lets assume each server has 2000 people on it. 20million divided by 2000 players = 10,000 credit. 10,000 credits per player is NOT going to cause inflation that we can recover from.

and second off, stop pretending that MMO economies are in anyway like real economies

That's just not possible.

 

Some of these credits have been turned into various mats and goods by paying for crew skill missions. And some of those goods have been bought by other players who have equipped them or used them to craft stuff, etc. I don't think having some of your gear being suddenly deleted because it was tainted by money duped by other people would be a very popular move.

 

Some of these credits have bought stuff off the gtn from other players, too. Then they used those credits to buy things, and so on. You can't revert all that stuff without penalizing players who never did any exploiting themselves.

 

Banning people who used the exploit is a no brainer, but fixing the effects it had on the economy is far from easy.

No, but you can add a negative balance to thier bank account.

1) Determine a figure as a reasonable amount that people may have amassed since the game went live. Wipe out any amount of credits over this amount.

Let's say 1million credits for arguments sake (could be 2 or 3, whatever) is determined as the reasonable amount then any account with more than this the balance is reduced to this amount, 1million in our example.

Some would lose some legitimate credits (me included) but the economy would be saved and in my opinion it would be a small price to pay. I can always earn more credits.

2) Trace exploiters and swing the big stick.

They may or may not have banned players. But it is not prudent for them to tell us exactly what they did. Firstly because of the legal exposure, and secondly because it would give more information to future exploiters.

There are legal and tactical ramifications in any announcement made by the publisher, developers, or management involved with this game. Sadly we live in a litigious world.

If you have a beef with BioWare, write them a letter and explain your cause. Posting a complaint like the OP seems much more like narcissism than constructive activity.

Dear community, I urge you all to contribute your thoughts to this topic as frequently as possible.

 

As many of you know by now, SWTOR's recent patch removed some serious financial exploit which have caused economies on all of the game's servers to be badly damaged. Players was able to, naturally, generate infinite amounts of credtis to meet all their possible and impossible needs.

More info can be found here:

 

In my humble opinion, many people (me included), upon realising inequity of this "little" problem, will be "in thought", to say the least.

When we talking about some kind of PVP exploiting, or even little PVE exploiting (like recent /getdown bug), this is tolerable, because "main stream" of players is unaffected. But when we talking about MMORPG server's economy, this poses a very huge threat to all its inhabitants, because it is bread and butter of the game. Those who think otherwise may want to ignore this post and do something else instead.

 

So, it rises 2 critical questions to Bioware:

 

1. Firstly, what measures will be taken against exploiters?

 

2. Secondly, but more importantly, how do you intend to combat those tricky types who used evasive maneuvres of washing off those illegal credits ( using throwaway accounts, GTN transactions, in-game mail etc)?

 

Let us not allow this dire situation to be resolved by temporary suspension, which really not help much.

 

What I personally like to see:

1. Temporary/Permabans to exploiters (really people, you should've known what you're doing in advance), theirs throwaway and main accounts.

2. Withdrawal of all illegal creds from circulation.

Let's keep this VERY important thread on the front page.

I will say this: the fact that this exploit existed is evidence of sloppy coding from Bioware. It should have been rooted out long before this game every went to closed beta, by their internal Q&A dept.

This will hinder economies. Only time will tell us how much impact. But on one hacker forum a person is boasting that he made 1.4 billion credits using these now patched exploits. 1.4 billion credits artificially introduced into this YOUNG economy can have a major impact on the price of goods on the trade house.

I think some of you guys who are claiming the servers are ruined need to get a grip. i heard the # 20 million used so i will assume that is in the ball park of what was gained from the exploit. lets assume each server has 2000 people on it. 20million divided by 2000 players = 10,000 credit. 10,000 credits per player is NOT going to cause inflation that we can recover from.

 

and second off, stop pretending that MMO economies are in anyway like real economies

If you read the Reddit aerticle it says that the exploit made it possible to make up to 2million credits a minute. The game has been out how many minutes ? Do the math... I think we are talking billions of credits.

If you read the Reddit aerticle it says that the exploit made it possible to make up to 2million credits a minute. The game has been out how many minutes ? Do the math... I think we are talking billions of credits.

Easily billions. Possibly much much more.