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ArchangelLBC

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  1. I'm sure that would make you and others feel better, but it would only create more problems not solve them. A knee jerk reaction to something you hate on a visceral level is exactly what you despise in the actions of those that necessitated this thread in the first place. Let's be clear here. There is a world of difference between blaming the victim, and looking at what happened and saying "could this have been prevented and if so how?". As far as I am able to dispense blame, which is to say insofar as I am able to hold an opinion on the matter, the blame completely and totally rests with those who harassed John and his family. I am not legally empowered to take any action against those people, but if I were I am hard pressed to see how the tone or content of John's posts yesterday would have any mitigating factor towards that blame. But saying that what they did was wrong, and beyond justification, which is all I AM empowered to do, is a matter of one sentence. The next question of "could have been prevented, and if so how?", is a more complicated matter and deserves more thought., and the first thing I ask myself is do I understand, or think I understand, the motivations behind those who committed these heinous acts of harassment. Well I think they did it out of anger and frustration that has been boiling for months. Understand that at this point blame and justification don't enter into it. No matter what John did or said, they weren't justified. No matter how angry or frustrated they were, their actions were inexcusable. Understanding the why does not mean I, or anyone else, condones the what. But if we can understand it their motivations, and if those motivations can be influenced by the actions of the dev team themselves without compromising their own duties or rights, then I find nothing wrong with suggesting such courses of action to the dev team so that future incidents like this will not happen or not happen to such a degree (I understand that the world is full of crazy people). The game isn't that important I agree. That's why I express my own frustration and anger by simply not contributing to feedback threads anymore. Stopping future harassment is, I think, very important though. Again, there is a world of difference between understanding something and condoning it. My understanding of the motivations which could lead someone to these actions does not, in any way, serve as justification for those actions. Since you want to bring in more serious examples, let's play this out a bit. Say that my friend gets something precious stolen from him. He finds out who did it and beats that person up. Even though I can understand my friend's motivation in beating the other person, that doesn't mean I condone what he did. It is wrong for him to take the law into his own hands, and the fact that the person he beat up stole something from him shouldn't be a mitigating factor. In one respect, I don't even care what was stolen because nothing can justify my friend for having done that That doesn't change the fact that the thief shouldn't have stolen though. Two wrongs don't make a right, but they don't make just one wrong either. Btw, my original example was much worse really, but this gets the point across I hope.
  2. Let me say up front that I absolutely do not condone the actions taken by members of the community as far as harassment of John or his family goes. Such actions are unacceptable, and those who participated in such harassment should be appropriately punished. That being said Eric, I understand the frustration which may have led those members of the community to this extreme. That doesn't make it right, but a refusal to understand what led to those actions leave us only doomed to suffer them again in the future. Frankly Eric the only part of your post that I agree with is that such actions are absolutely unacceptable. Everything else is utter crap. The combat team wasn't interested in a dialog. A dialog would be them talking to us. Those idiotic posts yesterday were John talking at the community, not to it. And they varied between being condescending "learn to play" nonsense and flat out untruths. Whether those untruths were a result of willful lying or incompetence is irrelevant. Holding an opinion the community doesn't like is one thing. Showing the kind of disrespect John showed yesterday while failing to meaningfully address any of the actual concerns of the Mara/Sent community is another matter entirely. If the alternative to no communication is lying or incompetence mixed with a healthy dose of disrespect then, speaking purely for myself, I'm not sure which I find more infuriating but neither is acceptable from you or the combat team. Either way I cannot bring myself to respect the opinions of the Combat team when they so clearly don't respect those of the community. Again, does that mean that those who allowed their frustration and anger to manifest in the harassment suffered by John and his family was justified? No it absolutely does not. There was no justification for that. Yet if the way Bioware communicates with the playerbase continues in the same vein that John gave yesterday then the absolute best case scenario is that the game closes down because everyone quit, and the worst case scenario is that more and more people give into their anger in ways that are out of bounds. Neither of those I think are what the devs want. Certainly neither of those are what I want. Yet the community is powerless to affect real change without the team and Bioware doing things from their end to engage in actual meaningful dialog about class balance, and sadly there will always be people who, when they feel powerless, will go outside the bounds of civil behavior in order to try and stop being powerless. Official channels will only ever be effective outlets for Player criticism, badly as it's often expressed, when those channels are seen to be effective. When you have PTS after PTS cycle where meaningful feedback is ignored, when you make posts like the three posted yesterday, many people will stop seeing those official channels as having any relevance. Some like myself will stop posting for the most part because we're frustrated and angry and don't see the point in trying to engage the development team any further. Others, unfortunately, will allow their frustration and anger to lead them more unfortunate, and frankly reprehensible actions. So were the actions of yesterday justified? No. Were they despicable? Absolutely yes. Were they predictable? Sadly yes. As soon as I saw them, the internet being the internet and people being people I expected something like this to happen. Could it have all been avoided if communication had been handled better? Yes it could have.
  3. Viable when sending over min/max gear from an optimized run in a group of people on alts who have the entire operations on farm? Because when I say progression group I mean a group trying to clear content for the first time. Because I know a lot of players who rerolled and retired their mains rather than inflict their preferred class on their raid group until they have the content on farm.
  4. Question: Are you actually such a player? Most of the players I know who aren't hard mode capable don't want to bang their heads on the wall for weeks. If they were willing or able to make that kind of investment in time and energy they would be hard mode capable. The game mechanics simply aren't that hard. Again, in my experience these are players who like playing with others, like seeing the bosses and the story, but absolutely don't want to be wiping a lot or take weeks with the same group to clear content. The thing to keep in mind is that players who don't do hard mode aren't simply less skilled versions of the hard mode players. Different people want different things from the game. Some want content to chew on that makes them push themselves and get better. Some people just want to log on and play with their friends. They aren't in it for the sense of accomplishment, they're in it to unwind, and there's nothing wrong with that approach. For many of those players, they were content not doing hard mode, but were happy to join, and even be carried through, story modes. Log on, faceroll stuff, joke around in ts/mumble, hey some gear. Good times. For many of them, especially those with very sporadic availability times, spending your one free night in two weeks wiping to underlurker isn't all that fun. Now, a lot of what you said does apply to hard mode capable players who have no business in nightmare. But for story mode I disagree.
  5. This argument would have merit if it were at all grounded in the reality that we actually have instead of unthinking elitism. Here is the fact. There were people in previous tiers who could clear all hm content, with a good chunk of work, who had no business in nightmare mode. Those same people now have no business in hard mode. At all. Worse, there are entire advanced classes that have no business in a progression group at all, no matter how good the person behind the keyboard is. This is a serious problem and is absolutely not ok, even if we never get a NiM in this tier. The story modes are too easy for even previously non-NiM people, but the hard modes come with all of the frustration usually associated with NiM. In particular the tight checks (healing, tanking, dps) and the wipe inducing nature of even a single mistake. Again, I expect that out of nightmare. I don't expect it out of hard mode, and if that's the new standard guilds will simply break and the pool of endgame players that even care about raiding will shrink further. And this is absolutely exacerbated by the current class balance situation. Again, in Nightmare I have no problem telling a player "sorry, your class is a huge drag on progression. You need to reroll." That's just the way it rolls, even though it sucks. When we're saying that in Hard Mode.L, when the best PvE Anni Mara in the game switches to Merc because he doesn't want to hurt his raid team, that's a serious tuning issue. The reason we use the word balance is because we all implicitly recognize that you need to keep away from two extremes. If hard mode is too easy, on the level of current story modes, especially when nightmare is always released several months later, then even those who have no business in nightmare get bored and quit. Too hard, and those same players get frustrated and quit. Both are easy to do. Both are bad. The sweet spot between too hard and too easy is tough, but it's worth it to give the majority of endgame players something they can accomplish that actually feels like an accomplishment. If we were two months in and only 15 guilds had cleared both ops, but had done so with a standard group make up, then I'd say things were about right. Almost 5 months in, and pretty much all first kills coming from stacked groups of very dedicated people, and you have a problem.
  6. This right here. I don't think Pyro/Plasma was doing too much damage but maybe I'm too biased in that regard, and a nerf to damage may have been appropriate. But this change doesn't merely nerf the damage but makes the spec just clunky and unfun. Please roll back the change to Flame Barrage. I can't believe that they didn't allow Public Testing on what was, by far, the most significant change to the spec.
  7. Perhaps not. I'd edit it out, but I've long since decided to let my mistakes stand as they were made (well, except maybe typos), if only as a reminder that I make many of them. I'd apologize to id, but since I am on his ignore list (again it seems) it wouldn't do much good. Honestly on point, while leaving the exploit in place doesn't excuse violating the ToS, the damage to the community over this nonsense really is worse than any of the other affects this might or might have been. I still cannot believe it was left in place as long as it was =/
  8. You should learn the difference between incentive and need. If I'm in a group clearing HM ravagers so I can have a toon with the lockout, then I don't need gear from HM ravagers in order to win the progression race to beat HM ravagers first. At that point if no one else has beaten HM ravagers then I've already won the progression race. If I haven't already beaten HM Ravagers but use someone else's lockout to gear up then I've already lost that race. Either way exploiting won't help me win the progression race. Did those looking to gear up in BiS 198 gear have an incentive to exploit as much as they possibly could? They sure did. Was this exploiting going to have any bearing on their ability to win a progression race. No it wasn't. Do you need me to use smaller words so you can follow the argument better? A diagram perhaps? In my experience, people are removed from progression groups either because they stop showing up, consistently fail mechanics, or consistently fail DPS/Healing/Tanking checks. A mechanically strong player who consistently shows up and can put up numbers commensurate with their gear level will keep their spot. And if that's not how any "true high level progression" group runs then I'd say they're all equally demonic, not divine. And yet bugged proc relics were allowed weren't they. Even by classes that had a choice on whether or not to exploit that bug such as gunslingers. But yes you're right, player made guildelines are put in place to normalize those results to the extent possible. You know what's never mattered though? How you got your gear. Because it's irrelevant. Because you can either put up numbers or you can't. And whether you get it quickly or slowly, the only thing that matters is who has the biggest numbers in the end. You mean like the 6 weeks or so following a completely new expansion that raises the level cap and introduces two entire tiers of new gear? Right so this situation would have no effect since it's within the time limit you described. Are we talking about most players or are we talking about those players who take progression races and DPS leaderboards seriously? Because I'd argue that players that haven't cleared story mode yet don't care about either. I'm sure for people like yourself it is. I'd argue that PVE is cooperative by definition. That traditionally MMOs as a whole are cooperative by definition. At best you can call it player defined (i.e. what it is by definition is up to the player in question you ask) but you won't be able to draw any moral conclusions in that case. Which is what my original post was mostly concerned with. Whether I did or didn't, you clearly have no grasp of how proofs work, and so I wouldn't go to you to determine how well I did or didn't prove anything anymore than you're likely to come to me to ask how high level "competitive PVE" works.
  9. Progression race: First to clear the content wins. Since you were only really getting good gear by exploiting this on Hard Mode, someone had to be getting that content down on Hard Mode so they could share the lockout. So exploiting can't affect the HM Ravager's race. Arguably any group that can clear HM Ravager's is already making solid progression in HM ToS. So the progression race isn't affected. The DPS competition is a matter of gear but not time. Whoever puts up the best numbers wins. Doesn't matter how you got your gear. You can either bring it or you can't. If you can then you'll get your gear eventually and blow everyone out of the water. If you can't all the exploited gear in the world isn't going to help you. Neither competition is officially sanctioned by Bioware so is not under the purview nor the protection of the ToS. Both competitions fall under the same general consensus that governs pretty much all such similar competitions in videogames (such as speed runs etc.) which is be up front about your glitches if you use them, so we can separate based on different criteria, but there's nothing morally wrong with it. edit: Which I have to tell you is so much more a valid point than "There's no place in games for any cheating whatsoever at any time and in any place". Unfortunately, as I said, we don't get much of a say in what that punishment is, outside of voicing our opinions. My opinion is that the punishment should fit the crime. My opinion is also that if BW is going to come down on this instance of exploiting then they should come down on the other rampant violations of the ToS that affect players to the degree that the community has a legitimate interest in seeing punishment such as all the gold spammers. I'm not saying that by not punishing the latter they shouldn't punish the former. I am saying that by punishing the former, they should punish the latter.
  10. The people who are already in competition for those progression leaderboards didn't need to exploit for an achievement. Those with the skill to put up top numbers are going to do so, and be in those top progression groups more often than not. Within the DPS leaderboards, it's already accepted that you will use whatever advantage you can get your hands on, intended or not (sup double proccing relic bugs), and those leaderboards always take gear level into account. At worst this expedited the time people wait to start putting in high numbers, and even then you are going to be missing mainhand weapons and 198 relics no matter how lucky you were with the exploit. Additionally, that is a competition, if you can call it that, that the community itself fosters. There are no official BW posts or rewards, or as far as I know any achievements, for being first to kill a boss or being the best at killing a dummy with x amount of health. He is wrong you know. Or if he's not he has yet to make any case for why this reaches the level of some sort of moral infraction. Edit: On the contrary. I agree that BW has the right to make whatever rules they want and put them in the ToS. I agree that they have the right to enforce those rules how they see fit within the bounds of that ToS. That's all completely black and white. If you violate the ToS you open yourself up to whatever consequences BW deems fit to enforce. People violated the ToS. Some of them had actions taken on their account. The end. If people think that those who exploited should receive much harsher punishment, then sadly that's no more for them to say than it is for those to say who think no punishment at all should have been levied. I am speaking not to the technical violation, which as I said is open and shut, but rather the moral or ethical discussion which is a completely different ball of wax. Is it morally wrong to exploit a bug in order to circumvent certain mechanics in a video game in order to achieve the reward for beating content that had those mechanics in it? I don't think it is.
  11. No but you came into the conversation and started quoting someone long after that person had acknowledged that exploiting was technically against the rules, and therefore cheating because BW says so. What you missed, it seems, is that Max has been arguing against those calling for permanent bans or hugely disproportionate responses because for them this transgression goes beyond a mere breaking of a ToS and was in fact morally wrong. When he says he doesn't attach a sense of wrong to the technical violation of a rule, he's talking about morals. There are things which are wrong (morally) whether there are rules against them or not. There are things which are wrong even when there are rules, or even laws, specifically protecting such actions. I personally do not believe that exploiting the ravager bug was an example of such a wrong. Neither does Max. Those who are calling for permanent suspensions and disproportionate responses do seem to think it was morally wrong and he's asking why they think that way. Let me say as a member of the Destiny community that it is fundamentally a toxic one, though I would argue that this is for reasons that don't have much of anything to do with cheesing bosses. As time has gone on cheesing bosses has been more and more accepted by that community. Those who don't do it usually just call those who do scrubs for not beating things legitimately. Nevertheless ways to cheese bosses are openly discussed on Bungie's own forums, and while Bungie makes an effort to correct those exploits ,often failing to do so and often to the annoyance of the community who think they should spend their time addressing more important issues, in general as long as the cheesing doesn't affect PvP none of the community seems to really care. I'd definitely agree that there is very much a culture of "us vs the developers", with many pointing out flaws, and others responding that people should stop whining. Meanwhile, whatever exploiters did and however they were punished, the damage to the community is way greater than any other harm or benefit to the community and is a direct result of the dev's allowing it to go on for way too long. I don't know what part of you is more insufferable. Your self-righteous nonsense, your woeful ignorance, or the sheer repetition of the way you express your self-righteous ignorance. Using built in code to circumvent certain mechanics in videogames has been part of the culture for decades. And no one has ever cared, and indeed many have encouraged this, in what are for all intents and purposes PvE settings. People print t-shirts with the konami code. Now you'll point out that those are single player games and this is an MMO. Fair enough, but I'd point out that a sense of fair play is only important in a competitive game. While you can "cheat" in a PvE setting, similar to the Konami code or those Destiny cheeses I mentioned, there isn't any implied sense of fair play. You raid with your team to take down a boss and get gear. Some people try to make this competitive, and many many others don't give a damn. You can't hurt a sense of fair play that doesn't exist and many people don't see why they should care one way or the other how someone else they don't even know came to own their gear. Was it against the rules? Sure was. Did some of those people suffer the consequences of those rules. Well action was taken on their accounts. However just as it's not for us to say what does and does not constitute the rules (the ToS is a completely unilateral document. We agree or don't but we can't negotiate what's in it), it's also not for us to say what actions should be taken. The moral issue you take here is a complete non-starter. It's not a competitive game (or at least not the part affected by this exploit). All the people can cheat is the system in place that they're going against (the E part of PvE). That's always been true in PvE games, whether single or multiplayer, and in general the gaming community either doesn't care or actively encourages that. If you can't understand that then maybe you should leave the community because circumventing intended mechanics is right there at the heart of gaming.
  12. Confirmed ammo counter, and Blazing Bolts looks awesome, and apparently we're going to have much easier ammo management. Things are looking very good for commandos in 3.0 I think.
  13. Let's ask the really important questions: Will troopers finally get a damned ammo counter?
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