Guild Wars 2 and It's Schizophrenic Exploit Policy

[unruly]

In this case, I think it is fair to say that someone who amassed enough karma to buy enough items to get nailed for the exploit had a pretty firm grasp of the game and genre. That's why the people who only bought a few (so far looks like under 4) are okay.

Also, I wasn't online for the event in question, but I suspect most map-chats were full of people saying "Wow, that is a huge discount. That has to be a bug!"

I understand what you are saying, but RF is definitely a case of "Deserves the ban" and ArenaNet's handling of this has been fairly decent (I would prefer them to announce the "Make your case' on their actual website, but whatever). Maybe there might be problems in the future, but it is generally a good idea to give benefit of the doubt. The "slippery slope" argument is weak, at best.

To be fair, the karma weapon bug was extremely cheap and would have been easy for people who were relatively new to the game to exploit to mass numbers. I mean, the weapons cost 21 karma, which is about what I get for failing an event at level 40, so it would be easy to have the karma to buy 50 of them if all you did was heart quests without participating in any events. But at the same time, there's no actual gear pieces that are that cheap at any point(as far as I've seen at least, the only stuff that cheap is stuff like cooking mats). Because of that fact alone it should have been readily apparent to anyone that even bothered to ever open a single karma vendor's shop screen that there was something wrong with the pricing.

The other one that I'm aware of, which I'm not sure if they've started banning/suspending for or not, is the Vigil armor set. Apparently it was selling for something like 10 silver a piece, when from what I gather it's supposed to be closer to a gold a piece, and then could be salvaged or forged into stuff that sold for much more than that. It's a higher barrier of entry to exploiting it, but it's still within reach of quite a large portion of the playerbase.

[Finicky]

I didn't even know there was an exploit, but I'm glad they are banning people over it.

It's a shame that it's only a three day ban, economy based exploits (that are dead obvious and in numbers that weren't just for self use) should just be a permanent account ban.

Hilarious that OP bought 180 of them and is mad that he got banned.

Asshat, don't try to break the economy for the rest of us, if it were up to me you'd be permabanned.

[FriendlyFire]

Honestly, this can all be summed up fairly succinctly: just like in real life, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't.

[gundato]

To be fair, the karma weapon bug was extremely cheap and would have been easy for people who were relatively new to the game to exploit to mass numbers. I mean, the weapons cost 21 karma, which is about what I get for failing an event at level 40, so it would be easy to have the karma to buy 50 of them if all you did was heart quests without participating in any events. But at the same time, there's no actual gear pieces that are that cheap at any point(as far as I've seen at least, the only stuff that cheap is stuff like cooking mats). Because of that fact alone it should have been readily apparent to anyone that even bothered to ever open a single karma vendor's shop screen that there was something wrong with the pricing.

The other one that I'm aware of, which I'm not sure if they've started banning/suspending for or not, is the Vigil armor set. Apparently it was selling for something like 10 silver a piece, when from what I gather it's supposed to be closer to a gold a piece, and then could be salvaged or forged into stuff that sold for much more than that. It's a higher barrier of entry to exploiting it, but it's still within reach of quite a large portion of the playerbase.

Holy CHrist, it was 21? I thought it was 210 or even 2100. 21!?!?!

In that case, even the newbiet newb on the newb tree should have seen something wrong, and I would bet real money that map-chat was FULL of people saying "What the christ!?! Everyone, come exploit this!"

[Raaritsgozilla]

R_F You are an idiot and got what you deserved. Stop whining.

[husasa]

Suck it up. The people who have a right to complain are the ones who were hacked and have to wait for ArenaNet to put out this fire before they can go on to reinstate their accounts.

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[R-F]

No, he's quite clearly saying that if you report an exploit, you are obviously acknowledging the fact that it is an exploit. And you used it.

No, he's quite clearly encouraging everyone to never report exploits and to, in fact, never play the game in case there are exploits.

[hamster]

I agree that an "exploit" made possible by an error committed by the game devs themselves should not warrant a ban. Reversing the wealth effect is the most they should do. That would be reasonable. But a perma ban is never reasonable - that's too much power that is only exercisable - unilaterally, by the way - by one party. And that party is NOT the consumer.

On the other hand, since R-F doesn't disagree with temp banning exploiters, by his own standards, he deserved what he got.

p.s. just knew it was fishy when he said he "forgot" how many he bought lol. In fact i bet it's actually way more than 180. That's probably only half.

[caljohnston]

Exploits indicate poor programming. The developers should fix the error and apologize to their players, not ban them.

[Nalano]

Exploits indicate poor programming. The developers should fix the error and apologize to their players, not ban them.

"I'm sorry you were able to rob my store because an employee didn't lock up properly. No, no; I'm not going to prosecute you: In fact, keep the items. If anything, it's my fault."

Hell, looking at the Reddit replies to ArenaNet's statement on the event, it looks like tempbans weren't enough for some folks.

[Labbes]

I think ArenaNet's handling of bugs/exploits in GW1 was great. If I remember correctly, there was a time when the prices for the rarest crafting materials dropped drastically (I don't know the exact reason). This pretty much affected everyone, and I believe they just did a server rollback.
Then there was a bug in PvP which made you invincible. This only happened if you did a specific string of actions. It did not affect everyone. People got banned over that, and permanently banned.
I'm not sure why you would complain over getting a 3-day ban. It sounds like the 3-day ban is in fact longer, which sucks, but I'd say be grateful you were not permanently banned.
Also they don't encourage players not to report exploits. There will always be those that do not try to gain something from abusing a bug who will report it. If you think it's report-worthy, don't exploit it. There is, and always will be, the chance of getting banned for exploiting a bug in any MMO.

[caljohnston]

"I'm sorry you were able to rob my store because an employee didn't lock up properly. No, no; I'm not going to prosecute you: In fact, keep the items. If anything, it's my fault."

Nobody robbed anybody. If a store mislabels their prices it's their fault not yours. You're not obliged to tell them or to return the items if they ask. Real life stores apologize and take the loss, knowing that your future business and their reputation is more important.

It's okay if you have some sort of fetish wherein you prefer MMO companies threat you like a child, scum, addict and criminal at the same time, but don't force that on the rest of us.

[deano2099]

"I'm sorry you were able to rob my store because an employee didn't lock up properly. No, no; I'm not going to prosecute you: In fact, keep the items. If anything, it's my fault."

That's a good analogy actually. Because "dont' steal stuff" is written down quite clearly in the law of most lands. If "don't buy really cheap stuff from vendors" is in the Guild Wars 2 rules then that's fair enough. But I'll wager it just says "don't use any exploits", which is the equivalent of replacing all the laws of a country with "don't do anything bad, mmm 'kay?"

[Labbes]

That's a good analogy actually. Because "dont' steal stuff" is written down quite clearly in the law of most lands. If "don't buy really cheap stuff from vendors" is in the Guild Wars 2 rules then that's fair enough. But I'll wager it just says "don't use any exploits", which is the equivalent of replacing all the laws of a country with "don't do anything bad, mmm 'kay?"

I'd say going into an unlocked house is a better analogy. You don't even need to steal anything, it's an offense anyway. If I leave my door open, and you decide to take a peek, you better have a damn good reason for doing so. "Personal gain" certainly isn't one.
A three day ban is hardly the same thing as the real-life punishment for stealing tons of things.

[kyrieee]

It's ArenaNet's screw up, they should just revert the profits of the people who took advantage of it and leave it at that. Personally I wouldn't want to play an MMO where I felt like I was at risk of being banned all the time. That's what I like about EVE, most of the time CCP take ownership of their own mistakes instead of blaming the players. A friend of mine recently found a way to make 2 bil ISK / hr, someone told CCP, they fixed it, no one gets banned and everyone moves on.

[sendmark]

CCP can't afford to ban too many people, small player base and reliant on subs.

Always good to see exploiters punished.

[NathanH]

I think anyone defending the banning of MMO players for playing the game as created is a disgrace to video gaming, but then I think MMOs like this are a disgrace to video gaming, so I guess my opinion is irrelevant.

[jnx]

No, he's quite clearly encouraging everyone to never report exploits and to, in fact, never play the game in case there are exploits.

Did you ever consider just reporting the issue and not exploiting it? That's an option too, you know.

[frightlever]

ArenaNet's exploit policy is all over the show, and it's ruining the game.

It's not ruining my game. I'm having a ball. Also, not exploiting.

[deano2099]

CCP can't afford to ban too many people, small player base and reliant on subs.

Always good to see exploiters punished.

That's interesting actually. They've said before that once they decided against a subscription model, they were freed up from having to design gameplay that retained subscribers. I don't think that can entirely be divorced from the way they deal with customers: there's no downside for ANet to banning someone. They've already got their money. For someone like Blizzard or CCP, it's a different thing as if you stop a customer playing, you lose £10 a month or whatever. If WoW permabans 3000 players, they're throwing away £30,000 a month. If those people would have subscribed for a year, that's half a million down the drain.

For ArenaNet, the loss is zero. Lost revenue acted as a commercial check and balance on Blizzard and the like, ArenaNet have no such issue, and that's why this is sort of worrying. (Yes, they reverted them to temp-bans, but certainly haven't ruled out perma-bans in the future).