118684-the-economics-of-exploitation-and-you

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Seriously, you didn't know until this conversation that people were keeping hundreds of plat worth of high value items? I know this comes off as rude, but more so, I'm just surprised. Expectations are not set by your words, they are set by your actions. Your actions say, it's VERY profitable to jump on exploits in this game. Your words say "[..] set people's expectations for this particular thread that while I can bring this stuff up and make a case for tighter/harsher bans". People already know what expectations are set by your actions. If another big exploit comes out and a bunch of people participate due to the expectations your actions have set, the player base isn't likely to care that you tried to set stricter expectations with words. Fact is, the expectation set is that it is VERY profitable to cheat the system any way you can in this game. I'm a little confused by you stating that it is your job to track down and punish the offenders, but at the same time you don't think they are being punished enough. I agree that they were not punished enough, however, if you disagree with the way you are doing your job, why not change it? Perhaps it's simply that you don't get to choose the punishment, just find the offenders, which I suppose is just another example of how much of a tribal knowledge or silo problem you guys seem to have over there.


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Personally, I wouldn't want to see somebody banned over this either. What I would have liked to have seen though, is major repercussions for those that participated. As it stands, it was profitable. To make this simply a break even situation, you would have had to remove all plat made off of the exploit, and if it didn't total the amount they made from it, then start removing the items purchased since the date they started their abuse. That gets you to square one. That is to say, no punishment, simply back to where you were before you started exploiting. To actually punish the players that took advantage of this exploit, you would have to take the above a step further, actually including a way to punish the player, meaning that they would be worse off now, than the time at which they started exploiting. That would be something like taking an extra X% of however much plat they made off of the exploit, resetting their amp and/or ability points. Whatever you want really, just some sort of actual punishment to show that you do not tolerate this behavior. EDIT: The point of this is that not only did the players not get punished in my opinion, but they actually didn't even get set back to square one. EDIT2: @CRB_DaOgre Most of these talking points are for you, and I'd love to get some feedback on how you feel about the above. I know this is my perception of the situation and it may not be reality. I will not be offended and want you to show me where I'm right and where I'm wrong if you are allowed, and I'd also like to know your personal opinion on the above. I know that what I'm hearing from people could be completely wrong, and perhaps players really were punished (beyond breaking even) aside from a temp ban.


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Asking exploiters to be banned is far from a witch hunt. It's asking for common game justice and accountability on the part of Carbine. Further, don't exaggerate. Banning cheaters isn't suddenly going to kill the game's remaining populace, NOT banning them is. People don't like to play with exploiters. People like dude above don't like their 6 months of progression invalidated by exploiters, or played off like it was nothing as phmb did. I know nothing actually matters because this is a video game and *cupcake*it who cares, right? But in the scope of the people that care about the game, have invested time into it, they don't want it to devolve into nothingness. Further, as an added point, banning even 100 cheaters now, permanently, is nothing compared to the 100s to 1000s of people that won't pick up a game that caters to exploiters. I don't share this opinion, but I have others who do, and that's the opinion that they simply won't play a game that condones exploiting. Further, it just adds another black mark to Carbine's list of management faults, and a soft stance on exploiting is a very big mark indeed. Finally, it was their choice to forgo a rollback for tracking people down, and thus the only option we have. No one here really cares about naming and shaming specific players, as long as justice is served. This is no witch hunt. People don't care about names, and yes we ALL agree that CRB should do a better job of preventing it in the future. However, they still need to do a good job of cleaning it up now. Finally, let's not distract from the real issue at point. I think we all know someone who cheated and who deserves to be banned from this exploit. We all know people who we would probably miss playing with, but that's the risk they took when deliberately exploiting. I know that its kind of rough to see even people who have posted in this thread, or people who have been trolling this thread, to be put on the chopping block, especially when they're your guildies, in your case, but this isn't just a harmless exploit. This was a deliberate and malicious exploit, for great personal gain at the indirect cost of others. Does it really not occur to everyone else that the economy matters a lot less than banning the cheaters? The focus here does not need to be about preserving the populace or keeping cheaters / exploiters around, it needs to be about attracting new players. The economy is best served with a massive amount of players feeding it, rather than trying to repair it from exploiters. People aren't attracted to games and studios that condone exploiters. (Funny, its starting to sound like one of the major complaints about arenas in this game!)


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Hi DaOgre, Thank you for this. As far as I can see, CREDD has only marginally increased on Jabbit and I understand this is where the focus has been. However, all items of interest have seen a surge in price after they were all bought during the exploit (eg sign of fusion - eldan used to be below 25g, now at 35-40g a 60% increase). Given that Carbine is being very light touch on this (ie doing next to nothing as I understand there was no claw back on outflows from the accounts), one should not expect the economy to come back to normal. This is pretty much where it stops in my view regarding the topic you are willing to discuss. I do not have much to add on the other topic that would not be obvious or would not have already been described by other users.


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I think the Eldan signs (particularly fusion and logic, etc) are increased more do to the fluxes than anything. You need the eldan to make the expert mats (like tech leather), and you need expert mats from like 4-5 other crafters in order to make the fluxes to reroll runeslots as a technologist. All of the mats cost at least 2 eldan-sign of fusions + 5 eldan *other sign (logic for tech leather). These would be up, IMO, no matter what due to increased demand related to the new expert technology crafts being highly desired.


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I understand your frustration here but like I said I don't decide how punishments are handed out or what the policy on that is. I've been poking around a bit and I'm going to try to get some numbers for you guys, but ultimately the people who are making those decisions are more tuned in on WHY those decisions are made. I absolutely understand the frustration about people seeming not to have been punitively punished for exploiting and that not being much of an incentive for them to have not cheated. All I can say is I've been asking around about it. If you have specific questions here that you feel aren't being answered I'd be happy to speak specifically to them. Thanks!


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We can't say if this is true or not of course but if it is the statement "we have all of that data" becomes very dubious indeed. The punishment if this is true was a quick fix. Someone had lots of herbs or a lot of money...chop a bit of it away and rid them of their herbs. If someone bought the herbs from the CX and you knew this, what have they done wrong..nothing but said person has got a punishment. Once again, if true, if you had proper transactional logging you could fully reverse it but you can't have if this post is correct. This person has setup buy orders for bloodbriar as my post earlier states benefiting from the exploit but instead of simply taking away the bloodbriar and refunding the plat paid there's some absolute toilet way this has been dealt with. It pretty much makes your statement about having full transactional data a lie if this is true because why wouldn't you use it otherwise. People don't like liars or being cheated/exploited.


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