Important Announcement: Legendary Tokens Exploit

wuweird

_Vitto wrote:

I like to think they had some interest in not taking action (or little action).
If it's for the health of the game or for their health (read $$$), this is something only numbers can tell.

There's a term for that sort of behaviour: exploitative.

wuweird

aesthetocyst wrote:

Coming soon to Kickstarter:

Marvel Puzzle Quest 2: The Robust Network Architecture Edition!

Featuring:

Crash Recovery instead of Crash Penalty!
Secure Token pulls!
Live PVP scores!

Can I also hope for:

Centralised storage of user accounts!
Sane tile drop resolution that isn't broken by new character mechanics!

wuweird

DrStrange-616 wrote:

Once the cheaters started exploiting the expensive 5*s, they cared and it became obvious to casual observers

I'm a lot more cynical, I think they only care now because it became obvious to casual observers.

Unknown

People play this game for hours and hours. With all these disappointing pulls, what makes you think they won't spend time re-rolling for things they want regardless of how long it takes. I wonder if this is how that one dude pulled 17 4*s in a pull..... Or something ridiculous like that, I can't recall exact numbers.

Depending on how they fix this, it maybe the beginning of the end to MPQ for many many players..

Flare808

Totally not a computer programmer so I have no idea how it really works. Maybe someone else can explain.

Would this exploit have a negative effect on everyone else's draws? If there were many people taking advantage of this exploit, their draws would be much higher than 10%. This would cause D3's metrics to show that we (as a community) were getting say an 11-12% draw rate of 5*s. Would D3 code their servers to be more stingy with 5*s to bring the percentage back down to the expected 10%?

Ducky

Flare808 wrote:

Totally not a computer programmer so I have no idea how it really works. Maybe someone else can explain.

Would this exploit have a negative effect on everyone else's draws? If there were many people taking advantage of this exploit, their draws would be much higher than 10%. This would cause D3's metrics to show that we (as a community) were getting say an 11-12% draw rate of 5*s. Would D3 code their servers to be more stingy with 5*s to bring the percentage back down to the expected 10%?

If this is, indeed, the case, then I am going to be very upset.

Ludaa

lukewin wrote:

Not sure why Salgy's link won't direct you to it, but here's the info. Searching thru the user Microtom's posts, you find some interesting foreshadowing. Screenshot this post for posterity folks, because it might get sandboxed soon. The fact that some people are referencing the exploit as rerolling, means people have known about it. I for one, did not, since this info was before I came to the forums, and I was still playing like a noob.

link to post dated Thu Jul 10, 2014 8:47 pm EST

Microtom wrote:

gobstopper wrote:

Microtom wrote:

If anyone want it, I have a bot that earns about 7000 iso per hour and is undetectable. I stopped playing a while ago and don't use it anymore.

It's amazing that you've admitted to botting several times and still you were never sandboxed. Demiurge Anti-Cheat #1

You think that's what's amazing? I told them several times there was an easy way to reset tokens and get any heroes. Tracking botters is an impossible task, it's understandable that they can't do anything about it. However, a bug this big should have been fixed as a priority. It's still not fixed.

When a new hero was released, the event tokens used to give a 15% chance to get the featured hero. So, you'd reset your token about 10 times and get one. If you didn't have a token, you could spend 200 hp and it was a great price for a featured hero. It took 5 minutes and you had it.

Now, when a new hero is released, the chances to get the featured hero is 2.4 percent. So you could spend an hour resetting your tokens and not get one. I believe they made this change to discourage people from resetting their tokens and get the latest hero quickly. So, instead of fixing their game, they punished everyone.

So they may have lowered percentages to combat the cheaters, instead of spending their precious new character resources on fixing the code? I believe it. It always feels like they want as little to do with this game as possible. People will absolutely spend a ton of time doing this if it works, think about how much time it takes to grind a top ten finish for new releases. I look forward to the mass sandboxing, but there won't be any compensation for those who played by the rules. That would require them to admit some fault.

Mawtful

Spiderham wrote:

Depending on how they fix this, it maybe the beginning of the end to MPQ for many many players..

It may be the beginning of the end to MPQ for D3/Demiurge/MPQ. I'm sure a good portion of those LT rerollers were still spending money to acquire those Tokens. If old mate ~everyone knows who~ with 8 or 9 5*'s decides to contest charges then that would be huge. Maybe the rest of the Alliance would try to contest charges too, if they were relying on having a player with that kind of roster on board.

As has been stated a number of times already, there's no saving face, just damage control long enough for people to get distracted by the snow on the title screen again.

GurlBYE

Just to comment on one ridiculous argument.
People not being willing to reroll.

LOL are you kidding me? People play the same nodes for up to 7 days for ONE legendary token, and you think they won't reroll a token?

People spend multiple hours and hundred of hero points for ONE legendary token

This whole game is nothing but doing the same thing and hoping for different rewards.

If people can get any sort of control they will.

QuizB

wuweird wrote:

aesthetocyst wrote:

Coming soon to Kickstarter:

Marvel Puzzle Quest 2: The Robust Network Architecture Edition!

Featuring:

Crash Recovery instead of Crash Penalty!
Secure Token pulls!
Live PVP scores!

Can I also hope for:

Centralised storage of user accounts!
Sane tile drop resolution that isn't broken by new character mechanics!

All jokes aside, perhaps this is time for version 2.0. Now MagicPQ is out in the wild, they might update MPQ, especially the back end/ui/tokens/yaddayaddayadda to prevent this from happening in future?

Of course, this is total Silver Surfer in the sky thinking and it may (read: probably is) not financially feasible or making sense from a business case perspective.

I personally think that if cost (time or money) wasn't an issue, MPQ is getting to the point of needing a major patch up to keep viable. Especially if the plan is to have it keep going for the next year/2/3.

It would also give them a chance to dig through their code and close other loopholes that can be exploited through known techniques.

DrStrange-616

DuckyV wrote:

Flare808 wrote:

Totally not a computer programmer so I have no idea how it really works. Maybe someone else can explain.

Would this exploit have a negative effect on everyone else's draws? If there were many people taking advantage of this exploit, their draws would be much higher than 10%. This would cause D3's metrics to show that we (as a community) were getting say an 11-12% draw rate of 5*s. Would D3 code their servers to be more stingy with 5*s to bring the percentage back down to the expected 10%?

If this is, indeed, the case, then I am going to be very upset.

GurlBYE

For there to be enough of a change in percentages to change draw it'd need to be higher then 4 or 5 percent. It'd need to be around 20-30-ish, and on top of that, the percentages are once again, not percentages for everyone, or assigned on an individual basis.

If they advertise 10%, some people can hit 0 and others hit 20 and the average would still be 10%.
Once you understand that you'd see that it's take an astronomical amount of covers from 1 person, or a ton of players when you consider the playerbase at large.


Probability isn't set in stone and its not a machine thats saying 10% of the player base will get X.

It's saying on every draw, there is a bag of marvel balls, there is a 10% chance of it being X Y or Z.

In a vault the ball is removed, in a normal draw, the ball isn't. It remains 10 percent.
It doesn't mean 10% of your draws will be X Y or Z, it means that if you drew infinitely your draws AND OTHERS would average around 10% altogether.

So the 40 Legendaries you got don't need to hit 10%. It'd be nice if they did, but thats not how it works.

GurlBYE

If any argument has unclaimed rare cards in a digital environment it may not (and likely doesn't at all) reflect the way this game is actually programmed.

If that were the case you should expect a 4 star for every 1,000 or so standards.

Cypr3ss

GothicKratos wrote:

I think some people are being a little superfluous.

The initial premise is that the developers knew about an exploit because there was a singular post about it two years ago. Come on, let's be reasonable folks.

tl;dr it's been brought to their attention now that people are using this exploit now to great affect and they're taking action.

The point is, previously, I feel like, it was a complete non-issue. We people seriously re-roll Heroic Tokens? Event Tokens? Give me a break. If it were me in their position, I wouldn't have drew attention to the issue by making a public statement on it then and I certainly wouldn't have spent money on fixing it.

I think some people are being a little appologetic.

The point is, previously, it was an issue that the developers chose to ignore. If you think people _wouldn't_ re-roll at any given opportunity then I think you're being a little bit ignorant. How many times do you run through an essential or final node for that 1 CP? They have also said this is *easily detectable* so either (A) it is easily detectable and they've been ignoring the people using it for years, or (B) its not easily detectable and they still have no way to resolve it but want to give the impression they're finally taking action.

You know how I know they haven't been banning people who were using this exploit, because alliances wouldn't of been encouraging their players to utilise the exploit, cause they wouldn't be in an alliance due to being sandboxed.

Regards,
Cypr3ss.

Cypr3ss

DrStrange-616 wrote:

scottee wrote:

Just because it hasn't been fixed for two years, doesn't mean they haven't been sandboxing people for it for two years.

That is possible, although it would require them to be proactive and show an attention to detail that I've not seen evidence of before. If they can close it now, they could have closed it then.

If they were sandboxing people 'as it happened' you wouldn't have people in alliances encouraging other alliance mates to utilise it, which was what the deleted OP reported.

Regards,
Cypr3ss.

Pylgrim

Super nice to know that while I pulled X-Force and IW from literally (not figuratively or exaggeratedly) half my Legendary Tokens, people were gaming the system to push even further ahead than just the people with average luck would.

Cypr3ss

Stax the Foyer wrote:

1) Keep people willing to spend actual money on the game. This isn't a subscription-based game, or a game for purchase. If they're lenient here, they run the risk that people's wallets are going to pucker up, or wander elsewhere. And a bad reputation on this type of issue can and will follow them to different games.

This is what I find very interesting. It would appear from the comments here & elsewhere that some people are still quite happy to hand over cash for this, which I find astounding.

AFAIC the leniency has already occurred, the issue being open for so long. So I'll be voting with my wallet and there will be no more money from me. I'm hanging out for the announcement that says 'we've closed this exploit', but am not holding my breath.

Regards,
Cypr3ss.

lukewin

OJSP wrote:

Flare808 wrote:

Totally not a computer programmer so I have no idea how it really works. Maybe someone else can explain.

Would this exploit have a negative effect on everyone else's draws? If there were many people taking advantage of this exploit, their draws would be much higher than 10%. This would cause D3's metrics to show that we (as a community) were getting say an 11-12% draw rate of 5*s. Would D3 code their servers to be more stingy with 5*s to bring the percentage back down to the expected 10%?

I had a strong suspicion that the exploit does have a negative effect on everyone else's draws. That's partly the reason I suggested in that hidden thread that not only the exploiters are punished, but everyone else that have spent money since the introduction of Legendary Tokens and Command Points but haven't used the exploit, to be given Legendary tokens to let them catch up. (If the exploiters are removed from the general population, then most likely there's no more catching up to do for the rest of the player base)

I would be inclined to believe that it doesn't. I'm not a programmer either, so this is purely put together using my logic, from other in-game mechanics. Rehashing a lot of what OJSP stated in his theory. I don't think there is a set amount of covers to pull from. That would be too complicated / not worth it to have a system like that set up. It would require that data gets sent/received from a source, that would need to be constantly updated and refreshed, which we know they don't like doing (which is why see PVP matches without updated values, why we can't have scrollable leaderboards, etc.).

Using SS's release as an example for my hypothetical. Numbers are made small, to make it easier to understand. If they'd fill a LT pool of 20 covers, only 1 would be an SS. If someone pulled the one, they'd have to wait for the other 19 covers to get pulled, before they'd refill the pool. If they refilled the pool more often with SS, they'd have more of the 4* in the pool, and the distribution rate among the population probably wouldn't be in line with the odds.

I think the way it's set up is that you pull a token, and then it does something along the lines of going thru the listed odds, and whatever it lands on, is what you pull. Your pull wouldn't have an effect on anyone else's, and vice versa.

The distribution of the whole population getting covers within the listed odds, would give D3 Go! / Demiurge reason to believe there's nothing wrong with the odds/system, thus no need to consider any changes. Similar example, in the movie Jurassic Park, the system only looked to make sure all the dinosaurs were there. When the system said all the dinosaurs were there, everything was working "fine". It wasn't until they checked to see if there were more dinosaurs than were supposed to be, that they found that the system was not working as intended. I'd say since they were checking the whole population's covers, and probably investigating anomolies that popped up / flagged due to being reported, they thought everything was working as intended. Until someone pointed out the exploit being used, they didn't think to check it, even though they were aware it has been in use for over a year and a half.

OJSP wrote:

Also, I think we should stop mentioning how the exploit is done.. I think that was the cause for the other thread to be hidden away. (I believe it's not deleted, considering that ConcernedCitizen's number of posts are still 4, but we could only see the one in here)

Regarding the post count, hidden/deleted threads don't remove post counts or reputation points received from the posts. I haven't seen posts mentioning how the exploit is done, but I have seen plenty (mine included) naming it. I don't think awareness of the issue is the problem, especially since people should now know it'll be punished. The other thread did have more details on the exploit, so I can see the cause for hiding it away. It is also in line with trying to keep discussion to a single thread, which is great that it's occurring in the official thread.

snlf25

So if it's extremely easy to tell who cheated then the converse is also true. So give all of us awesome non-cheaters some rewards and call it good. My forgiveness can be bought for 2.5 million iso, 5 roster slots and 10 Legendary Tokens.

Pinko_McFly

I am a bit skeptical that they actually have a way to detect this unless they can actually distinquish forced closes from crashes. Using the logic fed to us in the past, players can argue a string of good luck.
Maybe the rng on every client runs off the same seed and they can check the current rng value in the client vs the number of tokens used.