An Update On Token Exploits *Updated (12/15/15)

Unknown

How am I suppose to have peace of mind when I spend my money if I know that the cheaters are still around everywhere?

We have been playing in an unfair-environment for more than a month when these cheaters started to have a lot of 5*. I knew the certain players who have been boxed and have been hit repeatedly in PVP by them before, so I knew exactly at least how long they have been around with their monstrous 5*, it wasn't short. Plus I have repeatedly reported those guys which yield no result... And now, of course, we have no compensation or whatsoever. I know most of the affected group of players are the high level players which may be why you don't want to provide compensation to us. But the rewards they missed were also the top rewards, even included 1-month long effort to compete in PvP Season and got push out by cheaters...

IceIX wrote:

STOPTHIS wrote:

Is anything being done to actually fix the exploit? Otherwise I just see this as an announcement telling people to be smarter when using it. Or spend money and just get a warning.

That was already covered by the first post David made on this, but yes. We don't really like to have *any* exploits open, but something somewhere will always exist. And this particular exploit is difficult to "be smarter" about. The only thing you could really do is do it less, which is kind of counterproductive to the cheat in the first place. We don't tend to advertise any exploits we close up though, since even things that are patched up and announced as such will give insights as to how others may be found. The less outside information there, the better.

"The only thing you could really do is do it less" <- which means the problem is still exist?

How can we have confidence in your team again after all of these, how can I continue to invest while knowing that I will still be in an unfair-environment play ground again? Please, I don't want to leave the game i love(d) and the great people I've been together for so long, but when things became like what we're facing today, I only have few options left to choose from.

Thorzhamer

I'd say for how first responses to a crisis situation goes.... both Hi-Fi and Ice-X have left MUCH to be desired.

STOPTHIS

IceIX wrote:

That was already covered by the first post David made on this, but yes. We don't really like to have *any* exploits open, but something somewhere will always exist. And this particular exploit is difficult to "be smarter" about. The only thing you could really do is do it less, which is kind of counterproductive to the cheat in the first place. We don't tend to advertise any exploits we close up though, since even things that are patched up and announced as such will give insights as to how others may be found. The less outside information there, the better.

Using it less is exactly what I meant about being smarter. It's not really counterproductive, in any way. Frustrations over LT pulls pop up everyday. If for every 2 IW pulled, someone rerolls until they get a OML. Then they're still going to be ahead of the game. Might be slow, but it will probably faster than non-cheating players while potentially looking legit enough to escape the sandbox. And that's all the matters.

Now, respectfully, I don't think fixing the problem was covered in the first post. Closest point is "It is an ongoing process we are vigilant about maintaining." Maybe I'm just cynical here, but maintaining doesn't sound like fixing. However, colwag raised a fair point, it could very likely be a coding nightmare on several levels. Especially, if this is something that as been in the game from day 1. If that's the case, just admit it. It's understandable.

I'm just looking for you guys to reestablish my faith in you and your product. You're already admitting, which as someone who wanted more transparency I'm going to reluctantly applaud you for, that some people are going to escape the full punishment if they've paid enough, but when that's coming on the heels of you misleading us about the 4* DDQ node and "you're suppose to lose". My confidence is rather low right now for the game and devs. "This too shall pass" won't hold up forever.

DrStrange-616

colwag wrote:

DrStrange-616 wrote:

It isn't the Sopranos, to be sure, but the implication is that if you didn't pay you don't get a second chance. Of course, the paying cheaters don't get to keep their goods because everyone is watching, but I'd bet if we weren't ...

I do realize they're running a business, but that doesn't mean you have to check your soul at the door. They've shown clearly here that they don't give a **** about the players or anything called integrity or ethics. It's just yucky.

Is that pay-for second chance exactly such a big fault that "They have no soul" and "They have absolutely no integrity or ethics" are apt descriptors?

And to be honest, I'm pretty sure that even if we could not see other rosters and whatnot, I don't think they'd let the cheating stand. Like, the cheats are ultimately them trying to get covers at a far cheaper price then normal, after all. (200 HP Heroic compared to 2500 Cover Buy)

It sounds pretty reasonable overall, I'd say. Little stinky, but not "Clearly don't give a **** about the players or anything called integrity or ethics" level. (Where did not giving a **** about the players get involved here, anyways?)

I figure giving a **** should always matter and since this is about quality of play for all, it kind of does matter. But that's more a reflection of my overall feelings of blurgh regarding D3 and their handling of, well, everything. I don't find this choice to let paying cheaters off with a slap on the wrist and punish F2P players an ethical one. It's clearly not.

I think accepting bribes from players is not cool. Absolve your sins with a "donation"! I am being a bit over the top in my descriptors, but they do capture how I feel about it all. I believe they did let the cheating stand for a long time. I think they finally did something because it was called out publicly (again) and was hitting them firmly in the wallet. (The previous rabbits probably helped their bottom line in the end.) I, frankly, do not believe they monitored for it or took care of cheaters for the last 2 years. *shrug* I don't.

Finally, this is a free game. Supposedly. The game is free, but players who pay not only get stuff (as they should) but special treatment. That's not okay. And do you have to have paid more than $100 to get a pass or less?

What's the price of forgiveness these days?

udonomefoo

Working as intended. Peace out MPQ, I've got better things to do and better games that deserve my money.

simonsez

"David wrote:

Moore"]1. Exploits such as these are easily uncovered

Maybe, but probably only when you actively investigate the account. And as others have pointed out, we've been reporting players for weeks now, and very little has been done about it. Why should we think anything will be different now?

"David wrote:

Moore"]2. We are unable to provide numbers at this time regarding the amount of players that have used the exploit as that is still an ongoing investigation. However, early estimates show that the number is not huge.

What's your idea of huge? I look at the leaderboards and see way too many people with way too many 5* covers. I hit 1300 in every PvP, get every progression in PvE, and have 6 whole covers to show for it. When I see certain cliques of players where everyone has 20 or so covers, don't expect me to believe it's because they've all been way luckier than me. And don't anyone try to tell me that purchases are accounting for the difference either. At a 10% hit rate, there aren't that many people buying that many tokens.

"David wrote:

Moore"]4. While we thank all of you for playing fairly and by the rules, we are not currently considering compensation for the great majority of the community who have refrained from cheating.

You have a lot to learn about how to keep customers happy. But you know, it's just as well you aren't compensating everyone, because you'd probably end up giving compensations to dozens, if not hundreds, of people who've cheated and gotten away with it.

IceIX wrote:

The only thing you could really do is do it less

Thanks for providing a blueprint going forward for the cheaters.

This is all pretty demoralizing. You've got an exploit you can't fix, and you've got no way of finding people who don't abuse it. As soon as legendary tokens were announced, you had people telling you that random progression towards the endgame was a really stupid idea, but I don't think anyone anticipated it would blow up in your faces this badly. And the response we get from you guys is to pooh-pooh the extent of the cheating, to exaggerate how proactively you've been sandboxing these people, and a concession that minimal levels of token-cheating is the new meta. Screw this. Your game is dead.

Linkster79

This is freaking laugh out loud hilarious.

Firstly it is easy to uncover anyone that uses this exploit then you can give numbers as to how many?

Secondly say if I as a free player were to be found out using it I would get sandboxed forever, but if I throw some green at you then I can get a reprieve? Just how many pieces of silver would it take?

This along with the immortal words of "You are supposed to lose" are a pr gold mine.

Ever considered working on the Trump presidential campaign?

Looks like it is over to Contest Of Champions for me.

fnedude

IceXI said:
That was already covered by the first post David made on this, but yes. We don't really like to have *any* exploits open, but something somewhere will always exist. And this particular exploit is difficult to "be smarter" about. The only thing you could really do is do it less, which is kind of counterproductive to the cheat in the first place. We don't tend to advertise any exploits we close up though, since even things that are patched up and announced as such will give insights as to how others may be found. The less outside information there, the better.

So how about a list of what you consider an "Exploit".

I've played Wave nodes and my internet connection cuts out half way through, but I can still complete the match, I just can't get the rewards until the next DAY, because I give up and go to sleep (it's a sign to me.. )

So does will D3 consider it something wrong because I start an event 1 day, and then complete it (to your system's eyes) the next day to redeem the reward? Having something defining what's "bad" would help to know what's acceptable (and obviously gaming token rewards isn't acceptable).

I did nothing wrong, but I don't want the hassle of being sandboxed, because I was dropped in the middle of a game, and "resume" the game the next day and pick up where I left off.

kensterr

How about some code that sends a warning to the server everytime someone does this too often instead of manually checking it out?

Since the auto-sandbox feature had already boxed my ex-alliance mate for having too much ISO (he doesn't like to part with his sweet ISO and have an OCD about the minimum amount in his storage), I'm quite sure the devs can come up with something similar.

Stax the Foyer

I'm grateful for the response we've gotten, and in recognition of the implication that further information will follow, I've toned down the following feedback.

"David wrote:

Moore"]2. We are unable to provide numbers at this time regarding the amount of players that have used the exploit as that is still an ongoing investigation. However, early estimates show that the number is not huge. Speculation from some community members that the numbers are large, are unfounded. Bottom line; the number of players that have used the token exploit is fairly small and they will suffer consequences for behavior considered cheating.

I hope we'll get further information in the form of actual numbers or ranges when the investigation starts to slow down, because saying that "you think the number is large, but it's small," isn't a meaningful response. Relative statements don't mean much, especially when only a single exploiter in a given shard can be hugely disruptive if they choose to be. We don't know if you're overestimating what we consider a large number, or know what you consider a "not huge" or "fairly small" number.

"David wrote:

Moore"]3. To provide some transparency; second chances for players who have supported the game financially and have been caught using an exploit are possible. We take each situation on a case-by-case basis, looking at things like severity and how long the person has been playing, etc. These players provided with a one-time, second chance have their accounts rolled back to a time before it was corrupted by exploited gains. The loss can be significant for players in this situation and we usually do not see further cheating/exploiting from these accounts.

If the loss is significant, that implies that the exploiter was allowed to play for a decent period of time before being dealt with. That's worrying, rather than reassuring.

"David wrote:

Moore"]4. While we thank all of you for playing fairly and by the rules, we are not currently considering compensation for the great majority of the community who have refrained from cheating.

That's fair, I'm not currently considering further compensation on my end, either.

But I'm still listening.

JamesV

I find this frustrating as I enjoy the game. But I really don't feel like swimming in a tainted pool.

The fact that the response to an issue of cheating makes me think "man, kind of wish I was sandboxed" is distressing.

Unknown

fnedude wrote:

IceXI said:
That was already covered by the first post David made on this, but yes. We don't really like to have *any* exploits open, but something somewhere will always exist. And this particular exploit is difficult to "be smarter" about. The only thing you could really do is do it less, which is kind of counterproductive to the cheat in the first place. We don't tend to advertise any exploits we close up though, since even things that are patched up and announced as such will give insights as to how others may be found. The less outside information there, the better.

So how about a list of what you consider an "Exploit".

I've played Wave nodes and my internet connection cuts out half way through, but I can still complete the match, I just can't get the rewards until the next DAY, because I give up and go to sleep (it's a sign to me.. )

So does will D3 consider it something wrong because I start an event 1 day, and then complete it (to your system's eyes) the next day to redeem the reward? Having something defining what's "bad" would help to know what's acceptable (and obviously gaming token rewards isn't acceptable).

I did nothing wrong, but I don't want the hassle of being sandboxed, because I was dropped in the middle of a game, and "resume" the game the next day and pick up where I left off.

Stuff like this is probably why you can get away with dong a little exploiting and rerolling of tokens. Some stuff may happen and you accidentally do the glitch and just open another token and take it.

And that'd be how people can get away with doing this lightly.

Unknown

Case by case basis depending on how much money you've received from each individual? This is INFURIATING!!! You are so money hungry that you will overlook it, and do nothing. What about those of us who don't cheat? Will we be getting a couple of Legendary Tokens and CP's because we didn't cheat?

Didn't think so...

Dauthi

We thank you greatly for the transparency, I wonder if it is even what I wanted because, like others have said, I am now completely demoralized. Maybe a lie would have kept me going.

The bare minimum I would expect personally is a fix for the exploit, and its not like it is even hard. Make all the pictures look the same before you click on it, we would lose the cool gold/gold flashes etc, but it would be more than worth it. Remember when you took our sparkle victory animation away from us? Think of it like that, but a few people ruined it and thats why you had to take it away.

Lastly, cheaters/abusers aren't typically someone you want in your community, giving them a second chance is completely unheard of for any online game as far as I know. You say that usually they don't cheat again, but guess what, if they don't get a second chance you never have to worry about them doing it again ever, which means less work for you.

If I were to make a guess, as soon as the exploit abusers come back from their "break" they will continue to use it, but just be less obvious about it, like you said.

fmftint

So, what is an acceptable amount of roll cheating? And what does it cost for you to look the other way?

Mawtful

fmftint wrote:

So, what is an acceptable amount of roll cheating? And what does it cost for you to look the other way?

If there's a certain amount allowed then this becomes another one of those unspoken things that you need to get ahead, like shield hopping with LINE communication.

I think that it's a bit of a balancing act between time and frequency. So if you're only earning 1 LT every two weeks, then that's probably ok to reroll each time, but if you're earning a lot then maybe you should only be rerolling every 10th (idk how much is "a lot" per week - maybe 3 from 1300 in 3 PvP's, avg 1 from progression in PvE, 1 from 4* DDQ - that equals 5, so every 10th would be the same as 1 per 2 weeks for the slowbies). If you're actively buying LTs then you can probably even go as frequently as every 5th.

Omega Red

"David wrote:

Moore"]To provide some transparency; second chances for players who have supported the game financially and have been caught using an exploit are possible.

WOW.

stowaway

So if you re-roll the occasional duplicate cover, you're safe. You're only in trouble if you repeatedly re-roll until you get a 5*.

I've always known that these were people who did not take pride in their work. It's news to me that they're people who are incapable of embarrassment. Good to know.

Tannen

Speaking as someone that plays on multiple devices and occasionally notices that sometime rewards remain unopened...

A little bit of leniency around that issue would be appreciated. Be sure that they were actively exploiting and not just having multiple-device/lag issues.



Speaking as someone that has never knowingly cheated and has spent money to support this game...

Ban them. Ban them all. Money spent should never be a mitigating circumstance. If they really want to argue the point and are super attached to their ign, remove all 4*s and 5*s from their accounts, set their leg tokens to negative 50, set their pve scaling to maximum and set their MMR to give them only legitimate 5* teams in pvp.

Cheers.

Pylgrim

fmftint wrote:

So, what is an acceptable amount of roll cheating? And what does it cost for you to look the other way?

This should be heartbreaking for the devs to read, because it hints at the future of their game. Not cheating at all is literally going to be "not playing the game correctly". The accelerated, even if slightly, speed of progression of the "moderate cheaters" will mean that by not cheating, all your efforts (which are already sabotaged by the luck factor) are actually placing you below the competition (who will necessitate much less effort).

I'm sorry but a real fix has to come that puts a definite end to it and mercy should be minimal (i.e. not given to anyone who benefited from the exploit more than once). If you have to sandbox a few big spenders among them, so be it. Right now it is your responsibility to patch up trust and I'm pretty sure that one of the most offended parties are your biggest spenders, the ones who instead "re-rolling" just spent more.

Yeah, yeah, cheaters are a comparatively minuscule percentage of the player base, yeah, yeah, their cheating only affects the topmost competitive layer of play, being functionally invisible for the majority rest etc. Whatever logical justifications you can come up with to take less action than what your userbase demands are irrelevant when we are talking about hurt feelings and the dissolution of trust.

Do not kid yourselves, this is the biggest crisis that your game has ever faced. Issues in the past have made your players angry, even outraged. Some left in the middle of anger never to came back. But anger passes rather quickly and its intensity is eroded from memory upon recall; in the end, most players stayed. But disappointment? That let-down feeling is pervasive. Even if people don't quit right away, the feeling will linger and tint their whole interaction, withering away all enthusiasm and enjoyment.

Trust is dying among the playerbase at absurd speeds and every second you fail to address the true problem, every half-measure that betrays a lack of true commitment to your good users is only making things irreparably worse. Either use the next few hours to address this issue with the robustness and promptness it calls for or to start updating your LinkedIn profiles.