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

Dauthi

Pylgrim wrote:

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).

This is exactly why I agree it has to be fixed. I don't want to participate in this new meta-game to be competitive because they find it more beneficial to do work on other projects.

I feel bad for all the players who will never know why they struggle to remain competitive despite all their work/money.

Ludaa

Starting to think actual coding work is being outsourced now, given their seeming reluctance to change anything other than art assets (Is that a thing? I'm just kicking rocks here...). Where are Miles and Will at? Enlighten us as to why you can't fix this, and why we should still play while it does.

Howzat

Rather than rehash the obvious issues with this response I'd like to offer my opinion on two things you should/could be doing to help restore the faith of the player base.

1) Loosen the purse strings. I've never understood why you are so tight with a digital product that has no real world value. Right now you shouldn't be thinking of some freebies as compensation, you should be thinking of them as an investment. Goodwill right now will result in long term income and the survival of the game. A holiday sale would also be well timed. Hey if the game is going to die might as well make what you can right?

2) If there is an admission hidden somewhere in those posts that the exploit can't be permanently fixed in a timely manner (and your admission that it can't always be caught), then you need to pull Legendary tokens from the game. Next season return to fixed 4* covers for pvp/pve/ddq events and award 5* covers as season progression & personal/alliance placement. It's also been hinted that a pve season is on the cards, probably need to fast track that to make it fair to all at chance to obtain 5*. I know people don't like the rich getting richer aspect of 5* as high end rewards, but its a lot more tolerable than exploiters or the extremely lucky getting them.

I think these two actions would address what the community wants from you in the short term.
1) We need to be placated. Free stuff (that aren't tokens) and a sale always does that.
2) We want the exploit 100% closed ASAP. Whilst my suggestion may not be the long term fix it at least sets the status quo that existed prior to legendary tokens.

Pylgrim

Howzat wrote:

2) If there is an admission hidden somewhere in those posts that the exploit can't be permanently fixed in a timely manner (and your admission that it can't always be caught), then you need to pull Legendary tokens from the game. Next season return to fixed 4* covers for pvp/pve/ddq events and award 5* covers as season progression & personal/alliance placement. It's also been hinted that a pve season is on the cards, probably need to fast track that to make it fair to all at chance to obtain 5*. I know people don't like the rich getting richer aspect of 5* as high end rewards, but its a lot more tolerable than exploiters or the extremely lucky getting them.

Strongly agree with this. LTs already had several inherent issues which keep being brought around. Making a previously mild exploit into a game-changing problem is just the tip of the iceberg. LTs need to either be removed or heavily retooled.

Infrared

I don't understand why this can't be fixed. Why not have a buffer on the server side that temporarily stores the server-generated token pulls of each player? Then if the device crashes while opening a token, the server can just resend the same pull from the buffer. No more client side rerolling.

What am I missing? Is the pending rewards list stored on the device only?

Cypr3ss

Pylgrim wrote:

<snip> 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 <snip>

Quoting the above because I feel this points at the big issue MPQ has right now.

The bug/exploit needs to be patched so that it can no longer occur.

Without confirmation of this fix, for every person the vagueness in your responses assures, it makes another paranoid. The result will be from now until the end of time, people will feel justified in accusing anyone with a roster better than theirs of using exploits.

I realise this may not be a simple thing to fix/resolve, but without it I don't see people continuing to play/pay.

Regards,
Cypr3ss.

Moon Roach

A few ramblings.

I don't think I'm directly affected by this, nor anyone in my alliance. We're not that competitive, these guys would be ahead of us even if they didn't cheat, if only because of the sheer number of legendary tokens they must have had, and the amount of money they bought ISO with to level their characters. They'd be beating us with maxed 4* instead.

I guess we may finish a few tens of places higher in events if the culprits are sandboxed, depending on who they are and if we'd be in a slice with them anyway.

The cheating itself? Cheaters gonna cheat, cheat, cheat.

I can't figure out to which Circle of Hell they should be consigned. Fourth, for greed, Eighth, for fraud, or Ninth, for treachery.

Maybe the Sandbox of Hell, all of them together, doomed to fight amongst themselves for all eternity.

Moon Roach

Oh, one more ramble.

Skyrim is an excellent game, as I've rediscovered over the past few days. Easy to get immersed in, and no on-going costs.

Unknown

Removed link to image of player's roster.

ptisber, it seems you're new around these parts so I'm just going to let you go with a verbal warning. If you want to post images of another player's roster, please remove the displayed player's name and alliance name. Thank you.

Your friendly neighborhood fight4thedream

is it exploit or just $$$

G25

ptsiber wrote:

is it exploit or just $$$

I was just hit by this player in PVP an hour ago. That's what is so upsetting about This D3.

Tannen

$$$ -- That particular roster is apparently legit -- it was discussed to death on the forums a few weeks back and was confirmed by Ice. Congratulations on seeing your first super-whale. Scary when you find out that to some people money has no meaning, right?

Dauthi

Tannen wrote:

$$$ -- That particular roster is apparently legit. Congratulations on seeing your first super-whale. Scary when you find out that to some people money has no meaning, right?

Not true, and this is the problem with how they are approaching the exploit. Only those that over-used it will be caught. Those who maintained a ratio that just seemed "lucky" will be left alone.

Tannen

Dauthi wrote:

Tannen wrote:

apparently

Not true, and this is the problem with how they are approaching the exploit. Only those that over-used it will be caught. Those who maintained a ratio that just seemed "lucky" will be left alone.

I said apparently.

I suppose that I could have explicitly said "As of the last time this roster was looked into, it was legitimate. No confirmation if this is still true though." but I thought that it was punchier the way that I put it.

Also, unless you know that it's not true (and how they're actually approaching the exploit -- cos details have been VERY sparse), it would be best to wait on confirmation of cheating / not cheating, yeah?

Cheers.

Cypr3ss

Cypr3ss wrote:

The result will be from now until the end of time, people will feel justified in accusing anyone with a roster better than theirs of using exploits.

G25 wrote:

ptsiber wrote:

is it exploit or just $$$

I was just hit by this player in PVP an hour ago. That's what is what is so upsetting about This D3.

Thank you for proving my point.

Regards,
Cypr3ss.

boldfacedfemme

Ah, the most dangerous sentence uttered in human history:

If it doesn't directly affect me, why should I care?

And thus history is always doomed to repeat itself.

Moon Roach

boldfacedfemme wrote:

Ah, the most dangerous sentence uttered in human history:

If it doesn't directly affect me, why should I care?

And thus history is always doomed to repeat itself.

I guess that's a swipe at me, though I wasn't quoted, as I used the words "directly" and "affected"

I was making a statement of fact as I see it, so probably just a statement of opinion. It doesn't directly affect me. I'm not in a top 110 alliance that would be top 100 without the cheaters (as an example, not knowing who they are and what alliances they belong to makes examples imprecise).

I don't see how anything I wrote can be interpreted as "I don't care" or "why should I care". I was suggesting casting the offenders into a Circle of Hell, after all.

El Satanno

I strongly sympathize with people who spend cash on this game and play legit, no doubt. It's a big kick in the nuts to dump your time and energy along with your cash into this thing only to know that you're getting beat out by cheats. That is ****.

I will definitely echo the sentiment that Demiurge/D3 should strongly consider rescinding that policy of possible leniency towards offenders. Yes, you may very well sandbox one or more people who have dumped cash into this game. But are they more valuable than the potential spenders, either already extant here or incoming in future months, that will turn away in disgust knowing that cheating is tolerated? And are they worth more than the other great mass of low-mid spenders who are doubly insulted that cheating is tolerated, but not at their level of investment? Are they worth more than the loss of confidence from everyone else playing the game?

Take your lumps, 'box the whole lot of the cheats without exception, do what you have to do to close the exploit. It's best for the long-term health of the game and you don't need your fans to tell you that.

Polares

Again the best solution for these type of games is to do as many things as possible in the server, everything that is done in the sever is safe from normal player manipulations. If you encrypt the savegames and the communications with the server then the possibilities for cheats are reduced to the minimum. Of course this means dev hours and server time, so money and more money, and probably the dev doesn't want to invest that much money in a two year old mobile game.



But said that I think people is overreacting a bit ( of course everybody is free of overreacting as much as they want ). I guess that experience gives you a different perspective, but the thing is, I have seen cheats in a lot of games. It is not something new, and it will never go away. You can't get angry because there is a part of the game population that is cheating, there is a group of people that will always attempt to cheat, no matter why, and when the cheat is easy to do, this percentage is even bigger. Yeah it is annoying finding these people in PvP with these maxed 5s, but the percentage is probably very small, I dont think there is more than 100 persons with maxed 5s.

For me what it is more important is to wait and see how devs/publisher react. If they solve everything fast, without having a lot of people affected, then everything will be fine, if not, then the game will probably slowly die.

I guess the biggest problem is that the cheat is precisely in the highest levels of play, the best of the best were in fact cheating! And this is never good for a competitive game.

Bowgentle

Polares wrote:

For me what it is more important is to wait and see how devs/publisher react. If they solve everything fast, without having a lot of people affected, then everything will be fine, if not, then the game will probably slowly die.

What are you waiting for?
You got a follow-up statement from Hi-Fi that says all the devs are going to say on the matter.

Obviously the exploit is not easy to fix, so they're not going to.
If it _were_ easy to fix, they'd have given a timeframe for it.

And I'm sure the game will not die - the only people aware of this exploit and the whole situation are us forum-goers.

They probably hope that we'll all leave and be replaced with new whales, who are trying to catch up to people with 5* rosters.

This too shall pass.

They don't care about restoring the confidence of the veterans.
We paid our money, no harm if we move on.

They may care if legitimate whales start leaving in droves, but since people are STILL spending money, I don't see that happening, regardless of how much complaining goes on in the forum.

Eddiemon

Polares wrote:

Again the best solution for these type of games is to do as many things as possible in the server, everything that is done in the sever is safe from normal player manipulations.

Well no, that's the most secure solution.

But it means when you want to look at your roster you need to connect to the server and bring it down. When you want to spend ISO or HP you need to do multiple transactions. The game gets slower and less responsive. That's the tradeoff. The odd 'waiting for server' at the end of a match is annoying, but if I were liable to get it on almost any screen I don't know if I could play the game.

A heuristic approach to cheating is totally feasible as long as it is enforced. In fact it is in some ways better because it doesn't matter how you glitch yourself a million HP the server knows you shouldn't have been able to spend that much. Or if you are winning games infeasibly quickly or with underrated teams, yet again it doesn't matter what hack you used, it can still be policed.

The problem here is that they knew the exploit, knew how to detect it and yet apparently let players go hog wild with it. The lack of policing rather than the existence of he exploit is the real issue. Coming in late to roll back and ban people is too late after they let it get large enough to affect the high end meta.