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

JamesV

puppychow wrote:

Mawtful wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

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.

I just had this same realisation myself. Remember that the game plan for year 3 is to get rid of veterans who know better and replace them with naive noobs who can be trained to spend more frequently and in greater amounts.

The timing of this announcement is impeccable. Just long enough after anniversary & Galactus, just after bonus Command Points for big purchases & a US holiday that culminates in one of the biggest spending weekends of the year. Players have spent their money, so this was the perfect week to manufacture outrage.

Agreed. Why do you think the publisher spent so much time & resources to attend conventions this year? They know it's the newbies looking to play catch up who will spend the most money going forward, not veteran players with mature rosters. This is just following the script, as I see it.

THE PLAN IS WORKING. If you're getting guys like Malcrof (come on in and color me yellow! ) who is a relative newcomer to the game (joining this year I believe) and then spend his way (buying 40 packs as he admitted himself) to max covering his roster, then everything is going according to THE PLAN.

I find it interesting how in the heights of drama like this there's always a rise in the number of "how about a sale" threads. For clarity, I do not think its like manufactured or anything. I think it's a legitimate subconscious reaction to the situation that I'm sure has to do with the way free to play apps psychologically condition their user base (which again I do not mean to sound ominous or nefarious. I legitimately believe that's just the nature of these beasts).

fmftint

Expanding Jamie's car theft analogy, no we shouldn't be rewarded for not stealing the car. But if someone else steals a car and goes on a rampage causing wide spread damage, everyone who suffered losses is entitled to restitution.

JamieMadrox

orionpeace wrote:

I am posting this here, as Jamie Madrox, locked the other thread.

It is not cool to say your piece regarding a topic and then lock it so no one gets to respond to you and you get the last word. Mod or post. Don't co-mingle.

First off, you didn't even comment on the other topic so don't get all up in arms over it being locked.
Second, I could have just as easily responded to the topic and had another mod lock it immediately after. I chose to be transparent and both post and lock in one post.
Third, on locking the topic I mentioned that there were TWO other topics dedicated to the exploit issue that should be used.
Fourth, even if a thread is locked, you can still quote a post and move it to another topic to reference it.
Fifth, this is what I said there:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

First, with regards to the response from D3, I'm not happy either. I think they all should have been sandboxed regardless. That said, at least SOMETHING is being done.

Second, on the topic of compensation, you don't get rewarded for not stealing a car that is left running on the street. Why should you get rewarded for not using an exploit that you did or did not know about? The knee jerk reaction that every issue deserves compensation is ludacris. Your reward for being an honest player is that you get to keep playing.

orionpeace wrote:

Your example analogy of stealing a car is not even comparable to this situation. I'm not saying we should get compensation, but that is just a very bad analogy.

Players that didn't cheat were effected by cheaters. Have you ever placed 11th, 21st, 101st in an event, just outside the rewards you wanted? I'm not saying all instances of missing out can be laid at the feet of a cheater. But it has happened. More than once to players in this game.

Sixth, good analogy or not, you don't get rewarded for not committing a crime even if in doing so you lose out on something. That was the point I was making.

orionpeace wrote:

There is an exploit that has be in live for 2 years. No doubt they have sandboxed people for it. Their game allows constant cheating. Obviously, the recent announcement is an indication that the cheating has gotten so bad they had no choice but to acknowledge it.

I agree. I'm sure people were sandboxed by this in the past and that LTs and 5* characters just made it actually worth doing to get the covers. I doubt that it was much of an issue before this.

orionpeace wrote:

Then, of course, they follow that up with a clear indication that they care more about making more money than they do the integrity of the game or their company.

So, outrage is to be expected.

Again, I agree. I don't think that the response is adequate. Sandboxing all of the cheaters regardless of spending status is the only fair response I can think of. If there is some legal reason why they can't do this (IANAL), then we have a bigger issue that needs a better response and possibly some sort of compensation.

Outrage is expected and warranted.

simonsez

fmftint wrote:

Expanding Jamie's car theft analogy, no we shouldn't be rewarded for not stealing the car. But if someone else steals a car and goes on a rampage causing wide spread damage, everyone who suffered losses is entitled to restitution.

Yep... and you damn sure wouldn't leave the car keys where the guy can get his hands on them again, and hope that his future joyrides are less disruptive.

JamieMadrox

fmftint wrote:

Expanding Jamie's car theft analogy, no we shouldn't be rewarded for not stealing the car. But if someone else steals a car and goes on a rampage causing wide spread damage, everyone who suffered losses is entitled to restitution.

I understand what you're saying, but in this case how can you prove that you scored/placed worse than you would have otherwise? Also, for some context, I know of only three players from t10 alliances that were sandboxed and one other from a top "family" of alliances who was in a lover level (not t10) alliance.

I think that people are assuming that this issue was more rampant than it actually was. I'm not saying it's not a serious issue, but 3/200 (for t10 alliances) is 1.5%.

Again, I'm not saying that this isn't a serious issue, just that it's not as widespread as everyone seems to think it is.

simonsez

Jamie Madrox wrote:

you don't get rewarded for not committing a crime even if in doing so you lose out on something. That was the point I was making.

But your point is completely missing the point everyone else is making. No one wants compensation for good behavior. They want restitution as the victims of those who were cheating. Eg, I finished 54th in the season standings. You can be damn sure there were more than 4 people ahead of me rerolling their tokens. I saw 4 likely candidates on my page of the standings alone.

That said, I don't really care about getting compensated. What I care about is that as long as they stick with legendary tokens, the game is irrevocably broken. Since they can't fix the exploit, the only thing this entire episode has accomplished is to let everyone know about it, and let those inclined to cheat know that going forward they need to be more careful about how often they do it.

mohio

For the car analogy thing, I was just going to correct it to say that it should be more like a car that's unlocked with the keys inside. Saying it is running with no one in it, is like saying that the game itself makes it clear this exploit is possible, which is entirely false (as you can see in any of these threads, most people didn't know it existed). So, most people just walk by the car assuming nothing (who checks to see if every car they pass by is unlocked or locked? keys inside?). A handful of people notice it's unlocked with the keys inside - most of these still just keep walking cause they're not thieves. The tiny minority of people notice, open the door and drive off with the car.

Yeah, anyway - more on topic...

I can't really work myself up to getting upset about this response. Those who cheated are either sandboxed and therefore removed from the competitive player pool, or they will have their rosters restored back to before they started cheating (or before they were CAUGHT cheating, which is at least pre-5* so I'm okay with that). The part of it that just completely baffles (sort of - at least in a fairness way) me is why paying players are being offered the chance to roll back their accounts while presumably f2p players are not. I mean it's not confusing in the sense that D3 wants these guys to stay in the game and keep paying their salaries. But why is the same offer not afforded to a f2p player? I agree with Jamie (and many others) that they should just all be boxed indifferent to paying or not, but regardless they should all be treated the same.

Also - it's a little cynical, but I think a big reason they do not want to offer compensation for this problem is a PR one. As mentioned by at least one other person (sorry too lazy to find the quote), only the people who frequent the forums even know there is an exploit and that there are people who used it to get ahead. Sure some casual-ish players who don't frequent the forum but end up in brackets with the cheaters might see their roster and think something is a little shady, but they have no idea. Every player getting a huge pop-up in game saying "here's some free stuff cause we let some players cheat for the past 2 months" just confirms it for everyone and would be a PR disaster. In any event, I don't really think we're really owed anything by d3 anyway, but perhaps being a little extra generous during the christmas/holiday season would be a nice way to say sorry to those "in the know" (like anniversary 1-level rewards/events, not just a holiday sale).

JamieMadrox

simonsez wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

you don't get rewarded for not committing a crime even if in doing so you lose out on something. That was the point I was making.

But your point is completely missing the point everyone else is making. No one wants compensation for good behavior. They want restitution as the victims of those who were cheating. Eg, I finished 54th in the season standings. You can be damn sure there were more than 4 people ahead of me rerolling their tokens. I saw 4 likely candidates on my page of the standings alone.

But how can you say with certainty that those players wouldn't have scored better than you otherwise? Chances are they were already high level players that could have scored highly to begin with. There's too many factors in play during an event to say for certainty how things would have panned out.

simonsez wrote:

That said, I don't really care about getting compensated. What I care about is that as long as they stick with legendary tokens, the game is irrevocably broken. Since they can't fix the exploit, the only thing this entire episode has accomplished is to let everyone know about it, and let those include to cheat know that going forward they need to be more careful about how often they do it.

Agreed 100%. Characters and LTs are both broken. For something that could "only be earned by playing" and "not whaled" there seem to be a >0 number of players that have done just that.

simonsez

Jamie Madrox wrote:

But how can you say with certainty that those players wouldn't have scored better than you otherwise?

I can't, with certainty, which is probably why I'm not all worked up over the compensation thing. That, and the fact 5 extra heroic tokens aren't going to change my life.

dr tinykittylove

Maybe I don't understand the outrage because I'm only a collector, not a competitive player, but..

Sure, the exploit needs to be fixed. Sure, the cheaters need to be punished.

But people make mistakes. They do silly, thoughtless, unethical, downright wrong things and think nothing of it when there are no apparent consequences to themselves, especially in the anonymous context of an online video game.

Rolling back their rosters to before they started cheating seems like exactly the right balance of punishment and grace to me. Did they cheat? Yes. Did they win things by cheating? Sure.

But do they gain any benefit from it in the end? No. And all the time and energy spent grinding lightning rounds and pvp and pve and the legitimate progression and other gains from those? All gone. Even the crit boosts and 20 iso! That's got to hurt.

Give them a chance to redeem themselves. Or ragequit.

tanis3303

Ya know...I didn't think I was mad about this, and maybe it's just the kittystorm of **** I had to deal with at the office this morning that's put me in a particularly sour mood, but...

I can't claim to know jack about coding and such. For all I know, this type of thing might be nigh unto impossible to actually, completely close/fix. Fine, I get that. It sucks, but its way beyond my understanding of the inner workings of the interwebz and all it's interconnected parts, so if someone with more knows than me says it's not a quick fix, I can accept that. But this:

"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.

No. Just, just.....NO! Are you tiny kitty KIDDING ME?!?! I get that the company and the game need to make money, but you folks have just endorsed cheating, so long as you're willing to pay up to do it. Oh yea, and please guys, don't make it so obvious. Be a bit more subtle and pay up, and you can just keep on keeping on with your re-rolls. I don't want anything to do with a company with that kind of policy.

I have a whole lot more to say, but none of it is constructive and most of it wont make it past the profanity filter, kittys or not. Thanks D3 for letting us know in no uncertain terms that $$$ is paramount to fair play. That's gonna make putting the game down a lot easier for me.

Stax the Foyer

Jamie Madrox wrote:

I understand what you're saying, but in this case how can you prove that you scored/placed worse than you would have otherwise? Also, for some context, I know of only three players from t10 alliances that were sandboxed and one other from a top "family" of alliances who was in a lover level (not t10) alliance.

I think that people are assuming that this issue was more rampant than it actually was. I'm not saying it's not a serious issue, but 3/200 (for t10 alliances) is 1.5%.

Again, I'm not saying that this isn't a serious issue, just that it's not as widespread as everyone seems to think it is.

Those numbers are interesting, but I'd like to hear the overall numbers before drawing any conclusions as to the scope of the problem. Besides, while some people might think that it takes some sort of critical mass of cheaters to affect the standings, that's not the case, and anyone who plays PvP at a high level realizes that.

This isn't just a question of identifying the cheaters and bumping people up a corresponding number of places in the standings. Maybe some of the people with those rosters just shot up to the top of the standings and floated there, but that's not likely how they played. If you're bouncing around the middle of the standings for most of the event, you're having a huge effect on the gameplay of a large number of players. Some people benefit, some people have their hops ruined. And they're not choosing targets at random, either. Having an exploited roster can tilt the playing field strongly in favor of your alliance, or allow you to affect a large swath of players if you want to be a spoiler. The power discrepancy is absurd, and you're competing against people whose ability to fight back is totally controlled by RNG (or the number of superwhales they have banked).

Personally, it's that disruption that bothers me the most. I'm not saying that there's any way to fix that, as the standings aren't just bumped down, they're effectively shuffled. But if you were spending money on high-level PvP gameplay over the last couple of months, odds are your experience was impacted, even if only a handful of players were exploiting.

fmftint

I guess the biggest take away from this is, go ahead and reroll, just don't get too far ahead of the published odds


From this point forward every 5☆ pull, even legitimate ones, are suspect

mohio

Another thing with compensation, or how cheating players may have effected you in your placement...It's completely impossible to enumerate all the ways they changed things. Maybe they hit you on your climb but not the guy that finished 20 points higher than you. Maybe they hit the guy just under you, but not you. Maybe they climbed to 2000 and then started dropping cupcakes for all their teammates/friends, artificially increasing all of their scores, then again went to 2500, 3000...the ripple effect of their existence is way too far reaching and cannot be simply undone.

evil panda

I'm finally posting after writing and deleting posts three times.

First, thank you David for the reasonably timely communication. I understand you don't have numbers yet, but I think this community needs to see them (and the bannings) when you do have them

Second, I am shocked at the content of the response. D3/Demiurge should ban the cheaters and make it a top priority to permanently close the exploit. Are you kidding me? This is a crisis of integrity for your game. Are you really content to sacrifice your integrity (both corporate and personal) for your profitability? Would your employees be proud to work for a company that would do that? Btw I work in advertising and PR, and I've observed that those two things are essentially the same thing. Can't have long term profitability without integrity.

Finally, I think this whole compensation thing once again distracts from the real problem. And this forum base does this all the time. Demanding free stuff just clouds the solution. Just fix the loophole and bam the cheaters.

Ps - I am enjoying the hilarious analogies, though. Cheating spouses, stolen cars, Les Miserables references and Mario Kart 64! Keep em coming

Linkster79

mohio wrote:

Also - it's a little cynical, but I think a big reason they do not want to offer compensation for this problem is a PR one. As mentioned by at least one other person (sorry too lazy to find the quote), only the people who frequent the forums even know there is an exploit and that there are people who used it to get ahead. Sure some casual-ish players who don't frequent the forum but end up in brackets with the cheaters might see their roster and think something is a little shady, but they have no idea. Every player getting a huge pop-up in game saying "here's some free stuff cause we let some players cheat for the past 2 months" just confirms it for everyone and would be a PR disaster. In any event, I don't really think we're really owed anything by d3 anyway, but perhaps being a little extra generous during the christmas/holiday season would be a nice way to say sorry to those "in the know" (like anniversary 1-level rewards/events, not just a holiday sale).

I think bad PR is D3Go's stock in trade these days.

They could offer an in game pop up saying that due to certain game play issues here is some free stuff. Most casual players won't be aware what these issues are and will be like wahoo free stuff for issues I didn't even notice. I'm not really fussed either way.

Personally I would have been happy with all those who have been found to be using the exploit to be sandboxes, regardless of their spending habits and assurances this cannot happen again. It is the official reaction that is getting most peoples backs up now. "We know you are using an exploit, you know you are using an exploit. Please don't do it as often or tell anyone but if you get caught as long as you have paid up we will give you a second chance. Haven't paid? No second chances for you!"

If this exploit is so hard wired into the code it cannot be fixed easily then how about taking a snap shot of everyone's account then taking the game offline for a few weeks or months and rewrite everything from the ground up? I assume Puzzles and Glory uses a very similar game engine and surely they closed the loop hole for that game build? Extreme I know but it would restore player confidence.

Magic

Thinking of it a bit more i will be happy with 2-point solution:
1. Take away the spoils from the cheaters (roll-back and sandbox)
2. Fix the issue immediately and permanently

Regarding point 2 somebody suggested short term fix - all tokens open with the same image (no gold, shining or 5* screaming from the screen). That way the re-roll becomes pointless. Having in mind how quickly they have change (there and back again) the Victory graphic I bet changing token graphic is a job for an intern in the company. Question is - why it was not done before to kill the exploit...

GurlBYE

I've never seen a fanbase so dedicated to the defense of developers who are so much more absent then others I've seen in games.
Seeing past actions, they've clearly done something right to get you guys' loyalty.

It's fascinating.

IlDuderino

simonsez wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

But how can you say with certainty that those players wouldn't have scored better than you otherwise?

I can't, with certainty, which is probably why I'm not all worked up over the compensation thing. That, and the fact 5 extra heroic tokens aren't going to change my life.

They might if you keep rerolling them until you get Iceman covers

GurlBYE

IlDuderino wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

But how can you say with certainty that those players wouldn't have scored better than you otherwise?

I can't, with certainty, which is probably why I'm not all worked up over the compensation thing. That, and the fact 5 extra heroic tokens aren't going to change my life.

They might if you keep rerolling them until you get Iceman covers

So settle for iceman, hulkbuster, OR jean grey,

gosh stop being so greedy.