The current pink elephant in the room. 5 star boosted Gambit from ill-gotten gains.

whitecat31

We at the higher end of the pvp spectrum are facing boosted 5 star gambits that are basically owning the pvp landscape.  Introducing 5 stars boosted might not be so bad (assuming D3 knew how to playtest perfectly. ) , except, recently there was a severe bug on D3's part.  D3 screwed up and gave 7 command points for 2 dollar purchases.  This was clearly a bug, and it was exploited immediately by people who knew that D3 does not punish exploiters with any real punishments.

Not to mention, command points are actually set up to be non-purchasable. This appears to get around the 'dissatisfied players demanding refunds, for things they bought and being disappointed caveat' of google or apple play stores.

So D3 could not really punish people anyway, except to take away the ill-gotten command points.

Many of us know D3 is hesitant/incapable of doing that because it would punish innocent people who got command points from alliance mate purchases, and D3's tracking capabilities have proven to be subpar.   Not to mention D3 historically, has a huge problem of admitting mistakes and learning from them. They even have a habit of making post that point out their bugs go poof.

Anyway, after the bug of 7 command points for 2 dollars appeared. Buy rooms formed quickly. Some people were in buy rooms where people spent hundreds of dollars on the 2 dollar purchases. Basically, for 2 dollars players were getting 140 command points, instead of the usual buyroom purchase of 100 dollars.  Many players were instantly flooded with many thousands of command points, for super cheap.  Most of these people of course bought gambits with their ill-gotten gains.  So for basically a few hundred dollars, people have outshined people who have worked hard on this game for 2 to 3 years and have spent thousands of dollars on this game.    This is a huge failure on D3's part.

Blindman13

I think your tin foil hat may be on a little tight.
I don't deny that a few people took advantage of this error (it was an error, not a bug), but do you have any hard data on how many?  My guess would be that it was only a few dozen; at most a few hundred, which is a small percentage of the player base. And how many CP did they actually get?
Sure a few people got a leg up on others, but that will always happen when you have a game that has pay-to-win vs. free-to-play. What do you want them to do?  Give every player 1000 CP? Would that be "fair" to you? 

bluewolf

I read somewhere that these players are not allowed to make cover swaps for two weeks.  (I mean, they WERE not allowed to make cover swaps for two weeks, as I believe that window has passed).   Seems fair.....?  

If you are a big spender and this makes you mad, consider your priorities.  Just a thought.  There is some good that can be done with that money, for example.  

That said, I do wonder what solution you would propose.  They spent real money.  Yes, it was at a huge advantage.  But they got what they paid for.  They did not "cheat" except that their virtual goods were much cheaper than yours.  If I find an item in a store with the wrong (reduced) price on it, it is usually honored, score me.  Capitalism is not fair, it is all about getting the most you can while paying the least you can.  

Would you say that they all should have their money returned and gains rolled back?  I mean, what is a fair solution here?  Reversing their rosters, and giving the CP they should have gotten (none) for what they spent?  If they spent enough to warrant CP, but in small chunks, do you put together the money spent into a lump sum and reward the CP based on that?

If they spent $100's to $1000's of dollars (collectively), I'm sure D3 doesn't want to refund their money.  Plus all those paying players would possibly never spend again since they never know when D3 will just reverse the transaction.  Along with other payers once word got out.

I honestly don't know what D3Go can do to possibly fix this snafu.  I am just glad I haven't leveled any 5's to the point of meeting the Gambit wall in my MMR.  Just a little longer until Gambit is not a god.

Orion

People took advantage of what was given to them.  It's no different than blowing your hoard on a 25% token.  They didn't cheat the game to get those CP.  If it were an exploit, then I could see some sort of punishment, but not for this.  Yes, the gains they got were pretty significant, but what do you want D3 to do?

Punisher5784

Blindman13 said:

I think your tin foil hat may be on a little tight.
I don't deny that a few people took advantage of this error (it was an error, not a bug), but do you have any hard data on how many?  My guess would be that it was only a few dozen; at most a few hundred, which is a small percentage of the player base. And how many CP did they actually get?
Sure a few people got a leg up on others, but that will always happen when you have a game that has pay-to-win vs. free-to-play. What do you want them to do?  Give every player 1000 CP? Would that be "fair" to you? 

Regardless of the lack of hard data of this particular situation, the one fact we do know is that players have not been punished for exploiting errors/bugs. It shouldn't matter the percentage, if you're cheating, you should be punished but because nothing has been in the past, those same players will continue to look for shortcuts that harm the rest of the player base. We're not expecting to be rewarded for other players cheats/exploits, we simply want to finally see something done about it instead of the continued 'sweeping under the rug' we've seen for the past few yrs. 

crackninja

I just don't see any actual cheating here.

corytutor

In fact it was an exploit as people found a way around the fix. 

There are some who gained upwards of 10000 cp.  Who cares if you dont get swaps for 2 weeks when you have that much cp swaps wont matter. 

I think at bare minimum all involved accounts should be rolled back to the day prior to the error. 

Also, fyi, i could have exploited this. Me and 2 others in my alliance had the opportunity but we have integrity, and loathe cheaters. 

Avalancher

This was not cheating.

Blindman13

Punisher5784 said:

Blindman13 said:

I think your tin foil hat may be on a little tight.
I don't deny that a few people took advantage of this error (it was an error, not a bug), but do you have any hard data on how many?  My guess would be that it was only a few dozen; at most a few hundred, which is a small percentage of the player base. And how many CP did they actually get?
Sure a few people got a leg up on others, but that will always happen when you have a game that has pay-to-win vs. free-to-play. What do you want them to do?  Give every player 1000 CP? Would that be "fair" to you? 

Regardless of the lack of hard data of this particular situation, the one fact we do know is that players have not been punished for exploiting errors/bugs. It shouldn't matter the percentage, if you're cheating, you should be punished but because nothing has been in the past, those same players will continue to look for shortcuts that harm the rest of the player base. We're not expecting to be rewarded for other players cheats/exploits, we simply want to finally see something done about it instead of the continued 'sweeping under the rug' we've seen for the past few yrs. 

The core error in your argument is calling these people cheaters. They did not cheat, they made a legitimate purchase that the game offered them. Was it unfair that some got it and others didn't? Sure.
It's also unfair that some players get random sales, or the extra HfH that pops up just when you need it.
It's also unfair that the time slices are more favorable to some than others depending on their time zone.
I'm not going to loose sleep over it. Someone else having more money than me to invest in the game, or more time in their schedule to play optimally, or just happening to be online at the right time when a surprise sale is available does not detract from my enjoyment of the game.  The game is about me playing and building my roster. I could not possibly care less if someone else has a better roster than mine regardless of how the earned it (or paid for it).

pheregas

People are going to use exploits whenever and wherever possible.  It's not their fault.  It's human nature.

The real problem was that it happened in the first place.  It's right up there with the new 5* token pull rate errors.  This stuff can be play tested.  They just don't do it.

carrion_pigeons

Sorry, but paying an actual semi-reasonable price for in-game materials rather than the bloated nonsense prices the game normally goes with is not cheating.

I wouldn't have gotten involved regardless, since I'm pretty committed to being F2P, but if I was going to whale anything in this game, I wouldn't really be able to help noticing that I'm spending on something that has no value, so it would be hard to justify any argument that says other people should respect any value I artificially assign to my own poor money management skills.

Every time D3 does something like this, that "devalues" the efforts of people to fritter away their money, you should think, "oh good, I am being offered a (comparatively) very valuable product by this game: a sense of perspective."

PolarPopBear

Without data we don't know how many of the (many) boosted gambits out there are from the cp pricing error.  There are a lot of people who pulled huge hoards on gambit because he was rightly considered very strong, and he followed the exit of 2 (precieved) undesirable 5* Ock and Starlord.  So you had a perfect storm of lots of people holding currency and a very powerful character being released the same time they decided to extend new release boost to 5* teir.  There was always going to be a huge surge of Gambits entering the player pool.

The rockett

Sending money via pay pal from all ally members for the 1 person that still had this after the data push, thousand of dollar, to make $2 for 7 CP buys.  That's what happened. Went on for hours on end.   

animaniactoo

Frankly, imo, exploiting a game flaw is legal and kosher right up until the devs notice and say "We know this is an issue, we haven't figured out how to solve it. In the meantime, we ask you not to take advantage of it and will consider it cheating for anybody who does so from this point forward."

Take advantage while you can, grump for a moment if you missed the opportunity, and move on. Bugs happen. D3/Demi certainly does seem to be having an excessive number of them lately, but hey - until it gets locked down, who is to know that it's a bug vs a flash sale vs a rebalance or whatever?

Not everything happens in the order it's supposed to, so (as with the Halloween Store) sometime things appear before we see official announcements. There are a lot of people who never even make it into the forum or to Line or Discord and miss even the semi-official announcements. I certainly haven't seen any announcements in the game itself about any of these issues.

Therefore, if there's a possibility it might be too good to be true and it's before an official announcement? I'm totally going to take advantage and rub my hands with glee at having been able to do so. If I'm annoyed at not being a member of the club who figures it out and/or gets the word when it happens, I'm either going to find a way to become a member of that club or take my money elsewhere in annoyance at a game that has such regular issues.

"Bank Error in your favor. Collect $150."

whitecat31

Blindman13 said:

I think your tin foil hat may be on a little tight.
I don't deny that a few people took advantage of this error (it was an error, not a bug), but do you have any hard data on how many?  My guess would be that it was only a few dozen; at most a few hundred, which is a small percentage of the player base. And how many CP did they actually get?
Sure a few people got a leg up on others, but that will always happen when you have a game that has pay-to-win vs. free-to-play. What do you want them to do?  Give every player 1000 CP? Would that be "fair" to you? 

My tin foil hat?   I am not complaining about a conspiracy here. I am pointing out a problem. I am in various line rooms, and people talk.  I am just stating what the problem is.   I am not kidding when I say people got thousands of command points for pennies on the dollar.   I also don't have a solution.  If I had the solutions. It would be two things. One is something D3 is incapable of doing. ie. Reverse the command points and all the covers that were gained from the spending of said command points.   The other thing is don't boost new 5 stars.

Some of us play games competitively, because we believe there is some inherent integrity involved. Right now, the integrity of the game has been challenged, because of two things. Ill-gotten command points, and a boosted 5 star character that is the best in the game when boosted, which was bought by many (but not all) with said command points. 

Please note, there are people who got Gambit 5 star fairly.  So I am not trying to say anybody who has one has did something bad.

The true onus is on D3.

Vhailorx

I can accept the use of of the term exploit for this activity.  Some players clearly leveraged this situation to the hilt knowing full well that it was likely a mistake by demi/d3.  So knowingly doing something that is outside the intended boundaries of the mpq system seems like an exploit.  

But it's NOT cheating because the players did not alter the function of the game or do anything else that was expressly or implicitly forbidden by demi/d3.  Cheating would be hacking the game files to insert a new store option to buy 7 cp for $2 and then buying several thousand cp.  Even the client-side  bonus covers trick is more of a cheat than this because that requires an affirmative effort by the the player to prevent network access.

It is a **** situation for everyone though.  Some players have a massive advatange and demi can't easily roll it back without pissing some significant (either in terms of #s or $ money spent) group of players off.  No easy fix.  

whitecat31

crackninja said:

I just don't see any actual cheating here.

I have not said there was cheating.  This is not a cheating issue. At best you could call this an exploitation.  If you put candy in a room of kids, that says push a button to get a piece of candy, you don't blame the kids.  The onus is NOT on the players.  This is on D3.  The integrity of the game, is the issue.   Their answer to these things is usually. "This too will pass."

corytutor

It is cheating if youre one of the ones who worked their way around the fix, or attempted fix. 

Justify it however you want, its cheating.  

Stax the Foyer

The rockett said:

Sending money via pay pal from all ally members for the 1 person that still had this after the data push, thousand of dollar, to make $2 for 7 CP buys.  That's what happened. Went on for hours on end.   

It's important to highlight the scope of the exploiting that some people were able to do, because it contextualizes the complaints. This is not an issue of people taking advantage of the brief period between the bug and the data push. People aren't concerned with that. This was much, much bigger.

Qubort

Punisher5784 said:

Blindman13 said:

I think your tin foil hat may be on a little tight.
I don't deny that a few people took advantage of this error (it was an error, not a bug), but do you have any hard data on how many?  My guess would be that it was only a few dozen; at most a few hundred, which is a small percentage of the player base. And how many CP did they actually get?
Sure a few people got a leg up on others, but that will always happen when you have a game that has pay-to-win vs. free-to-play. What do you want them to do?  Give every player 1000 CP? Would that be "fair" to you? 

Regardless of the lack of hard data of this particular situation, the one fact we do know is that players have not been punished for exploiting errors/bugs. It shouldn't matter the percentage, if you're cheating, you should be punished but because nothing has been in the past, those same players will continue to look for shortcuts that harm the rest of the player base. We're not expecting to be rewarded for other players cheats/exploits, we simply want to finally see something done about it instead of the continued 'sweeping under the rug' we've seen for the past few yrs. 

They didn't cheat. There was an offer in the store for them and they purchased it. They didn't hack the code or manipulate anything to get it. Perhaps D3 was curious how much people would pay for more CP. They've conducted tests like that before.

corytutor

Youre wrong. They did it after fix. After. Meaning they took time to find a way around the fix and the system and manipulated it for huge gains. Thats cheating. 

Qubort said:

Punisher5784 said:

Blindman13 said:

I think your tin foil hat may be on a little tight.
I don't deny that a few people took advantage of this error (it was an error, not a bug), but do you have any hard data on how many?  My guess would be that it was only a few dozen; at most a few hundred, which is a small percentage of the player base. And how many CP did they actually get?
Sure a few people got a leg up on others, but that will always happen when you have a game that has pay-to-win vs. free-to-play. What do you want them to do?  Give every player 1000 CP? Would that be "fair" to you? 

Regardless of the lack of hard data of this particular situation, the one fact we do know is that players have not been punished for exploiting errors/bugs. It shouldn't matter the percentage, if you're cheating, you should be punished but because nothing has been in the past, those same players will continue to look for shortcuts that harm the rest of the player base. We're not expecting to be rewarded for other players cheats/exploits, we simply want to finally see something done about it instead of the continued 'sweeping under the rug' we've seen for the past few yrs. 

They didn't cheat. There was an offer in the store for them and they purchased it. They didn't hack the code or manipulate anything to get it. Perhaps D3 was curious how much people would pay for more CP. They've conducted tests like that before.