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

whitecat31

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.

After the data push, not all players lost the 2 dollars gets you 7 command points bug; some 'special' people maintained it.   Many alliance players sent those 'special' people hundreds of dollars via paypal, to keep pushing that purchase button over and over again. 2 dollars bought your alliance 140 command points. 200 dollars bought your alliance 14,000 command points.   If some of these 'special' people got into buy groups with other 'special' people and they were full of 20 'special' people, than 100 dollars got them 7,000 command points each. ( 140,000 total) Using those ill gotten command points to buy a boosted 5 star Gambit is just icing on the cake.  

Borstock

I see no cheating here. Furthermore, if they want to spend hundreds on a free mobile app, I am very happy. They are helping to support the entire community and I think they deserve a little extra special.

So, thank you to those people who took advantage. Thank you very much.

whitecat31

OJSP said:

Don't forget the HP they can use to buy packs that give them more LTs.. if they are the assigned person to buy, they can get at least 400k HP.

Well I said they were 'special'.  Not really too much you can do with that HP these days when you are chasing 5 star covers. I guess you could buy 40 packs for the legendary tokens. 

firethorne

If a bank makes an error in your favor, the cash isn't yours.  It still belongs to the bank.  You can get into serious legal trouble in assuming an error in your favor is yours for the keeping.

But, I'm wondering if any debate about whether this was or wasn't cheating is sort of missing the point.  Regardless of whatever morality you want to ascribe to people that took advantage of a pricing mistake, my elephant in the room is addressing the errant transactions that did take place in any meaningful way.  Because, regardless of where you fall on the question of the morality of the situation, there's no question that it was a mistake to let those points go out, and and any gains in game from the points shouldn't have actually happened. 

This is a failure on D3/Demi part.  And, I think they'd be content to sit quietly and hope mistakes like this are forgotten.  The question is, is that the response the players of this game deserve?

Blindman13

firethorne said:

The question is, is that the response the players of this game deserve?

Because we have to complain. Because it's the answer MPQ deserves, but not the one it needs right now, so we'll complain. Because D3 can take it, because it's not answer. It's a silent guardian, a watchful protector, a Demiurge.

ViralCore

The actual punishment at bare minimum should be loss of cover swaps for good. 2 week ban is nothing, they can just hold their resources for 2 weeks. The more important thing to take away from this is the lack of integrity by d3. They know of actual cheaters and refuse to handle them appropriately. Some of these same people are the ones who used the other exploits.

Jaedenkaal

firethorne said:

If a bank makes an error in your favor, the cash isn't yours.  It still belongs to the bank.

Or, more likely, it belongs to someone else.

And also, Monopoly totally disagree's with you. Not that I recommend using Monopoly rules/effects as sound financial advice, of course

JHawkInc

firethorne said:

And, I think they'd be content to sit quietly and hope mistakes like this are forgotten.  The question is, is that the response the players of this game deserve?

No, but it's the type of response we've been getting for years now. Why do people expect it to change? The people responsible for giving us the response we deserve don't actually have the integrity to do so, that's painfully clear.

thedarkphoenix

When did this happen?

658

I don’t blame the players one bit for taking advantage of this.  I do blame D3 for not rolling them back and issuing refunds.  It’s garbage.

thedarkphoenix

I dont think its as easy as rolling them back or taking what they bought away. There are probably a good number of people that saw the deal and spent a ton on it not even thinking it was an mistake.

Plus trying to roll back just purchases from that time frame is way more tricky than just a take back

Avalanche Kincaid

I say just take away all the CP from everyone that bought at 2.99 and give a refund.  It was obviously a glitch in the system so before or after soft patch, just get rid of the CP

firethorne

Avalanche Kincaid said:

I say just take away all the CP from everyone that bought at 2.99 and give a refund.  It was obviously a glitch in the system so before or after soft patch, just get rid of the CP

I think that would be the most prudent solution.  In cases where purchases have been made with the CP, I'd say account roll back would be the best step to help signal the players they care about this.  But, banning or any further punitive measures would be unnecessary, since ultimately all of this originally stemmed from a mistake made server side.  

Unknown

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therightwaye

This is amazing. Amazing.

And those arguing about this not being cheating are being ridiculous. It doesn't really matter if it fits a definition of cheating, it is certainly problematic for everyone else. Hey @brigby can my alliance get an hour to buy some CP?

thedarkphoenix

Taking away and rolling back accounts is not something you just do, 1st of all that could cause way more problems than it solves. 

And its not cheating, when you buy something for sales, especially a somewhat reasonable sale. It's not cheating. If you had to glitch or trick game into giving you a certain price that is cheating.


I had no clue about this but props to everyone that got the deal, is about 10 bucks for 35 cp which isn't really cheap and I can bet they made a ton of it.

You had to spend about 50 bucks to have any real chance at anything nice but I'm sure whales spent a TON so they cp probably through the roof.

You thought gambit was bad, wait until they champ out thor and he's buffed for the month.

RIP 5 star players

The rockett

$2-7 CPs
$100- 350 CPs
Full ally putting 100 in per person 
350 * 20 = 7000 CPs.

Game Breaking 

therightwaye

The rockett said:

$2-7 CPs
$100- 350 CPs
Full ally putting 100 in per person 
350 * 20 = 7000 CPs.

Game Breaking 

This bears repeating. 

ZeroKarma

I don't think anyone on here really faults people who bought in the initial window and got the bonus. I received 14cp and was wondering why people were buying Starks. Thought it was someone's birthday. 

The problem lies with the continued action. D3/Demi pushed out a fix fairly quickly to solve the issue. If you were able to avoid the fix then you could continue buying. 

We aren't talking about people unknowingly doing this. There was 100% knowledge that D3 rolled out the fix, people purposely identified how to avoid the fix, and then built a cp orgy around that. 

A similar scenario would be the 25% 5* screw-ups. Shame on D3 for doing it, especially more than once. But if someone found a way to maintain the odds after a change was made? Or hacks the game to change the rates? Then it's no longer taking advantage of a mistake. 

byc

What I don't understand is why this isn't the norm?

If they want to make $$$, devalue their in-game currencies and let the players loose.  Let them spends thousands to take advantage.

Let's make it P2W.