Legacy Cards in Standard Format Exploit (10/1/18)

octal9

One of the event rules states that Standard comprises of HOU block, KLD block, and Origins. The text on these is very obviously not up-to-date.

The event has a legacy ribbon. Legacy cards are allowed. That ribbon is dependent on the event type, even if it appears to have been erroneously defined as such. Standard events don't have that ribbon, and don't allow a deck to be built as such. Exploiters got around this in multiple standard events.

The mental gymnastics here are absolutely mind blowing.



I mean, we could dump this onto the mountain of "unclear text in mtgpq", honestly

Mburn7

octal9 said:

I mean, we could dump this onto the mountain of "unclear text in mtgpq", honestly

Now that I think we can all agree on.  Oktagon does not seem to take text in game seriously, and as a result has a ton of confusingly worded cards, rules, and descriptions.

Now we get to argue over proper interpretations because these things are really important (even though Oktagon has clearly stated that they think text issues are low priority)

wereotter

Mburn7 said:

Sarahschmara said:

This is being handled incredibly poorly by D3Go. 

Now this is something I think 100% of players agree with.

Actually not 100%

I think letting people do what they were doing while they track it without telling people they are is exactly what they needed to do in order to accurately collect data regarding who was cheating and with what frequency. The game doesn’t need to be your mother and remind you cheating is bad. That’s something anyone playing the game should really know already. 

I think launching it as a “surprise! Everyone who was cheating is getting punished” is exactly the right message to send. If they handled it any differently, people would think they weren’t serious, and that future actions might not be punished. 

Mburn7

wereotter said:

Mburn7 said:

Sarahschmara said:

This is being handled incredibly poorly by D3Go. 

Now this is something I think 100% of players agree with.

Actually not 100%

I think letting people do what they were doing while they track it without telling people they are is exactly what they needed to do in order to accurately collect data regarding who was cheating and with what frequency. The game doesn’t need to be your mother and remind you cheating is bad. That’s something anyone playing the game should really know already. 

I think launching it as a “surprise! Everyone who was cheating is getting punished” is exactly the right message to send. If they handled it any differently, people would think they weren’t serious, and that future actions might not be punished. 

I disagree.  I feel like they should have put a message in-game stating something like:
"Hey, we are aware there is a bug that might allow you to play legacy cards in standard.  Please double check your event decks to ensure that all cards in it are legal for the event"

They don't have to threaten punishment, just make sure everyone is clearly aware that there is an issue to look out for.  Then if they want to drop down punishment later nobody could complain, since we were all warned.

Instead, what happened was complete silence (in game and on the forums), and then a sudden "everyone who used the bug will be punished" with no clarification as to how they would determine who intentionally broke the rules and who did it by accident.  That is what led to the debate starting, as players clamored for clarification and got none, and then started fighting over what they each think the determination should be.

We still have not received any clarification, just something saying that the punishments were already levied (again, with no in-game notification at all).

Now there is another event that may or may not have an issue, and again we are receiving absolutely no answers from either D3 or Oktagon.

To me, this is a crisis that is being handled very poorly, and I assumed everyone else felt the same way, regardless of which side of the debate they fell on.

GrizzoMtGPQ

@octal9 these are not gymnastics to justify behavior. Rather my assertion is this:

The code itself must be the ultimate arbiter for what is allowed and not allowed. The only definition of exploit that makes any sense is running code that has been altered or modified in some way.

The reason I take this position is because I believe the development team must be accountable for what they produce and stand behind it.

I would argue this to be the sensible choice because there is no way to discern the intentions of the development team. This ROTGP problem is a prime example. Do they expect us to use legacy cards or not? They are so slow to communicate that we're all left to our own devices to figure it out.

The legacy cards in standard bug is another example. They called it out as a bug but did not explicitly tell us that the use of it was verboten. I ask, why is this particular bug, which gives you an advantage, any different than any other bug that gives you an advantage? I cited the Resilient Khenra bug as an example. These are not gymnastics, they are the logical arguments discussing why we must take a position that what the code allows us to do must be the intention and if they want to change it they need to patch the code not pontificate in the forums.

GrizzoMtGPQ

And just to clear the air on some of this, I did not get caught "with my hand in the cookie jar." Nor am I trying to defend those who used this bug to their advantage. I do not feel they should need to be defended at all. There are things that Hibernum and Oktagon have done that have significantly warped the meta and I have been here for all of them.

I was here when Hibernum put out Runaway Carriage in an absurd form and suddenly everyone was running it. It sucked. It was definitely not what the developers intended and you can bet that people benefited from it in both placement and rewards.

If the instructions for this bug had been more widely known it would have warped the meta in the same way and it would have been a phase, it would have been patched, and it probably would have been a lot of fun.

These things that come up give this game color or flavor or whatever you want to call it. I love them! They make this game interesting and keep it from getting stale. I don't care one whit about winning a particular match or getting great rewards, though those things are nice and keep me trying hard. I care a lot more that this game continues to be around and have a vibrant community excited to play it.

Tombstone

Hi everyone, my apologies for the late response. I've gotten confirmation that this event is intended to be a Legacy style event now. 

Mburn7

Tombstone said:

Hi everyone, my apologies for the late response. I've gotten confirmation that this event is intended to be a Legacy style event now. 

Thanks for the confirmation @Tombstone!  Rare to see you here in the General Forum, but nice to get answers regardless

ElfNeedsFood

Unleash the Second Sun!

khurram

GrizzoMtGPQ said:

I was here when Hibernum put out Runaway Carriage in an absurd form and suddenly everyone was running it. It sucked. It was definitely not what the developers intended and you can bet that people benefited from it in both placement and rewards.

And you weren't the only one. Runaway carraige was what the developers intended it to be. JC himself posted on the forums about it and said that he designed the carriage that way to shift up the meta. He was experimenting. It obviously warped it a little too much and then he nerfed it. So no. That particular example is not the same as using the legacy exploit.

timthes

Thanks Tombstone, was about to play the event in standard and legacy at the same time, just to be sure! ;-)

Brigby

Sarahschmara said:

Thank you for the information Brigby

Can you give us an idea of how widespread this was?

When you say that the rewards were removed from the players accounts, I assume you mean crystals, mana runes, and jewels but not cards (boosters). Is that correct? So the cheaters did still come out ahead?

Also, can you tell us how coalition rewards were affected by players using the exploit?

When it comes to the number of players we took action on, we only focused on the most egregious and worst offenders. This number ended up not being as widespread as most players believe it to be. Compared to the number of players in the general player base, the number of egregious offenders were but a small handful. 

Mana Crystals, Mana Runes, and Mana Jewels were easy to remove, however cards are a bit more difficult. For the majority of offenders, the cards they received from boosters were duplicates, so we ended up removing the equivalent number of Mana Orbs instead.

As for coalition rewards, I'm afraid I don't know how that was specifically impacted.

Sarahschmara

Brigby said:

Sarahschmara said:

Thank you for the information Brigby

Can you give us an idea of how widespread this was?

When you say that the rewards were removed from the players accounts, I assume you mean crystals, mana runes, and jewels but not cards (boosters). Is that correct? So the cheaters did still come out ahead?

Also, can you tell us how coalition rewards were affected by players using the exploit?

When it comes to the number of players we took action on, we only focused on the most egregious and worst offenders. This number ended up not being as widespread as most players believe it to be. Compared to the number of players in the general player base, the number of egregious offenders were but a small handful. 

Mana Crystals, Mana Runes, and Mana Jewels were easy to remove, however cards are a bit more difficult. For the majority of offenders, the cards they received from boosters were duplicates, so we ended up removing the equivalent number of Mana Orbs instead.

As for coalition rewards, I'm afraid I don't know how that was specifically impacted.

Thank you for taking the time to give a meaningful answer. I appreciate it very much.