Gilded Lotus in Standard and Legacy Decks Exploit (10/2/18)

GrizzoMtGPQ

As some of you might know there is an exploit in 2.9 that allows players to gain unfair mana bonuses when using Gilded Lotus in Standard and Legacy decks. 

Many of you were extremely helpful providing information on how to reproduce this exploit. If you have used this exploit to gain unfair mana bonuses when playing Gilded Lotus in your Standard and Legacy decks you will be punished.

When playing Gilded Lotus you must ensure that you do not use it in a way that gains you extra mana bonuses. We have telemetry and will be watching for those who use it to unfairly gain advantages over their competitors.

Aeroplane

GrizzoMtGPQ said:

As some of you might know there is an exploit in 2.9 that allows players to gain unfair mana bonuses when using Gilded Lotus in Standard and Legacy decks. 

Many of you were extremely helpful providing information on how to reproduce this exploit. If you have used this exploit to gain unfair mana bonuses when playing Gilded Lotus in your Standard and Legacy decks you will be punished.

When playing Gilded Lotus you must ensure that you do not use it in a way that gains you extra mana bonuses. We have telemetry and will be watching for those who use it to unfairly gain advantages over their competitors.

Unfortunately, with the bug infestation from the last update, I'm sure there are some people unknowingly using whatever you're implying. I didn't even know about the legacy/standard bug that was going on and I play this game everyday. This is all on Oktagon for doing such a poor job on 2.9. People will play Sphynx's Decree in any coalition event and shut down any deck when played. Old bugs have been reintroduced handcuffing good cards like Etali and hexproof has been amped negating cards like perilous voyage... Being worried about Gilded Lotus is just silly when there are other problems that will overload the ticket system , create a very frustrating atmosphere and drive people away.. Punishing and threatening the customer over a product that Oktagon has produced and exclusively sold as in Gilded Lotus's case oversteps anyone's authority and sounds a little funny. Oktagon should step up and be professional with a quick  update to fix their problem.

GrizzoMtGPQ

@Aeroplane this was sarcasm directed at their post about their buggy code not honoring deck restrictions in events. They have the audacity to call their shoddy code and QE an EXPLOIT. And they threaten to punish anyone who found out deck restrictions didn’t actually work and played the cards the game LET them play.

Dodecapod

I’m genuinely confused about the sarcasm here.  The Legacy exploit was certainly possible to stumble upon accidentally using intended game mechanics, but employing it systematically would fairly obviously have contravened the intent of the entire Standard format and would have been extremely unlikely to occur on a sustained, repeated basis without a player fully understanding the competitive advantage to be gained and the deviation from the listed in-game event instructions, so likening it to a card bug and/or text error in either its scope or its ethical ambiguity doesn’t inherently seem like a foregone or necessarily accurate conclusion (whether you’re referring to a specific bug with Gilded Lotus or not I’m uncertain of, but the comparison between a routine card templating issue and the Legacy exploit as far as the principle of uncertainty involved, where primary responsibility for any adverse externalities should lie, and the appropriateness of punitive action against some users seems clear).

Could you elaborate on the reasoning behind satirizing the devs’ decision to implement ex post facto rewards and punishments for certain player behaviors regarding this exploit, or clarify the implicit subtext if I’ve somehow misconstrued the meaning of the original post?

Obviously it’s correct to point out that a flaw in the code must have existed to allow for the possibility of Legacy decks in Standard, but to draw a different analogy from the one in the OP, a homeowner leaving their door unlocked doesn’t entitle passersby to enter and seize the homeowner’s personal property contained within that house then reject any penalty incurred under the auspices of “audacity”; the theft would in many cases still be punishable independently even if the homeowner made a mistake that increased the risk of theft.

As far as the Legacy exploit specifically, I wouldn’t advocate for extreme punishments personally, but “exploit” is an entirely accurate term to describe the situation in this case, and some punishment may be necessary to avoid functionally rewarding some players for taking advantage of a loophole at the expense both of the developers themselves and of other players who instead chose to forgo personal short-term gains and acted cooperatively with the developers in order to resolve the issue more expediently.

To approach the issue from a different perspective, If you were a developer, which behavior would you rather incentivize among your players in the event of a severe bug?  Whatever individual views among players might be (and those understandably seem to vary widely among the ones I’m familiar with), that question is ultimately (and predictably) going to be one of the first ones the devs consider in formulating policy every time, and it seems difficult to make the argument that the precedent established in the recent announcement countermands their intent to encourage players to work with them instead of against them, so responding with a claim of entitlement to exoneration seems unlikely to be a sufficiently convincing rebuttal to alter that precedent in any future scenarios that may arise. There may be other arguments that are more persuasive, and I’d certainly be interested in learning about them, as this seems to inherently be a polarizing issue and formulating sound policy is rarely a trivial exercise, but “the devs have code that failed to prevent abuse” doesn’t justify any abuse intrinsically, even if it’s a fair criticism to point out the devs’ error were that complaint to be leveled independently of any blame-shifting or ad hominem implications.

khurram

Anyone using that exploit knew that they were doing something that was against the rules.

Dodecapod's analogy describes the situation well.

"Judge, I only stole from the house because the owner left it unlocked. He is the one to blame. I mean, what else can you expect from a person like me? Let's just call it fair, okay?"

Aeroplane

GrizzoMtGPQ said:

@Aeroplane this was sarcasm directed at their post about their buggy code not honoring deck restrictions in events. They have the audacity to call their shoddy code and QE an EXPLOIT. And they threaten to punish anyone who found out deck restrictions didn’t actually work and played the cards the game LET them play.

Nice one. Hook ,line and sinker.

octal9

I'm with dodecapod on this. Your analogy doesn't stand up to scrutiny at all. "The game let me do it" is not a justification.

There's precedent for punitive action; there are multiple instances of this from gaming history. Quick example from this article: https://www.pcgamer.com/3000-guild-wars-2-players-permanently-banned-for-karma-exploit/ (emphasis mine): 

The players we banned were certainly intentionally and repeatedly exploiting a bug in the game.

Aeroplane

khurram said:

Anyone using that exploit knew that they were doing something that was against the rules.

Dodecapod's analogy describes the situation well.

"Judge, I only stole from the house because the owner left it unlocked. He is the one to blame. I mean, what else can you expect from a person like me? Let's just call it fair, okay?"

I'll respectively disagree as the the stolen item was never stolen , but purchased from a merchant and brought home then was contacted that it didn't work properly.  This is in the "recall" realm. The onus is on the merchant to take care of the defect or refund it completely, not the customer.

Now if we enter  fair play or sportsmanship , it only becomes subjective as Oktagon sets the playing field and rules with their coding and we play. With the numerous bugs already in play , the ball is not following the rules of physics. Is Oktagon creating an atmosphere of fair play with such a poor field to play on and a ball that is deflating? 

Since starting this game , the bugs are accumulating , but they keep pushing new sets out . Gilded Lotus is the least of their problems as Sphynx's Decree will ruin any coalition event. 

Its a great game , but its obvious they lack the resources to keep their product oiled and running smoothly.

Froggy

Look, if one knew of the bugs and went out of their way to abuse them for personal advantage and actually did gain some personal advantage, then I agree it is dishonest. From a purely moral and perfect world.

But I’ve been in this game for some 2 1/2 years now. So - exploit, huh?

I know of other minor exploits in this game that other players will never know existed. And neither will the devs. It will never affect game play. They will never cheat me into better positions in events or games (I’m definitely not the best player), and so what’s the big deal? They are minor and honestly no one would care if I did it. No one would notice either (I don’t do it, but I could).

But what about the fact that this game has major bugs in it to the disadvantage of the player base? We’ve known these problems existed for a long time. Could that not be considered an AI exploit against its players? (I know Oktagon is working hard to fix these - I’m not knocking you for this. Just putting things into perspective).

How about the fact that masterpieces are once again removed from IXL packs? It was previously such a problem that the dev team saw it fit to compensate the player base with a reward. They then fixed it. Now the problem is back. No mention of this anywhere - yet.

Or what about the fact of all the 2 billion SWW errors in the game? Could that not also be considered an exploit against players?

Or Legacy rewards being issued in Standard events?

Or most hated events constantly getting a re-run (I’m looking at you Dog Pharaoh)?

We don’t view them as exploits. We just complain and rant.

Or how about constant nerfing of cards? Had it ever occurred to anyone that a player might actually spend money for chase cards through direct purchase or through game currency purchase, finally get them, only to have them nerfed? That’s real life cash being taken for something that is later changed.

Was it an exploit for players to craft the Elder Dragons before they hit the vault for sale?

I’m not saying it was right to use the specifically mentioned exploit for personal advantage and gaining an edge in events. But why not post an announcement about it to the community as soon as it was discovered? Why wait to secretly run detective work to see who used your broken code? What punishment will the dev team get for the incompetence? I won’t agree with cheaters. But using an exploit that the devs incorrectly programmed is not cheating as you are not modifying the game programming itself. You are simply taking (unfair) advantage of others by using the broken code provided by the devs. So if the broken code (SWW) cost us top rewards in an event, why does customer service not give a squat? They can view the logs and verify any complaint sent. But no.

And yet the dev teams sits by and watches this exploit, trying to play cops and robbers. I guess they are trying to fight fire with fire? I don’t really get it.

Anyway, I generally score poorly in PvP so could care less about the exploit. Just thought I’d give my opinion on the matter. Foul play from both sides. Now - how to deal with that?

Mburn7

octal9 said:

I'm with dodecapod on this. Your analogy doesn't stand up to scrutiny at all. "The game let me do it" is not a justification.

There's precedent for punitive action; there are multiple instances of this from gaming history. Quick example from this article: https://www.pcgamer.com/3000-guild-wars-2-players-permanently-banned-for-karma-exploit/ (emphasis mine): 

The players we banned were certainly intentionally and repeatedly exploiting a bug in the game.

My question is this:  Where is the line?  When is using a bugged thing ok (say, when Zendikar's Roil was infinite with Path of Discovery) and when is it not?

There's a game I used to play (Highgrounds, if anyone else remembers that) which came out with a new mechanic that had an incredibly nasty bug with one of its abilities that was super easy to use.  There were debates for months over whether or not people using the bug should be banned for cheating, but nothing ended up happening because it wasn't cheating, it was just using the cards as they were (shoddily) programmed.

Why is the Legacy cards exploit any different?  Sure, it goes against the spirit of a Standard event, but its a part of the game.  Everyone had the ability to use it.  And it shouldn't have been a part of the game to begin with (as I said before in another thread, it wasn't exactly a difficult thing to discover.)  And since it was only used recently we can't even blame Hibernium for not implementing Event Decks properly, since whatever change allowed it to happen was more recent.

Nobody got punished for using Prized Amalgam when it guaranteed a game crash on anyone who faced it.
Nobody got punished for using Runaway Carriage when it was obviously broken.
Nobody got punished for making an infinite combo with Harness the Storm and Devil's Playground, or Season's Past and itself, or Baral and cheap spells, or Rashimi and gem changers, or Imminent Doom and Immortal Sun
Nobody got punished for swapping event decks for troll decks to stop other players from getting good scores
Nobody got punished for using low level walkers to get easy event fights for their high level walkers
Nobody got punished for using the old exploit that allowed you to select your opponent in events
Nobody got punished for the old Coalition bug that let you swap players in throughout an event and count all of their scores

I could keep going, but this is getting long.  The point is, why is THIS bug the one that will bring punishment down when exploiting any other bug is perfectly ok?

Note:  I'm saying this as someone who barely used the exploit in question (like, for 2 PvE fights and nothing else) 

bk1234

GrizzoMtGPQ said:

@Aeroplane this was sarcasm directed at their post about their buggy code not honoring deck restrictions in events. They have the audacity to call their shoddy code and QE an EXPLOIT. And they threaten to punish anyone who found out deck restrictions didn’t actually work and played the cards the game LET them play.

Each event has a little circle with an "i' in it. Those are the rules. Part of those rules are any deck restrictions for that event. If a player made the choice to use cards outside of those deck restrictions, they should be punished. It IS cheating, it IS breaking the rules. Their score should be disqualified for that event and their coalition should have it's rewards adjusted accordingly. 

If you walk into a standard paper tournament with legacy cards in your deck, you get disqualified. It's something you can easily do, put these cards in your deck -- but it's willful and purposeful cheating -- that's exactly what players did who used the exploit. 

Volrak

Mburn7 said:

The point is, why is THIS bug the one that will bring punishment down when exploiting any other bug is perfectly ok?

My view on where to draw the line is simple - it's not ok to exploit any bug to gain advantage beyond what would be possible if the bug did not exist.  Since D3 obviously can't and shouldn't try to spend huge resources policing all exploits of all bugs, I think policing the most egregious is a fine compromise.

If D3 had begun doing this earlier, perhaps folks would be less shocked that they now seem to care, as they should, about encouraging a culture of fair play.

octal9

The point is, why is THIS bug the one that will bring punishment down when exploiting any other bug is perfectly ok?

1. Play a card (edit: play a card within the confines of the event's rules)

vs

1. Use pre-built, custom standard deck standard 
2. Pick a match
3. Back out without starting match
4. Go to main screen of application
5. Go edit your custom deck
6. Add whatever card you want
7. Return to event and start your match

You can't possibly be arguing that this isn't a completely different breed of exploiting the game to your extreme advantage - extreme being the key word here. Relying on other players losing is a minimal advantage - getting a perfect score with cards not intended for use in your event format is extreme. This is an intentional set of steps used to gain an unfair advantage that, by your own admission, violates the spirit of the event itself.

Nobody got punished for using Prized Amalgam when it guaranteed a game crash on anyone who faced it.

No hard rebuttal here. That being said, the personal gain is minimal - it relies on others losing. (edit: and using the card was within the confines of the rules for the event)

Nobody got punished for using Runaway Carriage when it was obviously broken.
Nobody got punished for making an infinite combo with Harness the Storm and Devil's Playground, or Season's Past and itself, or Baral and cheap spells, or Rashimi and gem changers, or Imminent Doom and Immortal Sun

These are balance issues. Not bugs. "Exploitable" for your gain, sure - just add them to a deck. It's not on the same level of exploit. (edit: and using these cards was within the confines of the rules for the event)

Nobody got punished for swapping event decks for troll decks to stop other players from getting good scores

Provides almost no advantage (again relying on other players to lose), and they had to play the deck in the event for it to register, which put the player at a disadvantage. (edit: and using these decks was within the confines of the rules for the event)

Nobody got punished for using low level walkers to get easy event fights for their high level walkers
Nobody got punished for using the old exploit that allowed you to select your opponent in events
Nobody got punished for the old Coalition bug that let you swap players in throughout an event and count all of their scores

They should have been. Maybe take this umbrage with Hibernum? Ah, right. Different team now.

Nobody got punished for using an emulator and a program in QB to get astronomically high scores

This is just flat out incorrect - people were banned for that. And others had their name dragged through the mud unfairly. (also: it didn't require an emulator)

Mburn7

octal9 said:

The point is, why is THIS bug the one that will bring punishment down when exploiting any other bug is perfectly ok?

1. Play a card (edit: play a card within the confines of the event's rules)

vs

1. Use pre-built, custom standard deck standard 
2. Pick a match
3. Back out without starting match
4. Go to main screen of application
5. Go edit your custom deck
6. Add whatever card you want
7. Return to event and start your match

You can't possibly be arguing that this isn't a completely different breed of exploiting the game to your extreme advantage - extreme being the key word here. Relying on other players losing is a minimal advantage - getting a perfect score with cards not intended for use in your event format is extreme. This is an intentional set of steps used to gain an unfair advantage that, by your own admission, violates the spirit of the event itself.

Nobody got punished for using low level walkers to get easy event fights for their high level walkers
Nobody got punished for using the old exploit that allowed you to select your opponent in events
Nobody got punished for the old Coalition bug that let you swap players in throughout an event and count all of their scores

They should have been. Maybe take this umbrage with Hibernum? Ah, right. Different team now.

Nobody got punished for using an emulator and a program in QB to get astronomically high scores

This is just flat out incorrect - people were banned for that. And others had their name dragged through the mud unfairly. (also: it didn't require an emulator)

People were banned for the QB thing?  I don't remember that (although since it was pre-coalition and before I got on the forums I guess it makes sense I didn't realize).  Oops, my bad.  Took that line out of the original post

And its just as easy to do it by accident.  I lost a (luckily low scoring) PvE match because I was grinding story mode during the event while waiting for my charges to refresh and didn't know that it would change my event deck.

And I certainly won't call it an extreme advantage, Azor's Gateway still curb-stomped me into oblivion with my attempt at a legacy deck for it.  Now for PvP its a whole different story (since a Pigrakul combo is certainly much harder than anything you can do in standard), but that's why I (and probably others) didn't do it in PvP. 

Look, I get that this was a nasty bug and I'm happy its fixed (I am also one of the people who reported it, btw).
I just don't like how now suddenly people are worried about losing their accounts because of a bug.  It wasn't some hack into the code, or some crazy manipulation of events or anything, just a simple bug in the code for when an event checks the legality of a deck entered into it.  If anyone should be punished for it its whoever messed up the code to begin with (remember, this hasn't been an issue in the years that Event Decks have been a thing, so it must have been a recent code change that did it.)

Szamsziel

Simple case: xxx played with legacy deck in event. Maybe, just maybe it was by accident (story mode). Fine - so how many times should it happen? I'd suspect that d3 will take this into consideration. Also I have no doubt that if I notice playing with improper deck I'd report myself. And I doubt that you could play legacy without noticing that.

(there was example from gw2 ban hammer - if you had just few "usage" of exploit you were warned. If > 10 (I don't remember correct number though) by default banhammer swept you.

bk1234

octal9 said:

Nobody got punished for using an emulator and a program in QB to get astronomically high scores

This is just flat out incorrect - people were banned for that. And others had their name dragged through the mud unfairly. (also: it didn't require an emulator)

Many, many players were banned for this. 

Gunmix25

GrizzoMtGPQ said:

@Aeroplane this was sarcasm directed at their post about their buggy code not honoring deck restrictions in events. They have the audacity to call their shoddy code and QE an EXPLOIT. And they threaten to punish anyone who found out deck restrictions didn’t actually work and played the cards the game LET them play.

So if you ran a stop sign, you shouldn't be punished because the road lets you continue going forward? just curious.

Just because you can when no one is looking, doesn't mean you should... period.

Froggy

Gotta say, I love the analogies being given here.

Its become humorous.

If the bug was prevalent and the devs were informed and knew of it, why didn’t they post a warning the same minute here in the forums?

Instead they waited it out.

So an analogy: Cop sees robber breaking into a house. He waits outside so he can catch the robber for any and all possible charges. Who knows what he is capable of or what his intentions are.

Why not hit his sirens right away so robber runs and you catch him just on breaking and entering? Oh no! Now you caught much more than that. What’s the point?

I’m not pro or against the exploit. I could care less. I don’t generally score well in PvP. I’m merely pointing out that both sides are at fault. That’s right - BOTH sides. Do punish the abusers. And punish the devs. I think it’s only fair to ask that be done.

bk1234

Froggy said:

Gotta say, I love the analogies being given here.

Its become humorous.

If the bug was prevalent and the devs were informed and knew of it, why didn’t they post a warning the same minute here in the forums?

Instead they waited it out.

So an analogy: Cop sees robber breaking into a house. He waits outside so he can catch the robber for any and all possible charges. Who knows what he is capable of or what his intentions are.

Why not hit his sirens right away so robber runs and you catch him just on breaking and entering? Oh no! Now you caught much more than that. What’s the point?

I’m not pro or against the exploit. I could care less. I don’t generally score well in PvP. I’m merely pointing out that both sides are at fault. That’s right - BOTH sides. Do punish the abusers. And punish the devs. I think it’s only fair to ask that be done.

I don't think this is a fair analogy. 

The devs didn't raise a warning sign because they needed to find a fix for it. Had they said "don't use it" everyone would have tried to figure out how to do so. 

Had they done that, the appropriate analogy would be --

Security guard is walking through the mall and notices the lock to the outside door of The Gap is broken. Security guard posts a big neon sign on the door where every potential shoplifter can see -- "This lock is broken".

But what the devs and D3 did was more appropriate:

Security guard is walking through the mall and notices the lock to the outside door of The Gap is broken. Security guard immediately notifies the manager of the store and his security company who quietly place a camera to monitor the door until a repair man can fix it. 

GrizzoMtGPQ

My problem with this is calling it an exploit. I would agree that utilizing low level walkers to match against other low level walkers then switching is basically the same thing. Nothing was done there and that was widely abused.

@Gunmix25 I would not liken this to running a stop sign because you can even though there is a law against it. The code is the law, whatever it lets you do is fair dinkum. Oktagon and D3 knew this problem existed and could have said right away that they consider this cheating and warned everyone not do it. It is very easy to run afoul of this by mistake and assume that it is ok to do it.

@bken1234 Who looks at those info i's? And what about the times where they are grossly wrong? We've seen that! Where it said we could play with certain cards but you could not. Since the QE is so lacking in this game it is impossible to know what the developers intend.

How about the Resilient Khenra bug? I saw that card played a lot and I guarantee you it was because it was not working as intended and gave you a competitive advantage. Was that cheating? 

I think the line needs to be that if you mod or run software that is not strictly Oktagon code you're a cheater. Anything in the game is fine and is actually like a fun scavenger hunt. Finding little unintended easter eggs like the Tsunami Punch gives this game a little extra color.

Oh and Hexproof doesn't work anymore. Is that an exploit by Oktagon? Do they get punished? Because I can't use Gaea's Revenge anymore the way it is supposed to work.

boopers

@octal9 has this absolutely nailed. It could be argued that having done this one time was an accident and forgivable. But after that, anyone that did it a second time knew what they were doing — and most importantly knew for sure that it was against the event rules. 

Just because past past exploit abuses were not punished doesn’t mean that future abuses should not be. There is a long precedence in the gaming industry to punish those who choose to exploit programming loopholes to gain unfair competitive advantage. If D3 is late to act on abusers, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t.