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

GrizzoMtGPQ
GrizzoMtGPQ Posts: 776 Critical Contributor
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.
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Comments

  • Aeroplane
    Aeroplane Posts: 314 Mover and Shaker
    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
    GrizzoMtGPQ Posts: 776 Critical Contributor
    @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.
  • khurram
    khurram Posts: 1,077 Chairperson of the Boards
    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
    Aeroplane Posts: 314 Mover and Shaker
    @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.
  • Aeroplane
    Aeroplane Posts: 314 Mover and Shaker
    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
    Froggy Posts: 511 Critical Contributor
    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?
  • Volrak
    Volrak Posts: 732 Critical Contributor
    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.
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited October 2018
    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
    Szamsziel Posts: 463 Mover and Shaker
    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
    bk1234 Posts: 2,924 Chairperson of the Boards
    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
    Gunmix25 Posts: 1,433 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited October 2018
    @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
    Froggy Posts: 511 Critical Contributor
    edited October 2018
    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
    bk1234 Posts: 2,924 Chairperson of the Boards
    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
    GrizzoMtGPQ Posts: 776 Critical Contributor
    edited October 2018
    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.