Panthera

Amen.

Remember when imbued rings were changed from a clicky spell to a perm buff that stacked? Despite that nagging feeling that this was way too powerful, I spent everything I had to buy a couple. Days later, the stats are adjusted and it is a proc.

This is by far the coolest thing SoE has ever done when it comes to an adjustment like this.

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Panthera

You are an idiot.

I wish I could form a more elloquent way to express my opinion, but...I'm drawing a blank.

The term "exploit" is tossed about by people who want to look cool and be Mr/Mrs Power-Gamer and flex their imaginary muscles at playing a video game "more honestly" than anyone else. Fucking idiot.

LFG and any one of the dozen or so people likely to have read that note simply took advantage of an opportunity. He is an opportunist; not an exploiter. He is no more an exploiter than the person who uses death as travel is exploiting the game. I'm starting to want to puke at how liberally this term is being tossed about.

Seriously, I could have exploited the hell out of this. You see...I found a real, honest to goodness exploit. Not a game mechanic I could use to my advantage or even a cheesy strat of the desperate like death coordination. No. I'm talking about a way to duplicate adornments.

Yup. I figured out a way I could take a single adornment and turn it into 100's (or 1000's) with little effort. THAT is an exploit. For me to have made a single ring adornment and after a few minutes work have bags full of them is a real exploit. Not reading a patch note and seeing a way to take advantage of the opportunity presented. Had I not been talking directly to the producers about this, I would have done the same thing LFG did.

So please. Can we stop tossing about the term exploit over trivial crap and save it for what is a real error in game code?

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Dehah

Nice way to start off a debate.

Noted.

Every exploiter uses this same rationalization.

"SOE forgot to tag the HQ item has non-transmutable. I didn't exploit anything. I saw an opportunity to get some transmuted items real easy so I took advantage of it. SOE was the one that didn't flag it as non-transmutable."

"SOE was the one that gave the weak NPC in the in PoF a loot table that consisted of a master chest almost one out of two kills with a short repop. All I saw was an opportunity to take advantage of a mob that dropped stuff it shouldn't before the fix went live, I didn't exploit anything."

"SOE was the one that didn't prevent us from getting multiple groups into the one group instance of Nizara. I saw an opportunity to finish the zone first on the server by getting multiple groups in there, I didn't exploit anything even though I knew it was supposed to be for one group."

"SOE was the one that put relic on the zone's loot table in Labs and then left in solo-able drakes that cracked from eggs at the zone's entrance. I just saw an opportunity to farm fabled gear from solo mobs, I wasn't exploiting."

"SOE was the one that screwed up and had MO's adds dropping MO master chests. I saw an opportunity to farm contested loot from a heroic add, it was an exploit."

There are different levels of severity when it comes to exploits. To pile them all together would be stupid. However, killing yourself to get across a zone faster is a lot different than generating 120p out of thin air.

Since I doubt your ability to think critically for yourself, based on your insults and reasoning, I will outline the differences between using death as a travel mechanism and the exploit LFG did.

What does the person gain?

Death Travel:
* Saved time. The person doesn't have to run across the zone.

LFG Exploit:
* 120p. That's a lot of money, even if it isn't to LFG.

What does the person lose?

Death Travel:
* Repair cost of armor, unless they were already naked for two minutes. But striping down armor and waiting for two minutes negates a lot of the time saved by using Death travel.
* Experience debt, slows progress. Unless the person is lvl 70 with 100 aa.

LFG Exploit:
* The time it took to get the components, make the adornments, and adorn the items.

What does it take away from other people?

Death Travel:
* Not much. Perhaps the person used it to win a race to a mob.

LFG Exploit:
* The 120p, if spent, will remove goods from the economy that a non-exploiting person would have bought. So essentially LFG will steal 120p worth of goods from other players, most of which are honest players that never exploited anything. Most of which don't have 120p to spend on stuff in the first place.

That is a pretty serious exploit, and I applaud you for not taking advantage of it.

Please elaborate on this point. It almost sounds like you talked to the producers directly and they told you that it wasn't intended for people to take advantage of. Or are you saying that the producers did intend for people to take advantage of the refund for personal gain?

Bugs don't just show up in code. Bugs aren't just mathematical errors on the programmers behalf. And more often than not, code bugs originate in poorly thought out design decisions.

kyros

yeah... it's not an exploit in my opinion.

however, i do see what ath was getting at in the first place... let's go back in time and see how LFG has portrayed himself on the side of not taking advantage of game mechanics here:

originally posted here: http://www.eq2flames.com/showthread....ion+exploit+#6

doesn't even use bank boxes because he doesn't think that his character should be able to carry that kind of weight, and he says that he considers this an exploit. on the extreme side, but that's what he said nonetheless.

and now he's willing to take a gamble on taking advantage of the system to get money. seems a bit of a conflict in ethics to me. exploit? perhaps not, but maybe LFG should re-evaluate his own definition and his feelings about it.

Panthera

This is exactly what I'm talking about in throwing about the term "exploit."

You've got to be kidding me calling this an exploit. Easy? Name an "easy" HQ. Name any HQ, even at 70, that doesn't take an hour or more to complete. Oh sure, Thorn of Old is an "easy" way to get a legendary transmutable. You put in the time to do the quest, I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to transmute the item. I am capable of mentoring and easily wiping zones for the low level quests which yield transmutable items. I'm sure you are going to call that an "exploit" as well.

As to your other examples of zone mechanics and loot tables, I see none of that as being so egregious as to call someone a cheater.

Your whole diatribe on death vs. adorning is pointless since I'm not arguing either is an exploit. You seem to be hung up on "levels" and "degrees" of why LFG is god awful of a human being. I will address this little piece of inanity:

Steal? FFS, you are now accusing him of stealing goods from other players? What, exactly could he possibly be buying that he doesn't already have 10 times better? This, of course, ignores the fact that he already has many, many times more than 120 plat and could buy whatever he wanted before this. 120 or 12,000 is an immaterial gain when he already has more than he can ever spend. To now say that he is taking goods from other players is ludicrous.

To the former, I reported the exploit so it was known I could have a bag full of adornments at my will. Even if I purchased adornments or made them myself, I was afraid, my account would be suspended. I didn't want to take the chance. As to the latter, of course they intended the refund be used for personal gain. They would not have done it the way they did had they not. It would not have been announced nor would the amount be as great as it was. Seriously, I suspected the refund would be fuel cost. Nothing more.

And when you think about exactly what goes into making these, how much "gain" is there?

Again, I consider him nothing more than an opportunist. No more or less than anyone else that finds an avenue to some type of gain. Is it and exploit or an opportunity that I was the first on my server to make t6 cloaks the day of EoF's launch? The game mechanic oh so conveniently notified me that I "discovered" each mastercrafted cloak and could, therefore, charge what I wanted. In this case, I took full advantage of knowing I was first and that SoE created a new item slot that people were going to fill with something.

I will say, however, that this entire "debate" wouldn't be happening if players, LFG included, didn't toss about the term exploit so liberally. It is much the same with the term "Nazi." People use it so often to decribe others that it takes away the power of the term. You reduce the horror of the term's intention by trivializing it. Exploitation is cheating. When you use an expoit, you are cheating. I will never call someone that simply uses a game mechanic or takes advantage of an announced event a cheater. I reserve that phrase for those that truly take advantage of coding issues.

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Dehah

Apparently you weren't aware that people were repeatedly buying the item off of Shady and transmuting it. It was the only item in the game that could be bought from an NPC and transmuted. It was a bug, and some people exploited that bug for personal gain.

You don't see farming Mutagenic Outcast loot from the encounter's heroic mobs as an exploit? You wouldn't call them cheaters? That is what you just said right?

Just because he has money doesn't negate the moral implications of what he did. If the rich stole from the poor, that doesn't make it ok because they are already rich. If he never spends that 120p, then it is true that he will have taken nothing from nobody. But this isn't just about LFG. What about those European players that made over 1000p from exploiting this? How much goods will they take from honest players when they spend this money?

You may think it is ludicrous, but it is really quite simple.

Player A and Player B are of the same class. Player A exploited this and got over 100p. Player B didn't exploit this, and they are the richest non-exploiter of their class. Both Player A and Player B need [Uber Attack (Master I)]. Player C finds this Master I and puts it on the broker. Player A buys the Master I before Player B does because it was put up for more money than Player B had. However, had Player A never exploited to get that 100p, Player A would have not been able to afford it either. In fact, the price would have come down and Player B (the richest non exploiter of his class that needed the spell) would have been able to afford the ability before Player A. Since Player A exploited to get their plat, they basically cheated Player B out of the Master I.

The same thing applies for people who cheat by purchasing plat on non-exchange servers. By breaking the rules to purchase plat you didn't earn, you are cheating. When that person buys goods off the broker with their ebay'd plat they are removing the opportunity for other players to buy those goods. Read: They are cheating those other players out of goods that would have otherwise gone to a non-cheating player.

This example is very different than when they announced the moonstone acrylia changes for Adept 3s. I would never call the act of anticipating changing market conditions and investing wising as exploiting. What is different between that and what LFG just did were the intentions of the change.

SOE did intend to give players that satisfied a certain condition money. SOE did not intend to make the adornment business into limited-time mega-money-maker. SOE did not intend for players to create a crap load of adornments and then adorn items with them for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the refund.

The bolded is a major point of contention. If you disagree with this, then it is no wonder we don't see eye to eye. I personally don't believe that SOE would intentional do something that would allow certain people to easily make over 100p as a one time thing.

It is my understanding that LFG, after reading the test notes, actively created more of these adornments and then adorned items with them for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the refund. If he did not do this, and he only got money from adornments that his characters use, then I'll agree that he didn't exploit it. However, I think LFG saw a loophole that he could easily exploit, and the temptation of easy money clouded his judgment in this case. Even the most respectable people make mistakes. The question in my mind is: will he realize his mistake and learn from it?

Panthera

I have no idea what you are talking about on either. If there is an item you can buy, transmute and repeat over and over, then yes, that is a bug. To do so would be cheating.

I will never call what LFG did a cheat. Good luck with such a limited moralistic view of a video game.

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Dehah

I don't know how you can say I have the more limited moralistic view. It appears to me that your morals are more limited than mine. I would even be as bold to say that applying morals to only a facat of one's life would make said person a hypocrite. This isn't GTA, the Sims, or your GI Joe action set. You play with real people in EQ2. To shrug it off as a videogame is irresponsible.

Haidden

This sign says it all for me.




I mean im sure if soe had given more time then alot more people would have cashed in. LFG just saw the opportunity to make a few plat and he went for it and he probably isnt the only one out there. If you want to blame anyone blame SOE for putting it out in the notes. They could have did what they normally do and just ninja nerfed them and everyone would be like wtfbbq omgzor etc but they didnt. They gave everyone a notice and even said they would be providing a reimbursement and taking the augs off the items. So its SOEs fault for giving to much information. All they had to say was

*** Items ***
- Hit Point and Power Adornments:These have been reduced in effectiveness.In order to be as fair as possible


If they would have just said that then people would have logged in found the new adornments and found reimbursed plat and everyone would have been happy except for the few people out there who are never happy with what happens and always looks for something to whine and cry about.

Go ahead and say i have no morals or ethics /shrugs just the way i look at it.

Dehah

Do you care about Tradeskill Botters?
Do you care about IGN plat farmers?
Do you care about people who buy from IGN plat farmers?
Do you care about exploiters?

If you care about EQ2, then you should care, because all of these things hurt the long term health of a game.