Darammer

You are mistaken. The text Aeralik quoted in that PM is definitely not a /bug report, but there is no evidence to suggest it came from the boards here.

It may have, or it may have been sent as an e-mail or a PM on the official forums.

In any case, all of that is irrelevant to whether SOE could use this as further "spin control" as you allege; they need no further spin control after the initial dev-outting post from Snark. At that point, all bridges were burned between SOE and Flames.

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Metran

I don't disagree, what he did was down right wrong.

Like I said, it just provides the necessary documented spin control for why ties had to be cut. In a corporate environment if things weren't escalated through the proper channels, the paper pushers out there like to say something to the effect of(paraphrasing from several of my employers): "if you don't use the proper escalation, you can't expect things to get done the way you expect them to."

So in essence if you didn't submit the info through SOE controlled means, how can you reasonably expect that information to be handled observing SOE approved practices.

Bottomline, if I was SOE, this pm would be my next line of defense as to why the relationship between flames and soe had to end. It encouraged players and devs to break the approved practices to get things addressed in a timely fashion and also allowed devs to easily forward in-house information garnered through private correspondences on this website. I am not advocating that stance, but its not entirely unreasonable to see that as their defense in light of this new information.

Niber

I could care less about their personal justification. Justified or not, they were never going to come back to this site.

LFG

I would like to point out that in every instance where someone asked how to report something to SOE on this site, I always responded with my suggestion that they "PM it to Aeralik on the official forums."

Here is one example:

Re: Zone crash issue.

You can find more examples with our search function. I never encouraged nor believed that bugs and exploits should go through this site, ever.

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Odii

Exactly, and from an Admin standpoint, you were just cleaning house IMO.

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Odii
Darknessfalls

Metran

PR doesn't need to be done between the avid flames readers and SOE, but rather those who can see the argument from both sides. If SOE had the right PR team(which I highly doubt) they could easily take this PM and illustrate why they had to reign their devs in and protect the integrity of the game.

Then again, I am just waiting for my work day to end

Svetty

SOE obviously believed it to be an exploit if they have corrected the issue.

Osime

I thought it was pretty straight forward what his response was; he promptly sent it to the guild leader... oh you mean besides that? Yeah I'd like to know as well, but sadly we'll never find out.

*edited for clarity only.

Arangor

Your point would only be pertinent if LFG/Niber were groveling at SOEs feet trying to reestablish ties. Indicating that this is only further ammunition for Sony is irrelevant considering we all know Flames and SOE will never have the same affiliation as they did in the past.

What I'm trying to say is, who cares? Let them use it as spin control, if anything it will just reiterate the fact that a dev was involved in shady tactics with a live server guild. I think for Sony it would be best to never bring it up again considering they've already stuck the proverbial middle finger up at this website.

Dehah

I don't like exploiting as much as the next guy. But I'll forgive any exploit where the exploit in question involves using an every day game mechanic in a situation where a dev didn't intend for the everyday game mechanic to be usable.

For example, yelling a raid encounter and getting no reward, so that you can progress in a zone. Yes it was changed so you can't yell it anymore, but prior to that change you could yell any mob in the game and kill it for no reward. (The Rumbler "sploit")

This is a soft exploit: an action that when used in the standard situation is perfectly exceptable, but when used in a very specific situation is an exploit, even though the result of performing that action is identical in each situation.

A hard exploit is doing what is never intended in any situation, such as forming a 12 person raid in a herioc instance that has a 1-6 player requirement for zoning in. Or evac'ing while a temp buff is wearing off to get it to stay up permanently.

Here is some food for thought: At one point Leviathan's buff that has "75% chance to reflect a spell" wasn't working, it didn't reflect anything even though it was up on the mob. Obviously it isn't working as intended when no one gets any reflects, so technically to DPS the mob with spells or to debuff the mob would be exploiting this bug in this encounter. However, would any one call it a night because of this? Would any raid leader say "Sorry all, we can't kill Leviathan tonight. Its reflect is obviously bugged and we refuse to exploit this fact." Would a raid leader even say "Don't cast any spells. No nukes, no dots, no debuffs, we have to kill this tonight without spells otherwise we are exploiting the mob."

I propose that no one thinks that way. The reason is because using a standard every day actions such as casting nukes, dots, and debuffs is only an exploit in specific situations where the dev intended these actions to result in a very specific reaction and these reactions weren't occuring properly. But even though it is an exploit by the pure definition of the term, the severity of the exploit is such that you can't fault the player for doing it because it is a standard every day action for the player, and doing the same thing in any other situation is not an exploit. These sitatuoins tend to be highlighted by the ease at which the exploit is taken advantage of.

In the Leviathan case, a player simply has to cast a hostile spell to exploit this bug.

In the rumbler case, the player only had to click one button: the yell button; a button whose power had been bestoyed upon them at level 1 and which they could use to their advantage throughout the history of the game to give up xp and loot rewards to mobs in exchange for an advantage in staying alive and defeating the encounter.

In the preator's guard case (when the proc was accidentally set to 100% for a few days), the player only had to equip the item that they were probably already wearing and cast a spell.

In the Den instance (in Bonemire) the little adds have been broken and permarooted for just about ever now. All the player has to do is kill the boss of the heroic instance without killing these adds to exploit that encounter. All they have to do is not stand next to the adds to leash them.

In the case of Druushk add's leashing: again players found that they could use a standard every day mechanic and use it to their advantage. All they had to do was pull to a different spot. Like the above examples, if the action that causes the exploit is an every day action and is very simple to execute (ie, pushing a single button, or pulling to a different spot) then I hold that you can't fault players for using it at all.

There are many of these soft exploits still in game, and bet there are many raiders here that are just simply too used to taking advantage of them to realize they are exploiting. (Most) Everyone has to draw the line somewhere when it comes to exploiting. The above is how I define it. If performing a standard every day action in a specific situation is exploiting but in any other situation is not exploiting and the only reason I can do it in this exploiting situation is because of a bug, it is not my problem. In a game where many of these soft exploits go unfixed forever and is basically considered "working as intended", I'm not going to waste my time trying to read the Dev's mind's. Just /bug it and and game on.

Just thought I would give some people some perspective on the leet sploitz information that was shared by the dev.

"Psst, you can leash the adds!"
"Orly?"
"Yarly!"
"ZOMG No Wai! Leet Hax d00d!!!1!"