How Do You Define Exploit?

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LaserPointer wrote:

The way I see it is. The developers missed a mistake that they made. The players found the mistake.

It should be the developers that should be in trouble, not the players.

Finding the mistake didn't get them the ban. Abusing it did.

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CommAshen wrote:

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Leizvenn wrote:

The Ultimatum exploit was discovered through party play. It allowed one to continually rack up kills.

Orb of Horizons on maps however, is a case of an item doing what it does.

Orb of Horizons on maps was a case of an item doing what it does. You are correct.

And Ultimatums infinitely spawning monsters was a case of Ultimatums doing what Ultimatums do.

In both cases they were unintended by the developers. In both cases players made large profits off of it. But only one case was considered an exploit. Why?

Not true. Ultimatums give you instructions. When you leave the circle it tells you to go back in the circle. If you're getting bonus loot by disobeying game instructions that should be one of the most obvious triggers of logic and conscience that it is unintended.

Having realized it is unintended, to pursue it for your economic gain is to exploit.

In summary:

Follow the game instructions.

If instructions are unclear, rely on past game mechanics as a guide (much like you would a tabletop game if you find yourself in a situation not explicitly stated, default to the pattern or closest use case).

If you're still unsure use common sense and conscience.

If you still find yourself banned for exploiting after all this, I'd rather you not be in the game too.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

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LaserPointer wrote:

The way I see it is. The developers missed a mistake that they made. The players found the mistake.

It should be the developers that should be in trouble, not the players.

Finding the mistake didn't get them the ban. Abusing it did.

You usually have to abuse it to get their attention, or else they don't get fixed. Just like any other game.

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innervation wrote:

Not true. Ultimatums give you instructions. When you leave the circle it tells you to go back in the circle. If you're getting bonus loot by disobeying game instructions that should be one of the most obvious triggers of logic and conscience that it is unintended.

Having realized it is unintended, to pursue it for your economic gain is to exploit.

In summary:

Follow the game instructions.

If instructions are unclear, rely on past game mechanics as a guide (much like you would a tabletop game if you find yourself in a situation not explicitly stated, default to the pattern or closest use case).

If you're still unsure use common sense and conscience.

If you still find yourself banned for exploiting after all this, I'd rather you not be in the game too.

Ah, having not done any ultimatums I did not realize it actually nagged you to stay in the circle. :thinking:

That said, it's still bad policy to leave the exploitable conditions in the game and lie in wait for people to break it and then ban.

A few years back, another game company got in some mess with thousands of subscribers to their MMO because in the game world there were a handful of pickup-items that respawned immediately due to a coding error. Gamers (mostly tweens for this game) got their accounts banned if they actually "farmed" the pickups, which could be sold for a small amount of gold.

Their defense was "We didn't intend to make the items respawn but before we could address the issue, thousands of players had already abused them and unfairly filled their account with gold. This is not something we would normally put in the game and players should have known if it was too good to be true, that it probably was wrong."

A lot of parents of kids who got banned for this behaviour said their kids were unfamiliar with the game and had no idea this was in error. Other parents commented that while they thought most adults would realize it was wrong, a lot of kids playing the game had special needs and maybe were unable to 'connect the dots' between their behaviour and the consequences.

Almost anyone whose account characters picked up more than 1 of these pickups got a ban or suspension. In many of these cases, the total amount picked up was 2. This is exactly the number of pickups it would take someone to realize there was a bug, and then prudently STOP collecting. (The pickup item icon still appeared in the location the original pickup would spawn, but it usually became non-interactive scenery. The glitch ensured the item was always a pickup item.)

After a LOT of pressure the company rolled back virtually all the bans and suspensions, and fixed the error. Only accounts that had farmed the item with egregious efficiency and obsessiveness (50k gold or more) remained banned.

Blaming the players, or the parents, for discovering and exploiting bugs in the game, even if YOU strongly believe you personally would 'know better', is a bad tactic.

I've no doubt that many PoE players would have exploited the bug and even come to see it as necessary to compensate for a fundamentally broken lootsystem and negative EV associated with the league mechanic. I've no doubt that at least some of the 130,000 bodies turning out for league launch have a faulty sense of right and wrong, or have the character structure of an 11-year-old child. And this game isn't marketed for teens it's meant for 18+.

Lastly, despite their darnedest efforts at GGG HQ, some of those exiles crawling ashore on Day 1 may be doing so for the FIRST TIME EVER and have no inkling of what happened during Heist, or 5-ways, or in Valdo's Rest, because they are new to the game.

All the same though. Playtesting your game or applying smart brakes to loot/XP helps prevent really nasty PR debacles and bad-faith arguments about integrity.