Hell did VV or Akita T even see this coming? VV was predicting another big peak in minerals in July but guess this throws a spanner in the works of that plan

erm....




http://mmodata.blogspot.com/2012/05/mmodata-charts-v39-in-works.html

I like how now CCP is looking into taking action against Goons for blowing up their own **** for which they willingly paid too much.

This post made me think of a very good question for Aryth & crew:

Did this skyrocket your standings as a by-product?

Thanks in advance for the tip, either way.

So it's ok for CCP to gift it's pet players billions in isk in the form of T2BPO but when goons take you to the cleaners using brains they did wrong? Ehm no I'm glad CCP now knows what it's like to be an EVE inventor getting ripped off while trying to do an honest days work.

Good Job goons, keep it up. You fight for the common EVE player against CCP and the pets. Burn New Eden in the name of the helpless.

Goons have stolen CCP's silver spoon that they use to feed their pets and CCP is pissed off, good work goons!

It might be early, but hell, give it a think. Do you really want your FW represntative on the CSM fighting against you after he admittedly completely neglected the respective complaints of one entire faction for his own personal gain and profit?

For that matter, "Impeach Hans!"

You "read our document", eh? A few days ago, eh?

I guess that means you didn't actually make 8.7b, then, since that document was literally released 1 hour ago.

Uh...this is a game.

Do you "police" yourself when you play "Uno"?

What if your first hand is all Draw Fours and Skips? Do you call misdeal out of fairness to your competition?

What if this happens a hundred thousand times in a row. Were you an exploiter then?

I bolded your poorly-considered confessions for you.

It sort of looks like a whole faction was complaining and you admitted to making billions off their woes to me, Hans.

And it also looks like you're glad the Goons were manipulating the system, because now you seem to think you're justified in ignoring your oppositions' complaints.

[sarcasm]Higher standards could not be had![/sarcasm]

It wasnt a bug.

Were BOB banned for POS bowling? Were NCdot, Raidendot, ev0ke and PL banned for using a feature "not as intended" (i.e. tracking titans to blap subcaps) to get access to tech? Were hisec pubbies banned for abusing neutral logistics? Were anyone banned for abusing the wardec mechanics by dogpiling on each and every public war?

I wouldn't be an exploit if you had done it either. This seems to be the point your tinfoil hat is hiding from you.

Heh. More insults. Weak.

So, since you claim the EULA was violated, can you point out where? Because all I've seen are legal game mechanics working as designed, and auxilliary tools which CCP have specifically allowed.

I'm actually going to talk to you like an adult here, so lets hope it works.

The difference between an exploit and an unintended and undesirable use of game mechanics is that an exploit allows you, through various methods, to break a rule of the game. I will use an example from another game: Alpha Centauri, a great game, had a bug where if you gave the keyboard command for an airdrop, it would only let you do one per turn (as intended). If you used the mouse command, you could do as many as you wanted. That's an exploit, despite you doing nothing really wrong (hell many people who only used the mouse were unaware this limit was supposed to be there).

On the other hand, a perfectly intended use of game mechanics - self-destructing missiles with a fusion or greater reactor - is incredibly overpowered and lets you wipe out stacks of units in a way that wasn't really thought though well. No part of it breaks the rules - it does damage to all surrounding units, just as intended - but it's really overpowered and something you patch out or make a house rule against.

The key reason this is not an exploit is no rules were broken. The system functioned exactly as it was supposed to. Manipulating the price of an item is and always has been allowed (and is commonly used for margin scamming, or convincing people to sell stuff at a reduced price or buy it at an inflated price). Blowing up your own stuff to collect the proceeds is and always has been allowed. The issue is that once you combine the two, you get a situation that breaks no rule, but is highly undesirable (the generation of LP at a very low isk cost). If the mechanism allowed you to generate LP for free, there would be an argument it's breaking a rule of the game. But it didn't: every LP point you got cost you a specific amount of isk.

Since this is undesirable, the devs will naturally patch it out. But because it was perfectly legitimate when done, it's clearly not something that people should be punished for. When it comes to confiscating the products of the scheme, I think it's clear that shouldn't be done as well - it would be an unfair punishment - unless the amounts generated were so vast the health of the game demanded it. That's a factual question that we can disagree over, but from my understanding of the market this is not a gamebreaking amount. For the vast majority of the time when these five were dumping, implant prices weren't artificially low: they merely were at their historical average instead of the spiked post-inferno price. This is a lot of money for these involved - sadly, I am not one of them and must be content with my vast guidance system riches - but it's not an amount that will seriously affect markets or devalue LP.

And now it has turned into CCP vs Sandbox.

Whats with the stupid bank analogy you all need to share? Can't you use your own special snowflake one or can you not think of your own?...

Their ships were being blown up by characters of the opposing faction. How does that scream exploit to you?

The only problem is, it's not a bug. The individual parts are working exactly as intended.

I thought Malkavians were liberated by such construct as respect of person and possession. Hell, don't you think you are the enemy half the time when you're a Malk?!?

Look let's look at this from the other angle OK?

99.44%* of Goon transactions purveying anything faction are scams.

Yet in this "exploit" the customers got real merchandise every single time.

And they gladly gave their money for the items, because they were quite affordable.

A large amount of ISK was also destroyed.

What's the problem here, again?








[edit: * That might be the percentage of pure soap in Ivory, I'm not sure.]

Look let's look at this from the other angle OK?

99.44%* of Goon transactions purveying anything faction are scams.

Yet in this "exploit" the customers got real merchandise every single time.

And they gladly gave their money for the items, because they were quite affordable.

A large amount of ISK was also destroyed.

What's the problem here, again?

Your comparison is flawed. The "Jewbal" built the economic equivalent of a warp drive with the economic equivalent of tinker toys.

That's why everybody's so mad.

Economic warp fields shouldn't be possible with Viking-made formulae. Icelandic Calculus is champion.

Depends on the devs. I've heard exactly what you described (well, close) happened in EQ 2 or something, and SOE flipped out and banned. On the other hand, I've heard something like it happened in LOTR Online and the devs there went "yep, our fault" and simply fixed it and moved on.

I know what you're trying to say, mostly because you've said it again and again, but...your example sucks, because if you "bork the structural calculations" then individual parts were not, in fact, working as intended.

CCP has now gone and nuked a ton of assets on our accounts. Meaning, we are losing wealth we had previous to this. Wow. But the message is clear. If you want to abuse something, you do not report it. As someone who tried to work with CCP, my advice to anyone in the future is. Don't.

I want you to tell me who, exactly, was abused here. Who didn't have the same opportunity to leverage advertised mechanics?

To be abuse it has to be an unfair advantage. The mechanic was advertised.

The system was designed to do what it did. When applied, the system worked as predicted by its design parameters.

This was no exploit.

I can't stress this enough: This only worked because the "Jewbal" developed a model based explicitly on CCP's design parameters precisely as stated in various press releases.

This was not taking advantage of a vulnerability or exposure, though. It was just maths and nothing broke.

Bad design is not vulnerability. It's just bad design.

By poor design, not by exploitation.

I actually agree with you to a certain degree, and think what these guys did is impressive and could really only be done effectively with massive amounts of collateral, however, the fact is they exploited a known vulnerability in a system and should get punished.

I personally think that removing any assets and ISK the made from this venture, leaving the offenders out of pocket the amount that they investeted is enough of a punishment. But they did exploit the system, and CCP's own rules state that anyone exploiting the system will be subject to potential bans.

it means either ccp didn't know [and goons lie] and didn't test it enough, or ccp did know [ccp lies] and didn't care. but hey we're going around in circles beating a dead horse, again. all we can really do is wait for monday's ccp dev blog/post on here/smoke signal/telegram

Those LP cost literally dozens of ISK per unit. That is far from free.

When there is a cost incurred, how is a player to inherently know it's out of whack?

What other store doesn't honor their price labels?

How's this for buzz?

I would not, I actually applaud at their genius.

But the game companies usually don't like this kind of genius played on their products, so - regardless of me or you liking it or not, they go very heavy handed.

Point in case, in WAR in the last months there have been:

- Mass people banning because they discovered they could get an health buff thru a pet by going in certain zones. Developers used a flawed formula... rings you something similar?

- Mass people perma banning with no recourse allowed because they discovered they could increase their stats a lot by clicking on certain NPCs, which applied a formula that could be gamed.