Singulis Pacifica
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
27
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Posted - 2012.06.22 09:17:00 -
[1] - Quote
Vincent VanDamme wrote:So, a bug was abused?
This is a no brainer, isn't it?
Actually, it's not that simple. If this case would ever be brought to a real-life court, the Goons would likely go free. The problem is that there is no decisive evidence to support that the Goons did do this on purpose.
"Whaaa? They admitted doing this! There's your evidence, dude"
Precisely. It's the Goons admitting the scheme, which holds no value whatsover. They are of the same value as the ramblings of a madman. It can not be proven whether the Goons were deliberately abusing a system or they merely discovered this by accident and thought it was just working as CCP intended. In real-life court, the Goons would use the latter as a valid means of defense and would get away with it.
The key here is to realize this is not a real-life court. CCP has to act, but needs time to fully investigate what has happened. It is very likely that CCP was not even aware of this during their internal testing. That is because of one thing and one thing only:
The Goons know this game better than the CCP developers do.
Bottom-line is that the Goons gather around and wonder how to abuse and manipulate the system. That is the sole-purpose of their meetings. CCP does not have these. They don't have a group of hackers ready to do internal testing on how to abuse a system CCP designed. They release it to the live-servers and the Goons are the ones testing it.
Without the Goons, this would not have been discovered for a while. And clever players would have found out eventually, by accident or on purpose. Regardless, it would likely be abused over a longer period of time as the Goons are honest enough to publicize their findings in a relatively short time-frame (within a month upon release on the live servers).
Should the Goons be punished? Ban their accounts? Possibly. CCP has the right and ability to do whatever she deems fit. They can ban the Goon players admitting that they did this, or the entire corp. Perhaps even the entire alliance. Problem is that there is no right-way of dealing with it. If they ban players or a corp/alliance, they no longer hold on to the concept of the sandbox: give players the freedom to develop themselves. If they won't take action at all, other players will be disheartened knowing that "crime pays off". An example of this attitude is given by this post:
Wille Sanara wrote:So...exploiting a game mechanic that is obviously not working as intended is a bug, right? So we are going to see banhammer strike, right, CCP?
I really wouldn't want to be in CCP's shoes right now. They were beaten in a game that they created, outsmarted by its players.
CCP, if you do decide on actions against the Goons, may I suggest keeping this only to a small core group of developers? The more CCP employees know about actions against the Goons, the more likely the chance they will be tipped off giving them ample time to prepare for the upcoming ban or any other action you may take. As I said before, Goons will outsmart you and they will find a way to get around your ban or roll-back, or whatever you come up with. The only true way to punish them is a shift, sudden action with no time to prepare.
It will be interesting to see what the outcome is of this.
Oh and as personal opinion, I highly favor a ban of all Goons for a month. Determine whose accounts are from Goons players and ban all of them without any warning given. Give out the message that this was one abuse too many.
but... I'm realist enough to know CCP will likely not do such action and I won't be disheartened if CCP doesn't do anything at all. CCP knows the Goonswarm will always be one step ahead of them like true hackers trying to enter a protected system. |