This is like when the Villain in the movie spends so much time broadcasting his success it leads to his downfall.

I don't really want to say just yet, but basically if you know you're using a system in a certain way in order to gain massive resources, whether you're taking advantage of a design flaw or not and whether we classify it as an exploit or not we're still well within our rights to fix the glitch. I'm not going to comment on what we do or don't do at this point because I don't prejudge the results of investigations.

the goon alliance panel at next years fanfest is going to be p. good i think

You're the greatest sociopath that has ever played eve.

OP admits that his alliance broke the EULA by exploiting.

Again.

And CCP lets them stay.

And its directly because you cant afford to ban them.

Absolutely disgusting.

Consider me unsubbed.

CCP's resident economist should be fired. Period. Done. Along with quite a few others at CCP.

After the CCP Community Censorship Protocol ("CCCP") was enacted, I obviously can't say exactly what I think of whom. (And, I don't mean of the Goons.)

Am I the only person wondering why CCP is interfearing with the market when this is apparently a SANDBOX

Sandbox means if its possible, without exploiting a bug, its legit. Very simple. Think GTA, if you are having trouble. EVE is basically multiplayer GTA in space.

This deserves emphasis.

See, that's the problem here. You played Ultima Online. Now we're talking 5 people and you are trying to encourage CCP to ban 4000+ accounts because of those 5? That's 60K smacks per month they'd lose. Good thing they don't listen to morons like you.

I very much doubt CCP want to send out the message that although this is a sandbox, market manipulation, because that was what this was, is only allowed to go as far as to make you a little bit of money, make a lot and you're 'exploiting' the system.

It was frantic because we felt others doing this was imminent. Leaks etc. It's one thing to have a very controlled profit taking with a handful of people It's quite another for EVE at large to figure things out and dogpile. One is healthy for the game, the other is not.

And, can anyone in the CFC think objectively about this? These 5 who did this didn't just get one over on all non-CFC people. They gained an advantage over everyone else in EvE. Unless you are getting a cut. I'm not space rich enough to think 5trillion isk is just a drop in the bucket.

Except its nothing like that?

The considerably different tone in these articles is amusing. Guess which of these authors does not like goons, and which either likes us or is ambivalent?

(hint the answer is that I'm pretty sure Brendan Drain was the guy who mittens ripped a new one over his sensationalist "reporting" of the fanfest fiasco)

The only people I've seen use the word abuse are goon haters and people supporting their argument. Checkmate, atheist.

Either way, CCP must act, else this game is rigged for eternity with so much wealth at the hands of so few.

It wasnt a bug.

Item's CCP calculated value rises due to market forces: Working as intended
LP is offered for faction warfare kills: Working as intended
LP is redeemed for items: Working as intended

ehlp

Its not an exploit til CCP declares it so, and you can't be punished for it if its not an exploit. After they declare it so(I would consider Sreegs' post a declaration that it is so) any further use of said exploit because punishable.

I don't know much about him, other than a bit of his history. I just didn't wanna look like an ******* by accusing him of going f***goons if he was still of relatively friendly terms

oooo.... I see a way to finally make use of the EAS.

truth, it's why i joined the game.

I also do not quite understand in general, what Goons do with their ISKs. We not know, how much money Goons really made out of FW shop manipulations. We do know exactly, they sit on a monopol of Tech. Surprisingly we do not see any of this ISK. Goons still fly the same crappy fleet set ups like a few months ago, while other alliances fly t3 and have still way more Supercapitals. Others also have of course ship reimbursement programs. In other words, the wealth does not reach the average Goon. Where is that money?

I know. I self destructed a few hundred iteron IIIs as a noob to make some easy isk to buy a mission domi with.

e: I was referring to manipulating the price of EAS if insurance gets linked to market price

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.

Crap. Falcon pilots, you are all gonna get banned.

So are all the titan pilots.

Oh, and every member of a tech holding alliance.

And anyone who takes part in large, alpha based fleets.

And anyone who collects a huge bounty, then kills himself with his alt to collect said bounty.

Lets not forget the people who get rich off of the things like this that happen *every single expansion*.

I'm sure I am missing a category, but if that rule read the way you think it does, then 75% of the player in this game would be banned, including you I would bet.

This has been the endgame since the launch of EVE. Market manipulation and speculation is what we do day to day. This isn't a new thing for me or others, this is regular gameplay. This one just combined a few different mechanics into one larger system. But if you aren't patch speculating on each new CCP addition to the game, then you are really missing out on a cool part of EVE.

That might make sense.

If it were not for the fact that punishing people who did nothing in a system that they are paying you to use will only drive away innocent, paying customers.

CCP not doing anything about something is one thing, them actively pushing a 9000 person group for the actions of 5 of them will just cause them to go out of business. After all, if that happens, what happens when someone joins your corp, and then violates the rules? Will you happily accept punishment for actions you did not know about, by someone you cannot control?

Or would you, like any sane person, say 'F this, I'm cancelling my account and CCP gets no more of my money?'

I suppose you could be referring to nullsec domination? Far beyond the scope of what I was talking about though.

Insurance had nothing to do with what we were doing, you know.

Delete created isk that wasn't created using exploits that arent actually exploits

Duh

How can you delete that which hasn't been created?

No isk was created, no isk can thus be deleted.

In fact, isk has already been deleted, last I heard to the tune of 500b or thereabouts.

But they have not actually GOTTEN any isk yet. Only items that will be sold for ~5 trillion over the next few months.

Insurance fraud and pax amarria refinery was also "game mechanics" which could be (and was) used to create resources out of thin air.

It already has been, and that caused the insurance nerf.

New to EVE are we?

Provide proof.

Those instances are proof that very similar situations in the past were dealt with by changing the mechanic in question, with no repercussions to the people using them to profit. Precedent is set with them. Where is your proof that those cases are wrong?