By way of explanation we addressed the manipulation issue but haven't yet completed the investigation into the scope of the abuse. Once that happens I'm pretty sure some people are going to be a bit less smug about the money they made that one time when there was a bank error in their favor and then lost again when the bank fixed the glitch.

Asked whether the players have to deal with any consequences of the case said Peter, "Technically speaking, they were not doing anything that was forbidden. Thus, it is unclear what will be done. "

Peter says the players have simply taken advantage of cracks within the game, "and is actually very typical for EVE players. There are often amazing diagnosed guys playing the game. It is further submitted that it is respect for the creative songwriting here inside the house, "said Peter, in the end.

We voted that you may speak. So speak!

I'd like to know as to why are you so worried/upset over this issue ? Its not like its the end of the world and eve is going f2p with ship cash shop or something.

We voted that you may speak. So speak!

I'm getting the idea that this is being interpreted broadly as a statement that market manipulation is not allowed. And this position has some merit when looking at the news blurbs alone, but the issue that separates this from other market schemes is that it wasn't limited to profit from a market item directly. To be profitable it had to draw in a clearly unintended way from another mechanic which had an unfortunate reliance on the market.

freedom of speech (sandbox) does not include yelling fire in a movie theater is what I'm thinking.

Not that difficult of a concept unless you're the one wanting to yell fire just because you can.

In a sandbox game "Because I CAN" is a perfect justification to do something.

In a sandbox game "Because I CAN" is a perfect justification to do something.

In a sandbox game "Because I CAN" is a perfect justification to do something.

Case in point abusing any loophole that allows you to escape concord when you earned a concodonk is an exploit, and is treated as such.

Saying its not a fair comparison stupid, any exploitation of an unintended effect to upset balance and gain a gross advantage is against the EULA.

So your stance is market manipulation and social engineering, or just plain doing your homework and being better at the game than other people, is an exploit.

Good to know?

litmus test: if CCP did not intend it, it can be considered an exploit

dont compare regular market manipulation to the endless isk machine exploit goons found

People who have been pushing/testing the limit of this "sandbox" might have finally hit the wall with their little sandbox shovel and now the people who build the wooded walls are telling the kids that you can't take the sand over the said wooden line.

The logs, they show nothing



Thought thats what the 30 day ban was about?

There is that but there is a process of "investigation" and "asset freeze" before that. If anything, people will realize the borders now. Maybe they will get off with a slap on the wrist from ccp this time since they notified the devs at least.

litmus test: if CCP did not intend it, it can be considered an exploit

It's one thing to play in the sandbox.

It's another to let the kids run around and stab each other with scissors.

Someone is going to lose an eye eventually.

Hey tho; nice to know that if you find an exploit and massively get rich off it then ppl expose what you did you wont get in trouble. Really provides us with a reason to put in those bug reports huh?

blowing up your own assets for monetary gain has a precedent of not being an exploit, see self destructing ships for insurance profits a while back. and no, I don't have any direct monetary connection to FW.


they both entered the sand box of their own free will. whatever happens happens! deal with it!

Exploit is still an exploit, it only makes the punishment slightly lighter. Its only lighter because the culprits told devs themselves beforehand. Bans would be flying left and right if they didn't.

It wouldn't be such a massive exploit if people didn't look into loopholes on purpose because of boredom.
CCP didn't think it anyone could pull it off(you need large amount of coordination and isk tbh), but now they know that its possible(at least for goons, the people who play Loophole Online). Not surprising if they will now put "safeguards" in place so such easy "isk printing" can not be possible.

^Probably too busy filing and escalating petitions saying "i wasn't aware of dis!1!!1!" and "unfreeze mah isk plz or i unsub my 10 accounts"

Meh... I've been here long enough to have an idea of what the CSM & CCP are going to do. What I want to know is what Sony is going to do. That's a little more difficult to predict since we don't really know the finals details on how much control can EVE Trillionaires will have over Dust players. Any theories?

Meh... I've been here long enough to have an idea of what the CSM & CCP are going to do. What I want to know is what Sony is going to do. That's a little more difficult to predict since we don't really know the finals details on how much control can EVE Trillionaires will have over Dust players. Any theories?

What are the CSM and CCP trying to do then?

Probably use hollow shells filled with isk instead of dangerous materials for orbital strikes, if things get bad enough(on the oh so cold and harsh "grief") side then we'll have npc bots firin' off orbital strikes when dust guys command them to.

Probably use hollow shells filled with isk instead of dangerous materials for orbital strikes, if things get bad enough(on the oh so cold and harsh "grief") side then we'll have npc bots firin' off orbital strikes when dust guys command them to.

Coming up with a masterplan of not pissing off too many and pleasing as many as they can ofcourse!



probably will fail though.......gosh,why am i so bitter these days.

B-b-bots???

Agreed again. The same ole Generic Marriage Counselor procedure... ignore who is right, ignore who is wrong, declare a theoretical happy medium, ?????, profit.

Coming up with a masterplan of not pissing off too many and pleasing as many as they can ofcourse!



probably will fail though.......gosh,why am i so bitter these days.

Im on the fence with this one, ill just watch and see how it plays out.


On topic.... lol CSM speaking for us

Hm, with a big Mission Accomplished banner?

In a sense, i can almost see CCP writing a "big sorry, we didn't test it enough" letter and then mittens takes the heat off by rambling about something(and maybe even stating that he wanted to test the limit of the sandbox for the our greater good or something) irrelevant in the interview and ccp points to it to get some "this is a big sandbox" publicity to attract new, gullible potential players.

The next trailer will probably be about some large alliance manipulating market or something....."I was there and I profited, eve is real".

they still proceeded to do it knowing it was the lack of testing/listening on ccp's side.

Well it is well known that when you try to make everyone happy you fail. They should just throw their weight behind Goons, deal with the sub losses and go back to HTFU land

It would be hilarious however if they DID THAT and then Goons left.

CCP has every right to ban or reverse these transactions, ban the partcipants etc.. If the purpose was to test the game design, they could have done it on the test server. The purpose was obviously to gain an unfair advantage, to profit disproportionately from the design error.

I reckon, since CCP does so little listening and testing, it's serves them right.

I appreciate what they did, and will be looking for future opportunities to game the system now that I know the upside.

I really don't have any problem with this, but as was said in the OP, CCP stated that no rule was really broken here. If no rule was broken, and they acknowledge that something like this is typical of Eve players, why are the people involved having assets taken away?

All we really want is consistency.

Having GD scream at you, or all your assets being frozen for investigation?

CCP Screwed up on this one. The writing was on the wall about the mechanic becoming a potential exploit and CCP ignored it.

They ask for feedback.

They ask for bug reports.

They ignored us. They did it with the unified inventory as well.

CCP knows best, always. It continually bites them in the ass. However, now that someone has used one of their cockups to an advantage, they're probably going to take it out on the player instead of owning up to being the responsible ones. It's CCP, I don't see them admitting blame for their mistake. The Goon pilots who participated in this will most likely be the ones being punished when the developers who didn't catch this and the community team who didn't communicate this are the real people at fault.

If goons somehow leave, ccp will create npc goons. They will be a non playable pirate race that lives in null somewhere.....attacking everything on sight and trash talking in local, i don't know really. I can imagine that npc goons will be the thing that will attract a lot of high sec players to null though. I mean, how tempting will it be to shoot something with a name Goonium Marauder, right ?

Muah ado about nothing.

Folk used this mechanism to their advantage until CCP decided to change the mechanic.

No animals were hurt in the making of this drama.

End of story.

CCP removed 5 trillion isk from the accounts of players who did not break any rules or use any bugs. That isk initially came from other players, not NPCs, and it was taken with a method CCP said they were aware of when they first discussed the faction warfare changes that allowed the isk to be made. They were warned by the folks making the 5 trillion during the process. The money was made by using mass market manipulation to change the price of items, and CCP expressly condones market manipulation.

Taking this money punches EVE Online in the sandbox for about 5 trillion isk worth of damage. It's heavy handed, anti-sandbox, and given that the 5 trillion story will probably make the rounds of MMO press like the other EVE heists have, removing the isk will probably blow up in CCP's face.

CSM, where are you?

I'm a CSM and I am a CSM because I love the sandbox that is Eve.

Problem is no one can agree what the "sandbox" means.

For example, I feel the sandbox means unlimited free war allies.

I also don't believe the sandbox means unbalanced miner ganking.

As to the recent market shenanigans of the goons, they admitted they were doing something they knew was taking advantage of reverse engineering the game mechanic CCP had created to create a stable market and healthy economy to break the market and economy. The knowing intent to take advantage of a "hole" in how Eve works is very goon, also not consistent with the intention of the EULA. So clearly the goons were intending to break the sandbox. Very clever and very wrong.

So we all want a sandbox, but we still have to have some rules to agree what it means to be in that sandbox.

So for me I guess I call for CCP to define what they think this sandbox means because I can understand how many of us have no idea what "sandbox" means.

I'm going to ask for a dev blog to share what CCP thinks sandbox means.

Please remember, this is just me, I have not talked to the other CSM about this and I cannot comment on what they think about any of this.

Issler

The knowing intent to take advantage of a "hole" in how Eve works is very EVE.

CSM, where are you?

The last day or so has seen one of the most interesting things to happen in quite a while, with some of the broadest implications for EVE seen in many a year.

Firstly, CCP has stated that their predetermined "investigation" will result in the sandbox ethos being abandoned.Then we have CCP confirm that nothing wrong has been done, however they are still considering if the sandbox is dead.So not only do we have multiple public positions from CCP on this (if you include warnings in news items) we have heard NOTHING from the CSM.

So CCP:
- Have posted that they investigations are predetermined.
- Released news items warning players to not stress the game mechanics.
- Publicly confirmed that nothing wrong was done stressing game mechanics but they may act anyway.
- Assets have been seized despite CCP saying nothing wrong was done.
- Are messing with the very concept of the sandbox because they were publicly outplayed.

My question is, where is the CSM? Didn't we elect you to work for the players? What's their view? Do they support the sandbox or CCP's marketing department?

We voted that you may speak. So speak!

For all intents and purposes the Goon group that did this abused a system that they KNEW was broken or not working as intended. After they made 5 trillion someone leaked the information by accident, or did it on purpose to gloat about it to the devs. Only then did the Goons decide to write a post spitting in CCP's face gloating about how they abused said mechanic to make an absolute ridiculous amount of isk in a very short period of time.Now, CCP decides to step in and take assets (supposedly) from the players involved, and I assume anyone who the isk reached.

There are two problems that I suspect CCP had with this entire situation. The first is that the goons were raging **** tards about it, threw it in CCPs face, then heckled them in the thread many times over. When you **** in someone else's sandbox expect some fast repercussions. Secondly, this wasn't a "victimless crime". They abused a mechanic in game that gave huge advantages to one side in the faction warfare. The effectively nullified and disregarded any work that had been done in FW by people using the system as it was intended to be used.

A sandbox is something that the players usually dictate the goings on in the box. The devs of a sandbox try to have a hands off approach unless there is an egregious breach in what the players can do, and what the players should do. The goons crossed that line and then started to dance around like idiots cheering about it very loudly.

In my opinion the people involved in this are lucky they didn't get slapped with bans as well. Yes, this was a very clever exploit of a game mechanic, but it is still making the system do something that it wasn't intended to do.

If the goons had been even remotely humble about the situation I doubt CCP would have stepped in other than making sure this could not happen again. That being said, the goons are douches and had to throw it in CCP and the rest of the Eve communities face so they have to accept the consequences of their actions.

You also have to take into account that if this had been done by a non-nullsec power block alliance the people, and probably the entire corp/alliance, would have been punished far more severely than just having assets removed.


Edit: And goons, please stop having your god damn alts, pets, etc posting topics about this. You are just making matters worse for yourself. Accept the fact that what you did was wrong, and move along. I am sure you can find some other way to troll Eve again very soon.

I had already been attemping to speak to CCP for many days before this, we just hadn't synced up yet. We had been done since the day after the cashout or so. We cashed in a few more things at T4 to use up our liquid ISK, but for the most part, the T5 cash out was the endgame and we were done at that point.

CCP removed 5 trillion isk from the accounts of players who did not break any rules or use any bugs. That isk initially came from other players, not NPCs, and it was taken with a method CCP said they were aware of when they first discussed the faction warfare changes that allowed the isk to be made. They were warned by the folks making the 5 trillion during the process. The money was made by using mass market manipulation to change the price of items, and CCP expressly condones market manipulation.

Taking this money punches EVE Online in the sandbox for about 5 trillion isk worth of damage. It's heavy handed, anti-sandbox, and given that the 5 trillion story will probably make the rounds of MMO press like the other EVE heists have, removing the isk will probably blow up in CCP's face.

They're still waiting for the Mittani to tell them what they think, give them a while.

If it had not been the goons, would CCP have dealt with it differently?

Tieing back into your gankingn statement. No one has gotten ganking nerfed more than goons. 3-4 nerfs now depending on how you are keeping count.

CCP implemented something into the game without fully thinking about it. Again.

I'm a CSM and I am a CSM because I love the sandbox that is Eve.

Problem is no one can agree what the "sandbox" means...

...So we all want a sandbox, but we still have to have some rules to agree what it means to be in that sandbox.

So for me I guess I call for CCP to define what they think this sandbox means because I can understand how many of us have no idea what "sandbox" means.

I'm going to ask for a dev blog to share what CCP thinks sandbox means.

As to the recent market shenanigans of the goons, they admitted they were doing something they knew was taking advantage of reverse engineering the game mechanic CCP had created to create a stable market and healthy economy to break the market and economy. The knowing intent to take advantage of a "hole" in how Eve works is very goon, also not consistent with the intention of the EULA. So clearly the goons were intending to break the sandbox. Very clever and very wrong.