Is this all happening because theres no internal testing in rare team? How Is possible that peoples can hourglass with burning Blade and how Is possible that theres no crosstamps so you have to vpn the game to get different enemies?
Cheaters and Exploits
I'll just throw my guess out there as an outsider
In an effort to save costs to keep their free update business model and general financial design of the product they offer people rewards to help them help us all.
This leads to some pretty inconsistent situations where a lot slips through and some is being found and held for the purpose of exploiting rather than helping.
It's why I give them time at the beginning of a season before I get more critical. I think the business model for sot has allowed a lot of people a very enjoyable/affordable and high qol adventure experience (especially the last couple of years).
I think they do what they can with the situation they are in and it leads to a game that is buggy but also a game that is very accessible to a lot of people. Creating more pros than cons for a lot of people.
Could it be less buggy and exploit filled? yes and it could be a lot more expensive which would get to a point where it prices people out of adventure here, that's worse than bugs and people's exploits. I'd rather the game be a hot mess sometimes than people losing access to the experience because of cost.
Getting too expensive is also a real threat to the game existing in general. Lots of successful business gets in trouble by spending too much and it just becomes too big and too expensive to be sustainable.
Just my guess/opinion.
@wolfmanbush said in Cheaters and Exploits:
In an effort to save costs to keep their free update business model and general financial design of the product they offer people rewards to help them help us all.
This leads to some pretty inconsistent situations where a lot slips through and some is being found and held for the purpose of exploiting rather than helping.
My italics btw. As I understand it the BB exploit was similar to supply duplicates. Why wasn't that specifically checked? Or was it and insiders just didn't report it.
Anyway, my TinFoil Tricorn thoughts about it.
@th3-tater said in Cheaters and Exploits:
@wolfmanbush said in Cheaters and Exploits:
In an effort to save costs to keep their free update business model and general financial design of the product they offer people rewards to help them help us all.
This leads to some pretty inconsistent situations where a lot slips through and some is being found and held for the purpose of exploiting rather than helping.
My italics btw. As I understand it the BB exploit was similar to supply duplicates. Why wasn't that specifically checked? Or was it and insiders just didn't report it.
Anyway, my TinFoil Tricorn thoughts about it.
I believe the word from the top is usually something like "until it reaches everyone it's tough to be prepared for everything"
Which I 100% believe and understand. It's a complex and complicated situation. It's really just a try to do the best we can situation, with the resources available.
Doesn't mean the system can't be improved but in my experience many gamers are overly critical to the point of not really being reasonable in the situation. (this is my first live service game). Also inconsistent and move the goal posts all the time.
I can think of all kinds of times in SoT where the goal posts were moved by feedback areas, where people were given what they wanted and still were overly critical, where they do things like make demands about cheating and then they openly cheat on the pve side. They claim it's so easy to get banned and then act like duping isn't bannable. It's impossible to make some people happy in a situation. "Rare isn't doing enough" Rare is doing too much" and then when they get some attention they act nice for a day and go right back to giving people a tough time. Not really how adults should conduct themselves, imo. It's certainly not productive.
Too much entitlement imo, being harsh all day about a video game is too normalized imo. We can all do our part in one way or another, even if it's just being fair about situations.
I understand how they missed the BB-exploit so you could get millions within minutes since it was extremely specific what you had to do, I do think they should've done something way earlier though once it was discovered.
Same with BB being in hourglass, the people that knows how to exploit it, will do it and are doing it as I'm typing this since Rare sadly tends to be quite slow on fixing crazy exploits.
If I could have it my way, once crazy exploits gets discovered, they NEED to address it right the way and not wait over a week to fix it so more and more people learn how to use it. Once the BB-puzzle exploit got known, it was almost a 50/50 to see it on every server you were on and at that point it's gotten way too far
Given how relatively small Rare are by AAA standards, I think they're doing their best. When you look at the games industry at the moment, and particularly how brutal Microsoft can be, I'm just happy Rare are still going and doing a decent job of updating and supporting this game we love.
They do seem very stretched though, and are missing some obvious things (such as yesterday's Daily Deed initially referencing Umbra being at Lagoon of Whispers, and the changed Deed not working). I have no doubt they are talented folk and doing their best, but they are lacking resources and I think we need to be a bit understanding about that.
With regards to the Rituals exploits, yes, it dragged on longer than we'd have hoped because Rare don't work weekends typically. The Thursday updates are not ideal in this regard. I would rather seem them delay updates to the following Tuesday, so they can test a bit more and react faster to issues that arise.
But it may be pressure from Microsoft to cut costs and make more money that's at the heart of the issues. We're all paying the ABK tax now.
This is what happens when you tie your software development cycles to a Season Pass. The date dictates when you ship... not readiness of the software or anything having to do with quality metrics.
We have begun removing unfairly earned gold and rep from players who profited from Burning Blade Ritual farming exploits, breaking our Code of Conduct and unbalancing the in-game economy.
Players who stole from ships with a disproportionate Ritual value may also be impacted.For a short and sweet message this communication from Rare did a lot right, imo.
Made it clear that it was a harmful action that is a violation of the code of conduct.
Removing the unintended reward is a win for the game.
People selling loot that was created from wide spread and extreme exploiting (when it was clearly marked) also possibly losing that gold is also very good for accountability and for the game.
Action to support accountability, a good day for SoT.
Sets a good precedent moving forward.
@wolfmanbush I do have to wonder if they are reverting any purchased items as well. If you exploited 10M gold and then bought a bunch of captain ships, clothing, etc... there's a good chance that they will only remove the remaining gold and not the items.
It would be funny if they removed the original amount though, resulting in negative value purses for some pirates.
@d3adst1ck said in Cheaters and Exploits:
@wolfmanbush I do have to wonder if they are reverting any purchased items as well. If you exploited 10M gold and then bought a bunch of captain ships, clothing, etc... there's a good chance that they will only remove the remaining gold and not the items.
It would be funny if they removed the original amount though, resulting in negative value purses for some pirates.
https://youtu.be/4Ftel7aUysk?t=176
very very strong messaging here on the exploits. (3 minutes in)
Rollbacks and strong messaging was all I asked for and they delivered so I'm good with how they ended up addressing it.
Good messaging on the forums/feedback areas and very good job in that video, imo.
I think they will rebuild a lot of confidence with this. I'm happy to see how clear they made it for people. Now we can move forward, all on the same page.
While I am against exploiting bugs etc. I find the wording Rare and some people use very bizarre here.
'Millions/Billions of gold have come in the SOT economy' is a bit far fetched IMO. There isn't a real economy if there isn't guild player trading and auction traders like in MMO games like Elder Scrolls Online where having lots of illegal money can upset the whole market and touch all other players their funds and spending power indirectly. In SOT you just buy from NPC's with endless supplies of items that don't have gameplay altering abilities. So calling this 'upsetting the game economy' is a bit far fetched imo.
@licenturion said in Cheaters and Exploits:
While I am against exploiting bugs etc. I find the wording Rare and some people use very bizarre here.
'Millions/Billions of gold have come in the SOT economy' is a bit far fetched IMO. There isn't a real economy if there isn't guild player trading and auction traders like in MMO games like Elder Scrolls Online where having lots of illegal money can upset the whole market and touch all other players their funds and spending power indirectly. In SOT you just buy from NPC's with endless supplies of items that don't have gameplay altering abilities. So calling this 'upsetting the game economy' is a bit far fetched imo.
The economy is participation.
People cheating for very significant amounts of gold brings down their participation in content in a way that is intended.
All SoT content only works as it is designed if people play it in some organic form.
It is fair to say that this game is very inconsistent with risk/reward. It's very full of cheesing. That is still different than cheating to bring in unintended reward.
People were cheating for hundreds of millions, those boats existed. That's getting rid of a pirate lifetime of participation. They aren't gonna grind for gold or comms if they cheated for them.
One of the most nonsensical takes in sot history is that a lot of people think cheating in pve has no negative effect on others. It has massive negative effect on others that play legit and organically.
The reason that alliance servers get away with it is because it's the design of the feature. Not a good design but it's intended. Generally a terrible design for a risk/reward game with mass cheesing but they really like that pirates are around each other in the game. All the screenshots and social media engagement stuff.
tldr: fair to criticize the inconsistency, inaccurate to suggest that there isn't an economy.
@licenturion said in Cheaters and Exploits:
While I am against exploiting bugs etc. I find the wording Rare and some people use very bizarre here.
'Millions/Billions of gold have come in the SOT economy' is a bit far fetched IMO. There isn't a real economy if there isn't guild player trading and auction traders like in MMO games like Elder Scrolls Online where having lots of illegal money can upset the whole market and touch all other players their funds and spending power indirectly. In SOT you just buy from NPC's with endless supplies of items that don't have gameplay altering abilities. So calling this 'upsetting the game economy' is a bit far fetched imo.
It did have an effect on the monthly emissary awards though. I hope they'll take a look at that as well and give rewards based on the new values. Even if those 20k people were not all Reapers (as it also includes crews that sold the sword of an exploiter), that's a lot of people who got cheated out of their reward.
@wolfmanbush said in Cheaters and Exploits:
@licenturion said in Cheaters and Exploits:
While I am against exploiting bugs etc. I find the wording Rare and some people use very bizarre here.
'Millions/Billions of gold have come in the SOT economy' is a bit far fetched IMO. There isn't a real economy if there isn't guild player trading and auction traders like in MMO games like Elder Scrolls Online where having lots of illegal money can upset the whole market and touch all other players their funds and spending power indirectly. In SOT you just buy from NPC's with endless supplies of items that don't have gameplay altering abilities. So calling this 'upsetting the game economy' is a bit far fetched imo.
The economy is participation.
People cheating for very significant amounts of gold brings down their participation in content in a way that is intended.
All SoT content only works as it is designed if people play it in some organic form.
It is fair to say that this game is very inconsistent with risk/reward. It's very full of cheesing. That is still different than cheating to bring in unintended reward.
People were cheating for hundreds of millions, those boats existed. That's getting rid of a pirate lifetime of participation. They aren't gonna grind for gold or comms if they cheated for them.
One of the most nonsensical takes in sot history is that a lot of people think cheating in pve has no negative effect on others. It has massive negative effect on others that play legit and organically.
The reason that alliance servers get away with it is because it's the design of the feature. Not a good design but it's intended. Generally a terrible design for a risk/reward game with mass cheesing but they really like that pirates are around each other in the game. All the screenshots and social media engagement stuff.
tldr: fair to criticize the inconsistency, inaccurate to suggest that there isn't an economy.
Good point if you look at it like that.
I am probably just a bizarre player when it comes to this game. :D I am PL for years but have millions of (legit) gold but I never buy anything in game or don't care about commendations etc. I bought one cool ship set in the shop once ages ago and all the other earnable cosmetics look worse so I haven't bothered with them since. Same for my outfit.
I usually just play to chill, love stuff like Monkey Island and POTC stuff and usually try some of the new seasonal features.
As a developer, I don't understand why nothing is being done about it. Somehow people are managing to:
- get more than 2 players on a sloop
- get a sloop faster than a galleon
- can board without using the stairs
- have a 100% hit rate with chainshots
- etc. etc.
If people were messing around with my game this way, I would not sleep until I stopped them from doing so.
12 out of 16
