The punishment is a deterrent so that next time something exploitable pops up, people won't go spamming runs through it to gather tons of ill-gotten rewards. You think it's free and fast to go through everything and return stuff? Should people be allowed to steal whatever from stores as long as they return it in good condition?
I didn't come down on one side or the other, I asked a question to hear peoples opinions. And to be fair, regardless of what traits a bug manifests, in this case an exploitable one, the engineers will always have to weed through the effects and rectify them. Even if they were not caused by the players. I do agree that it's unfair to add more work for them though, yes.
TBH I thought the "B" was dumb as well, but you can't do whatever and be surprised at other people's reactions to you trying to essentially rip them off. IDK how saying "but I knew you'd catch me" is supposed to be a viable defense.
I wouldn't call it a defense. I'm just saying no one was going to keep anything. I don't think there was ever any doubt about that. And I wasn't surprised at the community response at all, just wanted to offer an idea for discussion. That's all. Thank you.
The problem with these posts is people that exploit and cheat always post on here trying to justify their actions and hopefully have people tell them they did nothing wrong. Bottom line is these people cheated, period.
I disagree, but I respect your opinion. I have no interest in someone deciding if I'm right or wrong. Just wanted to see a discussion on the topic. Thank you.
All I am saying is there is not much of a discussion to be had. In one sense or another, you are looking for some type of support for your justification. People that exploit and cheat know better. They know it is wrong and not intended by the game, but they take advantage anyway. There are consequences. Whether or not you know you will be caught so who cares is a flaw in reasoning. Yes, Kabam is partly at fault for allowing it to happen, but that does not give freedom for people to take advantage.
No, I am not looking for any justification whatsoever. What good would that do? What's done is done. As I said already, I'm not interested in someone deciding if my personal actions were moral or not. That's for me to decide. I just wanted to get some more opinions on the extent to which the exploit would ever really have affected the contest. You keep bringing up the idea that getting caught is irrelevant, but in this case I don't think it is. I agree that cheating for an ultimate personal gain is immoral, but if you know there will be no ultimate gain because the gains will be reversed than I I'm not sure how the exploit morally affects the contest(with the exception of the possible brief boost in AQ/AW which another member pointed out and I agree with to some extent). This was the general topic of the discussion. If you feel there isn't a discussion to be had then feel free to exit the discussion. Thank you.
Show of hands: if you're running through maps just to get closer to completion, how many of you just click through the rewards part until the final run, and even then who just clicks through that? I have no idea if I got any extra rewards or if I even ran into the exploit, though I completed heroic a while ago and have not gotten anything in last 2 master chapters. I would hope their judgment would allow a 100% run and no more for those that did it.
My personal opinion is that profiting from playing the game as intended and receiving larger than usual rewards is not cheating. Nothing was hacked. Nothing was done out of the ordinary except running the lines. We do that on a regular basis for completion points. You run the shortest lines. Again, just my opinion. You all are certainly entitled to yours. I just have more time now to comment. LOL
I agree with you. They should have treated it like any other bug. "Sorry it happened we will work on fixing it."
This was treated completely differently than a bug that makes us spend resources. First it was fixed, second it was fixed quickly and third the consequences of the bug were reversed.
Show of hands: if you're running through maps just to get closer to completion, how many of you just click through the rewards part until the final run, and even then who just clicks through that? I have no idea if I got any extra rewards or if I even ran into the exploit, though I completed heroic a while ago and have not gotten anything in last 2 master chapters. I would hope their judgment would allow a 100% run and no more for those that did it.
Not sure how effective a show of hands would be on an Internet forum...
Let me start by saying yes, I did recieve punishment for using the exploit. No, I am not upset at all. I am starting this discussion because I am curious to get the communities opinions on this line of thinking.
To clarify, I NEVER ran a single line more than once. I simply completed and explored difficulties as usual. I DID use multiple energy refills to to accomplish this faster. Clearly Kabam took more into account than just "running the same line 100+ times" when deciding on who was an offender. Again, I am not complaining.
The thought that I'd like to see discuses is the idea of "unfairly exploiting this bug". I chose to utilize the exploit under the assumption that there was absolutely ZERO chance that anyone who reaped benefits would get to keep their rewards. This type of thing has happened in the past and rewards were reversed. That being said, I fully expected not to keep any of the rewards I gained and collecting the extra shards and opening all the crystals was, for me, just a fun day of seeing what it felt like to open dozens of high value crystals. Again, I was under no illusions about keeping the rewards. As we've seen in the past Kabam clearly has certain checks and balances in place to flag unusual activity in the game such as exorbitant rewards being given or mods and cheats. So my question is this; if we know that Kabam has checks and balances in place to alert them to activities such as these and we know through previous experience that they will unquestionably take back all the rewards then how was this exploit ever going to cause any long term imbalance or unfair advancement in the game? And if it was never going to result in any real unfair advancement or imbalance then what is the moral judgment about using the exploit based on? Anything anyone gained whith any exploit is always inevitably going to be reveresed so why is there a need for excess punishment? I realize that some small short term personal gain may be attained by using exploit rewards to complete content or temporarily strengthen AW/AQ teams, but as we've seen, most if not all of this can be reversed. It seems like there is an argument to be made that these types of exploits are not as deeply harmful as Kabam makes them out to be. Pleas politely and respectfully weigh in. I think there is an interesting discussion to be had here.
And PLEASE AVOID USING THE "B" WORD SO THIS DISCUSSION DOESN'T GET CLOSED!
Thanks
I think the ban is kinda unfair. The fault lies on Kabam, I didn't get banned and I didn't exploit it at all but to be honest, there was a good chance I could've gotten caught up in it on accident. I tend to do a pass in normal 1st and then do Heroic and Master levels. This time I just didn't do it, if I would've then I would've got the extra rewards but not because I was trying exploit the system only because it's my normal routine. Sometimes I do 1 pass of beginner then normal and then go for 100% in the other 2. With that said it be easy to tell the exploiters if they were running over and over and over again I guess it makes sense but if it was someone like me just doing the normal playing style doesn't make a lot of sense for something thats not my mistake.
Let me start by saying I was not get a 7 day vacation nor did I take advantage of this bug. But I think 7 day vacations are insane for this. This same exact situation happened in the past and all they did was remove the 5*'s from people's rosters. They even let people keep the 20+ 4*'s they got...and this was when 4*s were somewhat rare and had a LOT more value than now. Yet people take advantage of the same bug a year later to get (in most occasions) worse rewards and get sent on vacation for an entire week? Absurd.
No doubt it was exploiting a bug, but people exploit bugs all the time in this game, and have in the past:
-People took advantage of LoL when it first came out and was easy to get through with SW, and were able to stay in there despite it being shut down for the rest of the game.
-People took advantage of being able to keep scoring points in Arenas after they were closed by hitting the "back" button.
-People took advantage of that crystal that would auto-respin every time you duped a lvl 99 champ to get LOTS of 4*'s back when they were super rare.
-People took advantage of the huge extra health/attack boost bug that happened after an update in order to beat difficult content.
-People took advantage of Unstoppable causing LoL opponents to freeze completely.
-People took advantage of fighting Magik when her limbo triggering twice caused her instant death.
-People took advantage of UC in LoL when his unstoppable wasn't working.
I'm sure there are tons more I am forgetting. However, NONE OF THEM WERE SENT ON VACATION for doing so. There is a heavy and strong precedent for not taking any action when exploiting a bug that is the sole fault of Kabam. In most instances they were even able to keep the majority (if not all) the rewards from doing so. To go out and issue 7 day vacations after basically turning a blind eye (if not tacitly saying it's ok) for 2 years is absurd.
The punishment is a deterrent so that next time something exploitable pops up, people won't go spamming runs through it to gather tons of ill-gotten rewards. You think it's free and fast to go through everything and return stuff? Should people be allowed to steal whatever from stores as long as they return it in good condition?
I didn't come down on one side or the other, I asked a question to hear peoples opinions. And to be fair, regardless of what traits a bug manifests, in this case an exploitable one, the engineers will always have to weed through the effects and rectify them. Even if they were not caused by the players. I do agree that it's unfair to add more work for them though, yes.
TBH I thought the "B" was dumb as well, but you can't do whatever and be surprised at other people's reactions to you trying to essentially rip them off. IDK how saying "but I knew you'd catch me" is supposed to be a viable defense.
I wouldn't call it a defense. I'm just saying no one was going to keep anything. I don't think there was ever any doubt about that. And I wasn't surprised at the community response at all, just wanted to offer an idea for discussion. That's all. Thank you.
The problem with these posts is people that exploit and cheat always post on here trying to justify their actions and hopefully have people tell them they did nothing wrong. Bottom line is these people cheated, period.
I disagree, but I respect your opinion. I have no interest in someone deciding if I'm right or wrong. Just wanted to see a discussion on the topic. Thank you.
All I am saying is there is not much of a discussion to be had. In one sense or another, you are looking for some type of support for your justification. People that exploit and cheat know better. They know it is wrong and not intended by the game, but they take advantage anyway. There are consequences. Whether or not you know you will be caught so who cares is a flaw in reasoning. Yes, Kabam is partly at fault for allowing it to happen, but that does not give freedom for people to take advantage.
No, I am not looking for any justification whatsoever. What good would that do? What's done is done. As I said already, I'm not interested in someone deciding if my personal actions were moral or not. That's for me to decide. I just wanted to get some more opinions on the extent to which the exploit would ever really have affected the contest. You keep bringing up the idea that getting caught is irrelevant, but in this case I don't think it is. I agree that cheating for an ultimate personal gain is immoral, but if you know there will be no ultimate gain because the gains will be reversed than I I'm not sure how the exploit morally affects the contest(with the exception of the possible brief boost in AQ/AW which another member pointed out and I agree with to some extent). This was the general topic of the discussion. If you feel there isn't a discussion to be had then feel free to exit the discussion. Thank you.
This is an odd line of discussion, but I'm game. It seems there are two separate issues you raise, although you expressed them as a single issue. The first is a question of how serious the effects of the exploit are if the net effects are going to be reversed upon detection. But to me that's a strange question. The rewards earned from the exploit *if kept* would be highly unbalancing, so the game devs must do everything possible to make sure that a) the rewards are not kept, and b) they apply the strongest reasonable deterrent to prevent people from doing things like this.
I get the impression you're trying to make the argument that since the rewards are going to be reversed, the exploit ultimately isn't damaging in actual fact, and thus the use of the exploit doesn't have long term consequences, because the effects don't last. And that the use of the exploit shouldn't be viewed as players doing something with long term consequences, but rather the players doing something that only has short term inconveniences.
I wouldn't grant that, because we never treat misconduct based on the ability for someone else to remedy the effects. We always judge misconduct by the damage the person does, even if that damage is repairable. But just for the sake of discussion lets say I allow that idea for a moment. The thing is, it doesn't change anything.
We treat exploits and the use of exploits based on their potential damage, not their ultimate damage. Game operators punish players for using exploits not just because they did a bad thing, but equally so to prevent them from doing them in the future. The strength of the deterrent isn't based on the net damage after they are rolled back, they are based on the net damage before roll back. These roll backs are costly in various ways, and they can impact other players beyond those that used the exploit. Those costs have to be factored into the overall severity of the conduct.
Which gets to the other, secondary hidden issue. There is a presumption that when rewards are gained, they can always be reversed painlessly. But that's not true in two ways. First, we don't know with certainty that every single person who benefited from the exploit had those rewards removed. No process is perfect. And even if it is perfect in this case, there's no guarantee that it will be perfect in every case. The presumption that whenever this kind of thing happens the rewards will always be reversed perfectly isn't a safe one. Second, there's no guarantee that when the reversals take place they also leave all other players unaffected. I've seen exploits of this magnitude happen in other games where the results were so widespread and so vast that the only way to reverse them was to perform a rollback of the entire game. That would have enormous impact on all other players.
We can't simply operate on the simplistic belief that it is okay to use an exploit because the devs will fix it anyway, and more importantly the devs can't give that impression. We don't actually know if the exploits can always be reversed perfectly and we don't actually know if addressing the exploits won't harm other players. Because we can't make that assumption, we cannot judge the severity of an exploit based on a random guess that there will ultimately be no longer term effect. And neither can the operators of the game.
In another post you asked what's the worst that could happen. The worst that could happen is people keep looking for and leveraging every possible exploit because they know there is no downside and a potential upside, the playerbase as a whole comes to believe the game operator doesn't care about exploits enough to do something about it, and they do what every playerbase has done when that situation has come up: abandon the game. Failing to come down hard on people who cheat or exploit the game has always ultimately destroyed games' ability to retain players, pretty much every time it happens. It isn't even a question of whether the game operator is doing everything possible or not. It is about whether the playerbase believes the game operator considers it a priority.
Let me start by saying yes, I did recieve punishment for using the exploit. No, I am not upset at all. I am starting this discussion because I am curious to get the communities opinions on this line of thinking.
To clarify, I NEVER ran a single line more than once. I simply completed and explored difficulties as usual. I DID use multiple energy refills to to accomplish this faster. Clearly Kabam took more into account than just "running the same line 100+ times" when deciding on who was an offender. Again, I am not complaining.
The thought that I'd like to see discuses is the idea of "unfairly exploiting this bug". I chose to utilize the exploit under the assumption that there was absolutely ZERO chance that anyone who reaped benefits would get to keep their rewards. This type of thing has happened in the past and rewards were reversed. That being said, I fully expected not to keep any of the rewards I gained and collecting the extra shards and opening all the crystals was, for me, just a fun day of seeing what it felt like to open dozens of high value crystals. Again, I was under no illusions about keeping the rewards. As we've seen in the past Kabam clearly has certain checks and balances in place to flag unusual activity in the game such as exorbitant rewards being given or mods and cheats. So my question is this; if we know that Kabam has checks and balances in place to alert them to activities such as these and we know through previous experience that they will unquestionably take back all the rewards then how was this exploit ever going to cause any long term imbalance or unfair advancement in the game? And if it was never going to result in any real unfair advancement or imbalance then what is the moral judgment about using the exploit based on? Anything anyone gained whith any exploit is always inevitably going to be reveresed so why is there a need for excess punishment? I realize that some small short term personal gain may be attained by using exploit rewards to complete content or temporarily strengthen AW/AQ teams, but as we've seen, most if not all of this can be reversed. It seems like there is an argument to be made that these types of exploits are not as deeply harmful as Kabam makes them out to be. Pleas politely and respectfully weigh in. I think there is an interesting discussion to be had here.
And PLEASE AVOID USING THE "B" WORD SO THIS DISCUSSION DOESN'T GET CLOSED!
Thanks
I think the ban is kinda unfair. The fault lies on Kabam, I didn't get banned and I didn't exploit it at all but to be honest, there was a good chance I could've gotten caught up in it on accident. I tend to do a pass in normal 1st and then do Heroic and Master levels. This time I just didn't do it, if I would've then I would've got the extra rewards but not because I was trying exploit the system only because it's my normal routine. Sometimes I do 1 pass of beginner then normal and then go for 100% in the other 2. With that said it be easy to tell the exploiters if they were running over and over and over again I guess it makes sense but if it was someone like me just doing the normal playing style doesn't make a lot of sense for something thats not my mistake.
I appreciate you're weighing in with your thoughts, but could you please replace the references to the "B" with something else so this discussion doesn't get closed. I know it's silly, but Kabam will take any excuse to close a thread. Thanks.
This is an odd line of discussion, but I'm game. It seems there are two separate issues you raise, although you expressed them as a single issue. The first is a question of how serious the effects of the exploit are if the net effects are going to be reversed upon detection. But to me that's a strange question. The rewards earned from the exploit *if kept* would be highly unbalancing, so the game devs must do everything possible to make sure that a) the rewards are not kept, and b) they apply the strongest reasonable deterrent to prevent people from doing things like this.
I get the impression you're trying to make the argument that since the rewards are going to be reversed, the exploit ultimately isn't damaging in actual fact, and thus the use of the exploit doesn't have long term consequences, because the effects don't last. And that the use of the exploit shouldn't be viewed as players doing something with long term consequences, but rather the players doing something that only has short term inconveniences.
I wouldn't grant that, because we never treat misconduct based on the ability for someone else to remedy the effects. We always judge misconduct by the damage the person does, even if that damage is repairable. But just for the sake of discussion lets say I allow that idea for a moment. The thing is, it doesn't change anything.
We treat exploits and the use of exploits based on their potential damage, not their ultimate damage. Game operators punish players for using exploits not just because they did a bad thing, but equally so to prevent them from doing them in the future. The strength of the deterrent isn't based on the net damage after they are rolled back, they are based on the net damage before roll back. These roll backs are costly in various ways, and they can impact other players beyond those that used the exploit. Those costs have to be factored into the overall severity of the conduct.
Which gets to the other, secondary hidden issue. There is a presumption that when rewards are gained, they can always be reversed painlessly. But that's not true in two ways. First, we don't know with certainty that every single person who benefited from the exploit had those rewards removed. No process is perfect. And even if it is perfect in this case, there's no guarantee that it will be perfect in every case. The presumption that whenever this kind of thing happens the rewards will always be reversed perfectly isn't a safe one. Second, there's no guarantee that when the reversals take place they also leave all other players unaffected. I've seen exploits of this magnitude happen in other games where the results were so widespread and so vast that the only way to reverse them was to perform a rollback of the entire game. That would have enormous impact on all other players.
We can't simply operate on the simplistic belief that it is okay to use an exploit because the devs will fix it anyway, and more importantly the devs can't give that impression. We don't actually know if the exploits can always be reversed perfectly and we don't actually know if addressing the exploits won't harm other players. Because we can't make that assumption, we cannot judge the severity of an exploit based on a random guess that there will ultimately be no longer term effect. And neither can the operators of the game.
In another post you asked what's the worst that could happen. The worst that could happen is people keep looking for and leveraging every possible exploit because they know there is no downside and a potential upside, the playerbase as a whole comes to believe the game operator doesn't care about exploits enough to do something about it, and they do what every playerbase has done when that situation has come up: abandon the game. Failing to come down hard on people who cheat or exploit the game has always ultimately destroyed games' ability to retain players, pretty much every time it happens. It isn't even a question of whether the game operator is doing everything possible or not. It is about whether the playerbase believes the game operator considers it a priority.
I appreciate you're opinions.
Concerning your point that "*if kept they would be highly unbalancing" seems mute to me because, as I said, they were never going to be kept. Because of this the idea that we have to address the "potential damage" of an exploit is null because there was no potential damage in the greater sense. I realize that many people may not want to accept that logic, but for the most part it is true. If you want to get into the minute specifics of how little changes in rewards and exploits can effect balance and player base then you have to also account for the wild and seemingly constant imbalances implemented on Kabam's behalf in the way of bugs that negatively affect champ abilities and server issues that are a constant pain to the player base. These types of imbalances also greatly affect the balance of the game so this imbalance will tip back and forth between Kabam and the players depending on the bug. I don't think it's fair to only address the imbalances caused by players taking advantage of exploits.
Now, regarding the devs of the game, I have already conceded that they are the real victims of this exploit in that they have to not only repair the code, but then revert the damage caused by it and that is indeed no small task. I am not discounting the importance of their work, but I am pointing out that whether a bug is capitalized on by players or capitalized on by Kabam the devs will always be addressing these types of issues. That being said, again, I agree that it is in fact immoral to cause more work for the dev team if that is where you want to point your focus on this issue, but I will again reminded you that the discussion was directed at whether this exploit was ever going to directly negatively impact the player base. I do appreciate your thoughts and I do agree with some of what you pointed out. Thank you.
I apologize if I missed some of your well articulated points as your post was quite long. Thank you again.
Come off it dude. You (exploiting cheaters) used champions and materials gained as an advantage in all aspects of the game between the time they were stolen and the time you were banned. These ill gotten rewards were used in every aspect of this live game and gave exploiters an advantage over those they were competeing with for rank rewards and war wins. They did have an impact and will still have an impact after your ban. You seem to gloss over and ignore this, I suppose it is because you cannot refute that your actions negatively impacted players and the game as a whole so you deny it as it doesn't fit the narrative of your cheating exploiting behaivor having no impact.
Here's another impact the mcoc team is now taking thier time away from working on the game and other issues to deal with you by correcting your account and banning you. Thank people like the OP for perpetuating bugs in the game.
Come off it dude. You (exploiting cheaters) used champions and materials gained as an advantage in all aspects of the game between the time they were stolen and the time you were banned. These ill gotten rewards were used in every aspect of this live game and gave exploiters an advantage over those they were competeing with for rank rewards and war wins. They did have an impact and will still have an impact after your ban. You seem to gloss over and ignore this, I suppose it is because you cannot refute that your actions negatively impacted players and the game as a whole so you deny it as it doesn't fit the narrative of your cheating exploiting behaivor having no impact.
Here's another impact the mcoc team is now taking thier time away from working on the game and other issues to deal with you by correcting your account and banning you. Thank people like the OP for perpetuating bugs in the game.
I actually addressed the AW/AQ aspect in my initial post as well as subsequent posts. I also addressed the developer aspect. Please take a look at some of the previous posts. Thank you.
Come off it dude. You (exploiting cheaters) used champions and materials gained as an advantage in all aspects of the game between the time they were stolen and the time you were banned. These ill gotten rewards were used in every aspect of this live game and gave exploiters an advantage over those they were competeing with for rank rewards and war wins. They did have an impact and will still have an impact after your ban. You seem to gloss over and ignore this, I suppose it is because you cannot refute that your actions negatively impacted players and the game as a whole so you deny it as it doesn't fit the narrative of your cheating exploiting behaivor having no impact.
Here's another impact the mcoc team is now taking thier time away from working on the game and other issues to deal with you by correcting your account and banning you. Thank people like the OP for perpetuating bugs in the game.
I actually addressed the AW/AQ aspect in my initial post as well as subsequent posts. I also addressed the developer aspect. Please take a look at some of the previous posts. Thank you.
You seem to think weasel words and mental gymnastics qualify as valid argument. Bad news they don't.
This is a very weird conversation, and honestly seems pretty non-constructive to me. What I'm gathering that you're saying is that "I knew that I was exploiting it, but because they were going to reverse it, it should be okay". This is not the case. The fact of the matter is that some users broke the Terms of Service and knowingly exploited a bug in the system that gave them rewards they had not earned. The Terms of Service are the rules that you have agreed to abide by while using the game and its surrounding services, and breaking the rules set forth can result in a variety of different disciplinary actions, regardless of whether or not you think the infractions are harmless or not.
I'm sorry that you think the punishment that was determined for this was too extreme, but they were the ones chosen and are well within the realm of possibility for the actions they were addressing. We don't take it lightly when anything is done that can possibly unbalance the game for other players, especially ones playing the game honestly.
Comments
No, I am not looking for any justification whatsoever. What good would that do? What's done is done. As I said already, I'm not interested in someone deciding if my personal actions were moral or not. That's for me to decide. I just wanted to get some more opinions on the extent to which the exploit would ever really have affected the contest. You keep bringing up the idea that getting caught is irrelevant, but in this case I don't think it is. I agree that cheating for an ultimate personal gain is immoral, but if you know there will be no ultimate gain because the gains will be reversed than I I'm not sure how the exploit morally affects the contest(with the exception of the possible brief boost in AQ/AW which another member pointed out and I agree with to some extent). This was the general topic of the discussion. If you feel there isn't a discussion to be had then feel free to exit the discussion. Thank you.
I agree with you. They should have treated it like any other bug. "Sorry it happened we will work on fixing it."
This was treated completely differently than a bug that makes us spend resources. First it was fixed, second it was fixed quickly and third the consequences of the bug were reversed.
Not sure how effective a show of hands would be on an Internet forum...
I think the ban is kinda unfair. The fault lies on Kabam, I didn't get banned and I didn't exploit it at all but to be honest, there was a good chance I could've gotten caught up in it on accident. I tend to do a pass in normal 1st and then do Heroic and Master levels. This time I just didn't do it, if I would've then I would've got the extra rewards but not because I was trying exploit the system only because it's my normal routine. Sometimes I do 1 pass of beginner then normal and then go for 100% in the other 2. With that said it be easy to tell the exploiters if they were running over and over and over again I guess it makes sense but if it was someone like me just doing the normal playing style doesn't make a lot of sense for something thats not my mistake.
No doubt it was exploiting a bug, but people exploit bugs all the time in this game, and have in the past:
-People took advantage of LoL when it first came out and was easy to get through with SW, and were able to stay in there despite it being shut down for the rest of the game.
-People took advantage of being able to keep scoring points in Arenas after they were closed by hitting the "back" button.
-People took advantage of that crystal that would auto-respin every time you duped a lvl 99 champ to get LOTS of 4*'s back when they were super rare.
-People took advantage of the huge extra health/attack boost bug that happened after an update in order to beat difficult content.
-People took advantage of Unstoppable causing LoL opponents to freeze completely.
-People took advantage of fighting Magik when her limbo triggering twice caused her instant death.
-People took advantage of UC in LoL when his unstoppable wasn't working.
I'm sure there are tons more I am forgetting. However, NONE OF THEM WERE SENT ON VACATION for doing so. There is a heavy and strong precedent for not taking any action when exploiting a bug that is the sole fault of Kabam. In most instances they were even able to keep the majority (if not all) the rewards from doing so. To go out and issue 7 day vacations after basically turning a blind eye (if not tacitly saying it's ok) for 2 years is absurd.
/edited for OP
This is an odd line of discussion, but I'm game. It seems there are two separate issues you raise, although you expressed them as a single issue. The first is a question of how serious the effects of the exploit are if the net effects are going to be reversed upon detection. But to me that's a strange question. The rewards earned from the exploit *if kept* would be highly unbalancing, so the game devs must do everything possible to make sure that a) the rewards are not kept, and b) they apply the strongest reasonable deterrent to prevent people from doing things like this.
I get the impression you're trying to make the argument that since the rewards are going to be reversed, the exploit ultimately isn't damaging in actual fact, and thus the use of the exploit doesn't have long term consequences, because the effects don't last. And that the use of the exploit shouldn't be viewed as players doing something with long term consequences, but rather the players doing something that only has short term inconveniences.
I wouldn't grant that, because we never treat misconduct based on the ability for someone else to remedy the effects. We always judge misconduct by the damage the person does, even if that damage is repairable. But just for the sake of discussion lets say I allow that idea for a moment. The thing is, it doesn't change anything.
We treat exploits and the use of exploits based on their potential damage, not their ultimate damage. Game operators punish players for using exploits not just because they did a bad thing, but equally so to prevent them from doing them in the future. The strength of the deterrent isn't based on the net damage after they are rolled back, they are based on the net damage before roll back. These roll backs are costly in various ways, and they can impact other players beyond those that used the exploit. Those costs have to be factored into the overall severity of the conduct.
Which gets to the other, secondary hidden issue. There is a presumption that when rewards are gained, they can always be reversed painlessly. But that's not true in two ways. First, we don't know with certainty that every single person who benefited from the exploit had those rewards removed. No process is perfect. And even if it is perfect in this case, there's no guarantee that it will be perfect in every case. The presumption that whenever this kind of thing happens the rewards will always be reversed perfectly isn't a safe one. Second, there's no guarantee that when the reversals take place they also leave all other players unaffected. I've seen exploits of this magnitude happen in other games where the results were so widespread and so vast that the only way to reverse them was to perform a rollback of the entire game. That would have enormous impact on all other players.
We can't simply operate on the simplistic belief that it is okay to use an exploit because the devs will fix it anyway, and more importantly the devs can't give that impression. We don't actually know if the exploits can always be reversed perfectly and we don't actually know if addressing the exploits won't harm other players. Because we can't make that assumption, we cannot judge the severity of an exploit based on a random guess that there will ultimately be no longer term effect. And neither can the operators of the game.
In another post you asked what's the worst that could happen. The worst that could happen is people keep looking for and leveraging every possible exploit because they know there is no downside and a potential upside, the playerbase as a whole comes to believe the game operator doesn't care about exploits enough to do something about it, and they do what every playerbase has done when that situation has come up: abandon the game. Failing to come down hard on people who cheat or exploit the game has always ultimately destroyed games' ability to retain players, pretty much every time it happens. It isn't even a question of whether the game operator is doing everything possible or not. It is about whether the playerbase believes the game operator considers it a priority.
I appreciate you're weighing in with your thoughts, but could you please replace the references to the "B" with something else so this discussion doesn't get closed. I know it's silly, but Kabam will take any excuse to close a thread. Thanks.
But thats what happened people got banned and they posted about it.
I appreciate you're opinions.
Concerning your point that "*if kept they would be highly unbalancing" seems mute to me because, as I said, they were never going to be kept. Because of this the idea that we have to address the "potential damage" of an exploit is null because there was no potential damage in the greater sense. I realize that many people may not want to accept that logic, but for the most part it is true. If you want to get into the minute specifics of how little changes in rewards and exploits can effect balance and player base then you have to also account for the wild and seemingly constant imbalances implemented on Kabam's behalf in the way of bugs that negatively affect champ abilities and server issues that are a constant pain to the player base. These types of imbalances also greatly affect the balance of the game so this imbalance will tip back and forth between Kabam and the players depending on the bug. I don't think it's fair to only address the imbalances caused by players taking advantage of exploits.
Now, regarding the devs of the game, I have already conceded that they are the real victims of this exploit in that they have to not only repair the code, but then revert the damage caused by it and that is indeed no small task. I am not discounting the importance of their work, but I am pointing out that whether a bug is capitalized on by players or capitalized on by Kabam the devs will always be addressing these types of issues. That being said, again, I agree that it is in fact immoral to cause more work for the dev team if that is where you want to point your focus on this issue, but I will again reminded you that the discussion was directed at whether this exploit was ever going to directly negatively impact the player base. I do appreciate your thoughts and I do agree with some of what you pointed out. Thank you.
I apologize if I missed some of your well articulated points as your post was quite long. Thank you again.
Here's another impact the mcoc team is now taking thier time away from working on the game and other issues to deal with you by correcting your account and banning you. Thank people like the OP for perpetuating bugs in the game.
I actually addressed the AW/AQ aspect in my initial post as well as subsequent posts. I also addressed the developer aspect. Please take a look at some of the previous posts. Thank you.
I'm sorry that you think the punishment that was determined for this was too extreme, but they were the ones chosen and are well within the realm of possibility for the actions they were addressing. We don't take it lightly when anything is done that can possibly unbalance the game for other players, especially ones playing the game honestly.