Exploration Rewards For Acts 1-3

AverageDesi

DNA3000 said:

WOLF_LINK said:

Diablord said:

BendersBounty said:

Krishna24 said:

Scopeotoe987 said:

Gildarts99 said:

Will be lame If they were to ban us for their own mistakes.

I explored act 1 believing this was intentional.

Me too.
chuckles, I am in danger

Same dude 😬

They should not ban anyone.
It is not our fault they did this right?
We did not hack or cheat to get these rewards, we got them in the way the game intended

Bro, it was not intended and you know that. It was the same with Mutant Treasure Island (a Side Quest) a year ago … you were able to run the same path again and again and get the rewards again (pretty juicy rewards). Exploiters got banned for a week and items reverted, easy solution.

Important disclosure: I am not a dev, I am not a Kabam spokesperson, and I have no specific information on what Kabam might be discussing regarding this particular issue at this specific moment as I write this.

Having said that, I doubt if people are going to get banned for this, and I think it is unlikely rewards will get pulled. In general, having some experience with the policy issues surrounding exploits in online games, here and elsewhere, the general rule of thumb is that if a player knowing does something that is clearly not within the parameters of playing the game normally with specific knowledge that this will give them either an obviously disallowable advantage or radically better rewards that would otherwise be unachievable, they place themselves in jeopardy of having disciplinary action taken upon them.

In the case of Mutant Treasure Island, people were rerunning paths repeatedly to get the rewards. It was obvious that this was a bug, it was obvious that this was not intended, the rewards achieved were so high so as to be obviously disallowable and otherwise unachievable, and to get these rewards required doing things no player would otherwise do if they were unaware of the exploit. So it was not a difficult call to discipline players in that case. And I should point out that not everyone who used the exploit were disciplined. They only banned players who were obviously leaning into the exploit, doing it tons of times. Players who did it once or twice were not banned, as you could argue a player that only did this a couple times may have been doing so out of curiosity, But twenty, or fifty? Not so much,

The updated Act bug does not appear to be a punishable exploit by this criteria. First of all, because the game reset everyone's progress to zero, it would not be obvious to a player that they were not intended to get rewards again. Furthermore, there was no way to repeatedly get them through degenerate behavior: the game was just giving the normal rewards any player would get by running the content once. The "bug" was that players who had already done those Acts would now be able to do the new versions of them, which was not intended. But this would not be obvious to a player who only looked at the content itself.

Furthermore, this change affected the very earliest Act content in the game, and that means the bug doesn't just affect veterans, it affected new players as well. A player who just started playing a week ago could have found themselves looking at a reset Act 2 and thinking cool, I'll just run it again. If this issue affected the Abyss, say, it would be much harder to argue that players were not aware they shouldn't rerun - that content is really only open to significantly experienced players of the game, and the rewards are so high no one could reasonably believe the devs were allowing players to have a second shot at them without announcing such.

Of course, there are going to be players that knew this was unintended and tried to farm the units and potions until the content was reverted. But since the developers cannot know which players they are, and datamining will catch the innocent along with the guilty, and as the rewards involved were not high enough to justify bans on their own (they are significant, but not so high that they would obviously be rewards the developers would never intend to hand out to anyone - clearly, as they intend to give them out to new players), in my opinion there's a very low probability the devs would try to yank the rewards back, and an extremely low (essentially zero) probability that they would issue bans for it.

This is just my opinion of course. I believe it to be a well-informed opinion in general, but as I said, I have no specific knowledge regarding what actions Kabam may or may not take regarding this issue. And this is not a blanket green light to exploit the game either: Mutant Treasure Island handed out punishment, and in my opinion justifiably so. Every situation is different, and if you aren't an expert in online game exploit management, it is always best to steer clear of these sorts of situations. "But you didn't ban for that" is never a valid defense.

Last time it was revamped, those who did not explore 100% got their progress resetw and got extra units and no one was banned or units removed

DNA3000

AverageDesi said:

DNA3000 said:

WOLF_LINK said:

Diablord said:

BendersBounty said:

Krishna24 said:

Scopeotoe987 said:

Gildarts99 said:

Will be lame If they were to ban us for their own mistakes.

I explored act 1 believing this was intentional.

Me too.
chuckles, I am in danger

Same dude 😬

They should not ban anyone.
It is not our fault they did this right?
We did not hack or cheat to get these rewards, we got them in the way the game intended

Bro, it was not intended and you know that. It was the same with Mutant Treasure Island (a Side Quest) a year ago … you were able to run the same path again and again and get the rewards again (pretty juicy rewards). Exploiters got banned for a week and items reverted, easy solution.

Important disclosure: I am not a dev, I am not a Kabam spokesperson, and I have no specific information on what Kabam might be discussing regarding this particular issue at this specific moment as I write this.

Having said that, I doubt if people are going to get banned for this, and I think it is unlikely rewards will get pulled. In general, having some experience with the policy issues surrounding exploits in online games, here and elsewhere, the general rule of thumb is that if a player knowing does something that is clearly not within the parameters of playing the game normally with specific knowledge that this will give them either an obviously disallowable advantage or radically better rewards that would otherwise be unachievable, they place themselves in jeopardy of having disciplinary action taken upon them.

In the case of Mutant Treasure Island, people were rerunning paths repeatedly to get the rewards. It was obvious that this was a bug, it was obvious that this was not intended, the rewards achieved were so high so as to be obviously disallowable and otherwise unachievable, and to get these rewards required doing things no player would otherwise do if they were unaware of the exploit. So it was not a difficult call to discipline players in that case. And I should point out that not everyone who used the exploit were disciplined. They only banned players who were obviously leaning into the exploit, doing it tons of times. Players who did it once or twice were not banned, as you could argue a player that only did this a couple times may have been doing so out of curiosity, But twenty, or fifty? Not so much,

The updated Act bug does not appear to be a punishable exploit by this criteria. First of all, because the game reset everyone's progress to zero, it would not be obvious to a player that they were not intended to get rewards again. Furthermore, there was no way to repeatedly get them through degenerate behavior: the game was just giving the normal rewards any player would get by running the content once. The "bug" was that players who had already done those Acts would now be able to do the new versions of them, which was not intended. But this would not be obvious to a player who only looked at the content itself.

Furthermore, this change affected the very earliest Act content in the game, and that means the bug doesn't just affect veterans, it affected new players as well. A player who just started playing a week ago could have found themselves looking at a reset Act 2 and thinking cool, I'll just run it again. If this issue affected the Abyss, say, it would be much harder to argue that players were not aware they shouldn't rerun - that content is really only open to significantly experienced players of the game, and the rewards are so high no one could reasonably believe the devs were allowing players to have a second shot at them without announcing such.

Of course, there are going to be players that knew this was unintended and tried to farm the units and potions until the content was reverted. But since the developers cannot know which players they are, and datamining will catch the innocent along with the guilty, and as the rewards involved were not high enough to justify bans on their own (they are significant, but not so high that they would obviously be rewards the developers would never intend to hand out to anyone - clearly, as they intend to give them out to new players), in my opinion there's a very low probability the devs would try to yank the rewards back, and an extremely low (essentially zero) probability that they would issue bans for it.

This is just my opinion of course. I believe it to be a well-informed opinion in general, but as I said, I have no specific knowledge regarding what actions Kabam may or may not take regarding this issue. And this is not a blanket green light to exploit the game either: Mutant Treasure Island handed out punishment, and in my opinion justifiably so. Every situation is different, and if you aren't an expert in online game exploit management, it is always best to steer clear of these sorts of situations. "But you didn't ban for that" is never a valid defense.

Last time it was revamped, those who did not explore 100% got their progress resetw and got extra units and no one was banned or units removed

Yes that's true, but as I said many is the player who said "but you didn't ban for that, so you can't ban for this" and were banned. You have to look at all of the specifics of a situation, and any one sentence summary of a potential exploit situation is guaranteed to not contain the nuance necessary to make a proper educated guess as to what the devs might do. For example, in this case players who *did* explore 100% also had their progress reset, and were still able to get completion and exploration rewards from the content. That's the part that was possibly more important, and probably what mandated emergency maintenance to revert.

I don't think they are going to ban for this, but I don't think you can compare superficially to the other situation and be confident they'll be treated identically.

WOLF_LINK

@DNA3000

Regarding Units they could gave farmed as many as some cheated with Mutant Treasure Island, no difference there. Units for a hundred $ for free are obviously not intended.

GroundedWisdom

WOLF_LINK said:

@DNA3000

Regarding Units they could gave farmed as many as some cheated with Mutant Treasure Island, no difference there. Units for a hundred $ for free are obviously not intended.

Actually, Treasure Island was an infinite loop you could farm. That wasn't within regular game play. This was a set amount that could only be acquired once, while completing the content.

WOLF_LINK

GroundedWisdom said:

WOLF_LINK said:

@DNA3000

Regarding Units they could gave farmed as many as some cheated with Mutant Treasure Island, no difference there. Units for a hundred $ for free are obviously not intended.

Actually, Treasure Island was an infinite loop you could farm. That wasn't within regular game play. This was a set amount that could only be acquired once, while completing the content.

Infinite loop? During the 20 minutes until they shut the Server down for Emergency Maintenance.

AverageDesi

WOLF_LINK said:

GroundedWisdom said:

WOLF_LINK said:

@DNA3000

Regarding Units they could gave farmed as many as some cheated with Mutant Treasure Island, no difference there. Units for a hundred $ for free are obviously not intended.

Actually, Treasure Island was an infinite loop you could farm. That wasn't within regular game play. This was a set amount that could only be acquired once, while completing the content.

Infinite loop? During the 20 minutes until they shut the Server down for Emergency Maintenance.

You could it as much as times you wanted in that set time. Unlike here where it was one and done.

Infinte here is used in the same vein as "infinte strek" in arena

Graves_3

I honestly don’t see any harm in revamping the act rewards and just letting everyone redo the thing again. 1500 units are hardly game breaking considering a hard core arena grinder can get those in a week. Besides people will be spending energy and time to redo those quests. Just revamp the rewards and let everyone run it again.

Kabam Miike

Hey all,

While we're still exploring exactly what actions need to be taken, we don't currently think that Mass Bans are in order. We are however likely to remove the Units gained, and there may be some cases where we need to temp Ban while cleaning up some accounts. There may also be some extreme cases we need to explore, such as somebody going out of their way to exploit it on multiple accounts or something, but we are not sure what the impact is quite yet.

We'll let you all know when we have made a decision and when we expect to bring the revamped acts back soon.

Terra

Kabam Miike said:

Hey all,

While we're still exploring exactly what actions need to be taken, we don't currently think that Mass Bans are in order. We are however likely to remove the Units gained, and there may be some cases where we need to temp Ban while cleaning up some accounts. There may also be some extreme cases we need to explore, such as somebody going out of their way to exploit it on multiple accounts or something, but we are not sure what the impact is quite yet.

We'll let you all know when we have made a decision and when we expect to bring the revamped acts back soon.

What about those who only did 1 quest out of the entire thing, the small scrapers so to speak?

I fully understand dealing with the ones doing all of it.

WhoDaPoo

I spent the little bit of units I made off act 1's confusing state on a 3* from the Cersi cav crystal (in black iso store). Is that not the same as just returning the units? The heartbreak sure feels that way

GroundedWisdom

Kabam Miike said:

Hey all,

While we're still exploring exactly what actions need to be taken, we don't currently think that Mass Bans are in order. We are however likely to remove the Units gained, and there may be some cases where we need to temp Ban while cleaning up some accounts. There may also be some extreme cases we need to explore, such as somebody going out of their way to exploit it on multiple accounts or something, but we are not sure what the impact is quite yet.

We'll let you all know when we have made a decision and when we expect to bring the revamped acts back soon.

Thanks Miike. Glad I waited for confirmation. Lol.

Masterpuff

Kabam Miike said:

Hey all,

While we're still exploring exactly what actions need to be taken, we don't currently think that Mass Bans are in order. We are however likely to remove the Units gained, and there may be some cases where we need to temp Ban while cleaning up some accounts. There may also be some extreme cases we need to explore, such as somebody going out of their way to exploit it on multiple accounts or something, but we are not sure what the impact is quite yet.

We'll let you all know when we have made a decision and when we expect to bring the revamped acts back soon.

Damn, once again, banning those for your own mistakes.

Masterpuff

Masterpuff said:

Kabam Miike said:

Hey all,

While we're still exploring exactly what actions need to be taken, we don't currently think that Mass Bans are in order. We are however likely to remove the Units gained, and there may be some cases where we need to temp Ban while cleaning up some accounts. There may also be some extreme cases we need to explore, such as somebody going out of their way to exploit it on multiple accounts or something, but we are not sure what the impact is quite yet.

We'll let you all know when we have made a decision and when we expect to bring the revamped acts back soon.

Damn, once again, banning those for your own mistakes.

I also did Act 1 on an Alt, that only had chapter 1 explored. Of OG act 1. So i figured it wouldnt matter no matter what the problem was since I hadnt explored initially anyways. So i did act 1, and got the units.



Then I spent them all.



So now I just spent 10$ on my alt to insure i have those units for yall to take. @Kabam Miike what about accounts who did it but it was first time explo? Like will my alt get banned?

Vintage773

If it’s a mistake on Kabam’s end, you can rest assured that they’ll find a way to punish players for it. No need to wait for the inevitable Miike condescending comment.

Skiddy212

Kabam Miike said:

Hey all,

While we're still exploring exactly what actions need to be taken, we don't currently think that Mass Bans are in order. We are however likely to remove the Units gained, and there may be some cases where we need to temp Ban while cleaning up some accounts. There may also be some extreme cases we need to explore, such as somebody going out of their way to exploit it on multiple accounts or something, but we are not sure what the impact is quite yet.

We'll let you all know when we have made a decision and when we expect to bring the revamped acts back soon.

Clown 🤡 response. You took a long time to address this, what did you think players were gonna do?

Obviously some exploited, I think a lot on this thread did not. Heck I didn’t even attempt because I just knew a response like this would come out. There shouldn’t be any bans. I get taking away the units. Bans though?

You messed up. You took hours to respond. I feel like we as a community that play this game are just getting shafted and shafted by poor communication an bugs, an just not good treatment. Shame, cause it’s a very good game…

GroundedWisdom

Skiddy212 said:

Kabam Miike said:

Hey all,

While we're still exploring exactly what actions need to be taken, we don't currently think that Mass Bans are in order. We are however likely to remove the Units gained, and there may be some cases where we need to temp Ban while cleaning up some accounts. There may also be some extreme cases we need to explore, such as somebody going out of their way to exploit it on multiple accounts or something, but we are not sure what the impact is quite yet.

We'll let you all know when we have made a decision and when we expect to bring the revamped acts back soon.

Clown 🤡 response. You took a long time to address this, what did you think players were gonna do?

Obviously some exploited, I think a lot on this thread did not. Heck I didn’t even attempt because I just knew a response like this would come out. There shouldn’t be any bans. I get taking away the units. Bans though?

You messed up. You took hours to respond. I feel like we as a community that play this game are just getting shafted and shafted by poor communication an bugs, an just not good treatment. Shame, cause it’s a very good game…

They actually addressed it last night during Maintenance, and had to discuss what their course of action was. Feel free to see it how you want.

Hilbert_unbeatable2

Kabam Miike said:

Hey all,

While we're still exploring exactly what actions need to be taken, we don't currently think that Mass Bans are in order. We are however likely to remove the Units gained, and there may be some cases where we need to temp Ban while cleaning up some accounts. There may also be some extreme cases we need to explore, such as somebody going out of their way to exploit it on multiple accounts or something, but we are not sure what the impact is quite yet.

We'll let you all know when we have made a decision and when we expect to bring the revamped acts back soon.

I am confused now...

Real_Madrid_76_2

They reverted back to original rewards of those acts

Beewee

I don’t understand this. You guys in the original post said we could explore for exploration rewards but not completion and that everyone would start at 0% explored. This seems like bad communication on your end and should've been left in.

Reference

My understanding at the very beginning of the announcement is:
1. Kabam is going to change the Act 1-3, to make it shorter to progress (given it is pretty easy for entry player to obtain 4/5/6* now, which makes Act 1-3 pretty easy);
2. Kabam is going to reset the completion % of Act 1-3, for those who have explored already, you would still got % reset BUT you won't get any exploration rewards if you revisit the Act;
3. For those who haven't explored Act1-3 yet, you will obtain new exploration rewards upon reset (what I know is unit earned in Act 1/2 will be reduced).

With that understanding, if you have explored Act 1-3 before reset, you are supposed to know you should not obtain exploration rewards. If you still continue to do when bugs occurred which gives you exploration rewards, this is an act of exploitation of bugs.

Deder80

Diablord said:

BendersBounty said:

Krishna24 said:

Scopeotoe987 said:

Gildarts99 said:

Will be lame If they were to ban us for their own mistakes.

I explored act 1 believing this was intentional.

Me too.
chuckles, I am in danger

Same dude 😬

They should not ban anyone.
It is not our fault they did this right?
We did not hack or cheat to get these rewards, we got them in the way the game intended

Right! That’s there mess up! That would be wrong in every way to ban players who did ran the quest again. They don’t ban us for there mess ups that cost us money! Why because it benefits them. Ya that mess up benefited some players…. Oh well Kabam. Get your coding right.

Hilbert_unbeatable2

Reference said:

My understanding at the very beginning of the announcement is:
1. Kabam is going to change the Act 1-3, to make it shorter to progress (given it is pretty easy for entry player to obtain 4/5/6* now, which makes Act 1-3 pretty easy);
2. Kabam is going to reset the completion % of Act 1-3, for those who have explored already, you would still got % reset BUT you won't get any exploration rewards if you revisit the Act;
3. For those who haven't explored Act1-3 yet, you will obtain new exploration rewards upon reset (what I know is unit earned in Act 1/2 will be reduced).

With that understanding, if you have explored Act 1-3 before reset, you are supposed to know you should not obtain exploration rewards. If you still continue to do when bugs occurred which gives you exploration rewards, this is an act of exploitation of bugs.

U were supposed to get exploration Rewads and not completion

Reference

Hilbert_unbeatable2 said:

Reference said:

My understanding at the very beginning of the announcement is:
1. Kabam is going to change the Act 1-3, to make it shorter to progress (given it is pretty easy for entry player to obtain 4/5/6* now, which makes Act 1-3 pretty easy);
2. Kabam is going to reset the completion % of Act 1-3, for those who have explored already, you would still got % reset BUT you won't get any exploration rewards if you revisit the Act;
3. For those who haven't explored Act1-3 yet, you will obtain new exploration rewards upon reset (what I know is unit earned in Act 1/2 will be reduced).

With that understanding, if you have explored Act 1-3 before reset, you are supposed to know you should not obtain exploration rewards. If you still continue to do when bugs occurred which gives you exploration rewards, this is an act of exploitation of bugs.

U were supposed to get exploration Rewads and not completion

Read again the box you quoted yourself.

Exploration rewards only given to those who haven’t explored before. Some players (esp those having alternative accounts) just completed each Act only in order to attain Cav status asap. Under the Act 1-3 reset, they can go back to finish the remaining paths and got exploration rewards. However, for those who already explored Act 1-3 before, you are not entitled any exploration rewards.

Reference

C’mon. Kabam’s announcement is not rocket science. If mods find that my interpretation is incorrect. You can remove my comment.

1. Player A completed Act 1 up to Act 6.2 and become Caviler. In between he got different progression titles such as Proven, UC etc.

2. Player A completed Act 3.6 via Path 5. However, such path no longer here after the reset (the reset is to reduce/simplify paths in Act 1-3, thus reduce units for exploration rewards)

3. So this may appear in Player A mobile that he is Cavlier but Act 3.6 completion % is “0” as his completed path no longer exist after reset.

4. What Kabam said is, even Player A go back and rerun Act 3.6, he won’t get any completion reward as technically he has completed before.

5. If Player A revisit those unexplored Act 1-3 paths and explored them, he is entitled the exploration rewards.

6. The last point, which is controversial for some players, is that when Player A explored entire Act 1-3 before the reset. He should NOT be entitled any exploration rewards after the reset. (But obviously some got the rewards and that’s why Kabam said they need to take them back plus investigating who exploit this bugs).

WOLF_LINK

Skiddy212 said:

Kabam Miike said:

Hey all,

While we're still exploring exactly what actions need to be taken, we don't currently think that Mass Bans are in order. We are however likely to remove the Units gained, and there may be some cases where we need to temp Ban while cleaning up some accounts. There may also be some extreme cases we need to explore, such as somebody going out of their way to exploit it on multiple accounts or something, but we are not sure what the impact is quite yet.

We'll let you all know when we have made a decision and when we expect to bring the revamped acts back soon.

Clown 🤡 response. You took a long time to address this, what did you think players were gonna do?

Obviously some exploited, I think a lot on this thread did not. Heck I didn’t even attempt because I just knew a response like this would come out. There shouldn’t be any bans. I get taking away the units. Bans though?

You messed up. You took hours to respond. I feel like we as a community that play this game are just getting shafted and shafted by poor communication an bugs, an just not good treatment. Shame, cause it’s a very good game…

Of course there need to be Bans for the people who exploited it like you mentioned. Knowing exactly what they are doing: breaking the ToS purposely. Same like Hackers, Mercs and other cheaters.

WOLF_LINK

Beewee said:

I don’t understand this. You guys in the original post said we could explore for exploration rewards but not completion and that everyone would start at 0% explored. This seems like bad communication on your end and should've been left in.

Nah, read carefully.

IF you 100% explored it before, your progression will be 100% afterwards as well. Only if you didn‘t finish the whole stuff, you can do it again.

Skiddy212

WOLF_LINK said:

Skiddy212 said:

Kabam Miike said:

Hey all,

While we're still exploring exactly what actions need to be taken, we don't currently think that Mass Bans are in order. We are however likely to remove the Units gained, and there may be some cases where we need to temp Ban while cleaning up some accounts. There may also be some extreme cases we need to explore, such as somebody going out of their way to exploit it on multiple accounts or something, but we are not sure what the impact is quite yet.

We'll let you all know when we have made a decision and when we expect to bring the revamped acts back soon.

Clown 🤡 response. You took a long time to address this, what did you think players were gonna do?

Obviously some exploited, I think a lot on this thread did not. Heck I didn’t even attempt because I just knew a response like this would come out. There shouldn’t be any bans. I get taking away the units. Bans though?

You messed up. You took hours to respond. I feel like we as a community that play this game are just getting shafted and shafted by poor communication an bugs, an just not good treatment. Shame, cause it’s a very good game…

Of course there need to be Bans for the people who exploited it like you mentioned. Knowing exactly what they are doing: breaking the ToS purposely. Same like Hackers, Mercs and other cheaters.

I understand they broke ToS. I understand it was wrong, but no response from Kabam for an extended period should not result in bans. they allowed it to go on throughout the day by not addressing IMO. Whatever though, it doesn't affect me, i didn't bother with this bug, at this point they are gonna do whatever they want so i don't know why i bothering saying my opinion lol, its all good

WOLF_LINK

It‘s not true that they didn‘t react. They immediately reverted the Revamp with Emergency Maintenance to stop further exploiting.

They just didn‘t post about it for the moment because they had to discuss it themselves first.