See, the reason itâs safe to assume you know nothing about programming is because anyone who has ever worked with code can tell you that strange and unexpected things can and will happen, and the circumstances to cause certain bugs can be so obscure that one can easily go through rigorous testing by a team of developers and testers without being found but then can be found by someone when thousands of players are playing.
In software development in general, it is just a fact of life that bugs will happen. In this situation, the developers gave the benefit of the doubt to as many people as possible; choosing just to roll back the exploit where they could, and only dropped the ban hammer on those who proved themselves to have been malicious in their exploitation by both obtaining gems and spending them.
Funny⊠you tried to make the point that assumptions make people sound bad, but in the process you only proved that BOTH of my assumptions were spot on while your assumption about me was maliciously inaccurate. Almost as though one of us knows what they are talking about, and the other does not.
Funny that youâre able to excuse coders because youâre a coder. So you know people make mistakes?
Is that a luxury only found in coders?
Iâm sure I said on the forums many times how Iâm not a coder. Why do I need to be a subject matter expert to have an opinion about an ethics based conversation?
Iâm not a psychologist but I know deflection when I see it.
Iâve been in the US Army before. And I can tell you havenât. So you shouldnât have an opinion about anything to do with War. Such as a game called Gems of âWarâ.
Pretty ridiculous right?
Lol⊠Thatâs not malice. Thatâs egregious. And no⊠Itâs not semantics either. But what I do know? Iâm not an English Professor so I shouldnât have any knowledge about words and what they mean.
Kudos to you if you had the Exploit available to you and didnât in fact utilize it. You didnât deny that your guild members may have used the Exploit. Odds say at least one of them did.
So of course youâre going to like the course of action where your friends donât get banned. But others do for cheating.
Go ahead and show me in GoW ToS where it says âusing an Exploit a little is okay, but use it too much and youâll be bannedâ or âuse a mail Exploit and youâll be banned but not a GW, Gnome, or Arena Exploitâ or âif we can take Ill gotten gains back then âno harm no foulâ but if we canâtâŠban time.â
Iâm guessing the ToS is much more broad and subjective.
Just as Sirrian has the right to ban whoever he wants from the game.
I have the right as a player to say, âhold up, what about the other jack wagons who Exploited the same amount of gems, used them, but didnât get them from the mail Exploit?â
And Iâm not speaking hypothetically. Both scenarios in fact happened with less than a month between the 2 occurrences.
So much like âcodingâ has a lot of factors that run concurrently and sometimes unforseen issues happen due to them. We have to give the same understanding with the devs rhyme or reason for doing what they do with player punishment. Given that they themselves are not infallible. I guess where our understanding for people making mistakes ends is using an Exploit and then using those gems. Because people never make concurrent mistakes⊠Only code is allowed to.
The programmer(s) who made the mistake is in the wrong, the people who used the Exploit are in the wrong, and the people who Exploited the Exploit resulting in a ban are in the wrong.
And if you or anyone defends any of the three scenarios that made mistakes⊠Then you are in the wrong as well.
TL:DR⊠basically Iâll let Dr. Cox summarize my insight about all the parties involved in this.
People do make mistakes. Which is why itâs good that they were lenient on those who may have mistakenly claimed the gems multiple times but who may not have been malicious in their intent. The people who were banned were the ones who extravagantly exploited the bug and then spent those gems in the hopes it would make it hard to roll back.
The difference between my assumptions, which have all been proven true, and the malicious assumptions you have made about me and my guild is that mine are based on experience and knowledge, while your assumptions are based on what you wish to be true for the sake of argument.
Interestingly enough, there is a common link between your behavior in this thread, and your opinion on the bans. That you fail to understand the difference between malice and mistake. This is a character flaw I would strongly urge you to work on.
Donât know anything about Guild War glitch or how long itâs been going on. Someone should take a video of it and send to the Devs maybe. Iâm sure they will get it fixed.
Your guesses were correct only because 99% of the worldâs population arenât coders. You donât get any validation from that. Nor gain any supremacy in your opinion.
With 100% sincerity. I donât know you, or know what guild you are in. So rest assured I have 0 malice towards you. I asked questions⊠You answered one of them. Iâm already giving you the benefit of the doubt by believing you. Though that withers as you try to defend yourself from me having an issue with your opinion. And you⊠Steering the conversation to fit your narrative⊠But then tell me Iâm not allowed to do the same thing?
What is your stance again? Itâs become a bit convuletedâŠso letâs refresh.
Youâre saying⊠The devs did the right thing by banning those who did the wrong thing, but by also not banning others who did the wrong thing. Despite the devs making the wrong thing available to some players.
Your reasoning is ⊠Because code and people make mistakes, but making 2 mistakes is too much. So those who make 1 mistake are praised, while those who made 2 mistakes are shunned.
The Cherry on top being⊠Because youâre a coder youâre right⊠While Everyone who isnât a coder is wrong. Bonus points if you guess that they arenât a coder and are correct.
You do realize half the staff on IP2 arenât even coders either right?
Few people are mind readers (Probably none!). Itâs impossible to say whether a person claimed the gems from the bugged email multiple times by mistake, or intentionally with 100% certainty. It is, however, reasonable to guess that people who had claimed the gems multiple times without spending them could have just been ignorant. I donât know the details of how the exploit works, but it is feasible that some people may have claimed the gems several times while claiming rewards from guild tasks without realizing it.
It would be unfair to try to figure out which people claimed the gems several times by mistake, or who had done it deliberately to a mild extent. So, for people who could simply have their gem count rolled back to the appropriate value, the developers showed mercy and lenience by universally sparing them punishment.
The people who were punished were people who realized that there was an exploit, and by their own actions proved that they not only knew what they were doing by creating gems through the exploit, but that they had full intention of taking advantage of it.
The reason it is important to note that you are not a programmer, is that you think something which is not equitable is. It is not reasonable to expect a program to always be 100% bug free. Itâs reasonable to expect bugs to get fixed, sure, but it is completely unreasonable to expect bugs to never happen.
On the other hand, it is entirely reasonable to expect people to not go out of their way to cheat, and to hold those cheaters accountable when they get caught.
You also keep maliciously pushing the implication that my guild may have cheated as a means to discredit my arguments even after I said clearly enough that your assumptions about me and my guild were wrong. So let me be crystal clear. No. I did not cheat. My guild did not cheat. And you are being extremely rude by repeatedly making that assertion. Do not make it again.
Actually, @Saltypatra can you formally ask this guy to stop throwing blind and malicious accusations of cheating at people? I donât know if that is a warn-able thing or not.
Spot on mate. Highly inconsistent, case by case and swept under the rug.
All or nothing, but in this case not only does ease of return factor in but supposedly âloyaltyâ too. Pretty ridiculous. Bang on the money with support, if itâs gonna be so inconsistent then why put our faith in it?
Attempts at making the exploit known were removed, what, an hour after it started? No accountability or warning, and a total pouncing blame shift after patiently waiting for the exploiters to exploit to their max. The blame then shifting to further split that banned or unbanned group on the threshold of gems not spent, and gems spent (not in excess). Chaotic!
I completely agreeâŠI have absolutely no doubt that some players who used the exploit 100+ times and never spent the gems, planned to spending them later onâŠThey used exactly the same exploit but escaped the guillotineâŠMaybe there were so many who used the exploit and never spent the gems, that they they decided not to ban them because it would have reduced their player base significantlyâŠAs for the trophy reduction from guilds, i would also like to have an explanation as to why
âŠ@Rojo mentioned that if someone was banned, then their trophy count would go tooâŠThis is simply not the caseâŠLike you said @awryan âwhy punish everyone in that guild for the actions of oneâ
Looks like a legit website. As legit as all your statements today.
Oh .
I think I just made a leading statement. Does this mean youâre going to continue to combat me and call the devs on me at the same time?
I could post my own links about your behavior thus far. But the ban hammer has been swung enough lately. It looks like I need to take a personal time out before I tell you what I really think about your actions in the 2 hours Iâve gotten to know you.
Itâs an automatic deal. The devs would have to manually over ride it.
If a player gets banned for any reason. Then that guild they are in looses a percentage of that players overall trophies. No biggy if theyâve been there a couple months. A huge hit if theyâve been there for years.
No, they got off on the technicality of not having exploited anything. Thereâs really two things that happened here:
1.) Due to a bug, players received the same mail multiple times. It was perfectly okay to open that mail, read it, collect the contents and delete it afterwards, thatâs what the mail system is there for. If someone felt like doing that 10, 100 or even 1,000,000 times, people have strange hobbies, enjoy. Go ahead and post that screenshot showing MoSt GeMs EvAr. No harm done, the mistake was on the sender side, itâs going to get corrected.
2.) Those who spent the gems, knowing very well they had been received by mistake and would have to be returned, got banned. The threshold for âknowing very wellâ was set fairly high, so that even the dumbest bag of hammers couldnât possibly claim ignorance.
As much as I like to rant, the issue feels like it was handled well. They could possibly have posted some kind of warning about spending gems once they became aware of the exploit (which may just have caused more players to go on a spending spree). And I donât really see why guilds should lose trophies clearly acquired prior to the incident. For the rest Iâll give a thumbs up.
I do think itâs important to add that posts were infact removed, and no formal follow up announcement was made up until the ban much later. Iâm not against the Ban, just the inconsistency in the ban, and the lack of acknowledgement from sender end.
They can stand by their decision all they want, Iâm all for it. But it most certainly was not handled well.
The announcement was made once the issue could not be exploited any longer. Announcing anything earlier is really a two-edged sword, it might actually cause more players to exploit than less. Those who got banned abused the issue so excessively they probably wouldnât have behaved any differently, and the announcement would probably have attracted even more people with a similar mindset. Thatâs a lot of âprobablyâ, you never know until you really try, I understand why they went the way they did though.
So, what would you have done in their situation? Ban everybody who opened their mailbox on that day?
To start, Iâm not trying to argue, only debate/discuss in a way that brings us to better understand different opinions.
I think it was handled poorly because of the entire process, from beginning to end.
Posts were made regarding this bug, and they were removed. Many players didnt see the posts yes, but they were made nonetheless. They removed these with no reason or follow up. No announcement, and since the final goodbyes, no accountability - not a single âwe created a bug, sorryâ. They could have at the very least acknowledged their part in the bug, and given a formal warning as to the result of exploiting that bug. By doing this they could literally have banned whoever they wanted without any appeal whatsoever.
By not making a formal annoucement of THEIR BUG, they have since banned indiscriminately - and itâs 100% confirmed to be broken down like this:
Unbanned: If you did not spend gems you exploited. Or if you spent those gems but only under a certain amount (approx 2k-8k gems) - yes players that spent gems have been unbanned. Believe it.
Banned: Only if you have spent more than that threshold.
So where is the line drawn? You can exploit but only to a very specific extent? A formal announcement and forewarning would have made their current handling of the process OK. But everything they havenât done makes everything they have done not ok.
More precisely, you didnât get banned because you didnât exploit by spending the gems that were sent to you. Collecting the gems was considered as much exploiting as repeatedly clicking the Underworld button, you didnât gain any benefit.
More precisely, you didnât get banned because you didnât cross the line in the sand.
More precisely, you got banned exactly when you crossed the line in the sand. Thatâs what a threshold is there for.
Yes, of course, you can move as close to the line in the sand as you dare. Thereâs a certain risk involved, itâs not always possible to accurately predict the exact location of the line, so it might be wiser to not move into that direction.
Are you familiar with the terms âalpha errorâ and âbeta errorâ? Not trying to be insulting, itâs a pretty fascinating topic that most people donât understand. If you are interested I can explain, it fits the current situation very well.
time.â
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