Thanks, that makes more sense than the ‘s/he got it faster/cheaper than me and I don’t like it’ misconception I had. 
It still all seems to point towards the company’s insistence to sink us being at the core of players’ frustration and inability to be happy for others: hope the playerbase does not lose sight of that fact. 
Sorry folks, but I’m not letting this drop just because Salty has chosen not to answer further.
@Saltypatra can you tell us what number of players need to use an exploit for it to not be considered an exploit then? Or is it only when the exploit goes above a certain ‘gem value’ (which btw, has been shown to be pretty large above in terms of gems or gem keys saved).
Why were I (and others) essentially branded a cheat when Zuul was unintentionally released & we created him? Why were our resources given back within 24 hours & Zuul reclaimed? More to the point - what’s the difference here?
40k seals average to get the guardians to mythic, at 2k per week that’s 20 WEEKS worth of grinding & having our drop pool watered down - how is this fair to the 99% of your playerbase to allow 1% to throw the middle finger up while they no longer have to grind for this?
At this point I’m sure it’s not about fairness, but about what can be sweeped under the rug.
How can we tell the difference? If I would report every player with one of the new Mythic Guardians I would just waste my time because the support could simply lie and say that the player had accumulated seals and/or used orbs and I couldn’t refute it at all…
In Zuul’s case the devs and people at the support zendesk wouldn’t be able to lie to me, or anyone else, that some player had all the necessary orbs before hand.
The amount of effort required to reverse it.
Some examples from the past:
Looking at Guild Guardians:
That’s such a tangled mess, it would take a heroic effort to clean up. If I were in charge of approving such a cleanup operation, I’d seriously doubt it could be pulled off without creating more issues than it solves.
If they had been available through gold keys for a full day I’d be liable to agree with you, however they have a 40-minute window to check. Make no mistake, they can work out who obtained guardians though gold keys I have no doubt - this game tracks everything we do.
Again, I have no gripe with anyone who obtained the guardians through fair means - fair play to those who had the willpower to save up enough seals & orbs! But those who have exploited the (once again) poor releases should not be allowed to keep what they have unfairly gained.
The Devs have (had) set their stall out on this when it previously happened, but now it’s ok? That is what really irritates me, even more so as I’m still adamant that had more people known & taken advantage of this, they would be recalling everything. If even one person uses an exploit, why should they gain an unfair advantage?
Ok then, set the record straight & just take a loss - make them available in gold keys for a week. Or gift us the same amount exploited via mail.
Just because it’s a massive mess it doesn’t detract from the fact that certain people have effectively been allowed to get away with it - how is that deemed a fair response to the vast majority of the playerbase?
There isn’t any “fair” approach here. Gifting them to everybody would be unfair towards those players who already spent seals or ascension orbs. Same applies to adding them to gold chests now. This is really a loss/loss situation you don’t ever want to end up with, because no matter what you do, you can’t win. Those of us somewhat familiar with software development are getting whiplash from shaking our heads in disbelief at this keeping happening over and over again.
The best way to limit collateral damage would have been to just leave them in gold chests forever, immediately pushing out an announcement about it. I believe there would have been ways to balance out their perceived losses in future updates. Which probably just shows how little I know about financials.
And this is the issue. Again, I have no problem with those who chose to say “Ah well, let’s try it on the off-chance” as I’m pretty sure they thought they’d have them taken back. My issue is purely with the uninspiring response from the Devs on this - they have now changed the rules regarding exploiting what appears to be (yet again) a very poor system so any further ‘mishaps’ should also go unpunished yes?
Or are those ‘lucky few’ just to be considered better than us!
If there was ever an update that needed to go smoothly, it was this one. But it had errors & bugs just like every update has had for the last year or so. Calling players cheaters for playing casual PVP (and then killing PVP), and then saying there’s nothing they can do about their own screwup is just about the worst thing you can do.
They had a one day window to roll back an account. After tuesday it was too late, as GW matches would most likely have taken place and it’s basically impossible to roll that back, not without screwing what ever guilds (both of them) were involved in that day’s battle.
The lack of QA and testing has really bitten them this time, as well as, they SHOULD know better than to drop updates during GW but still do.
They also have no-one to blame but themselves.
When has this ever stopped the GoW devs from attempting an action?
No, that’s the result. The issue is that this issue shouldn’t have happened. More precisely, it shouldn’t have happened yet again for the umpteenth time.
Let me tell you a story. Several years back, in the early days of mythic troops and global chat, there was a very popular meta game. Players would cluster in channel 001 on mythic release morning, eagerly waiting for the first mythic pull to show up. No one would dare to touch their key stash, because everyone knew the new mythic would once again be missing in the loot tables. You would burn your keys for nothing, and there wouldn’t be any refund. The devs used to play along, one would open chests from a dev account until a mythic popped out, then players would start spending. They eventually got a grip on this, after a very, very long time.
There’s a second part to this story. Veteran players still play another very popular meta game. It’s opening gold chests whenever special common/rare troops get introduced that shouldn’t show up in gold chests. There’s a well established tradition that they do show up in gold chests, the only exception I can remember being Jewel Gnome. This tradition also extends to other parts of the game, like temporarily finding special troops up for crafting in Summoning Orbs. If you care to bet, this is a very reliable one.
I have so many questions. 
At least one guild got Xathenos from a Legendary Task and they were allowed to keep it. That was only 30 players and should in theory have been “quite easy” to fix, yet no effort was made to fix it, and if I’m not mistaken the uproar was just as large.
The established reality with this game is that when it comes to troops, if they wind up being available through unintended means, there is a strong possibility that the players will be allowed to keep the troop, or at absolute worst (Zuul) have it removed and the resources refunded. Have there been any instances outside of Zuul where anything was taken away/reverted? If not, the devs have at least been consistent.
I was online during the “oops” window and did get a few copies of the new Guild troops. I don’t have the orbs to boost the troops. The amount of copies I got represents less than one week worth of seals. If the devs want to roll it back and take away what I got, they can go ahead, I don’t care. I also don’t care about the “1% of the 1%” who either had the gold or the orbs to push their copies to mythic. I have more important things to be pissed about, like the (un)Epic Task fiasco and intentional slowing down of the game, which are things that actually make me not want to play.
I do feel the policy regarding people getting troops through unintended means should be to remove those troops, but I also understand not having the manpower to devote to something like that as well as the desire to be uniform in their response to this happening. I imagine things would blow up far worse if they were to be inconsistent. If they can roll back everyone who got something during a 40-minute window, but are unable to do that type of rollback after a 60-minute or 80-minute window, people would absolutely freak out.
I’ve felt for some time now that literally everything the devs are allowed to do is guided by how much it will affect revenue. With all due respect, a handful of players being pissed about this likely won’t affect their bottom line, and taking away time from development to review every single account that has these troops to determine how they got them so that resources can be accurately refunded if they indeed came from Gold Chests could have a much larger financial impact due to delaying whatever the next cash-generating feature is. This probably isn’t the answer anyone wants, but a large part of me feels this is the reality of the situation.
I don’t really remember any exceptional uproar. I guess their reasoning went something like this:
If those 30 players were okay with the deal I wouldn’t see any cause to complain, feels like a good resolution to me.
Oh, I wasn’t implying they CAN’T do the right thing, I’m saying that they will OPT for the easiest thing: Just ignore the issue because they have the perfect excuse even if someone would open a ticket to complain that some player already have the guardians fully ascended.
Well the uproar shouldn’t of been “big”. The “guild” didn’t do any thing to exploit the LT system. Immediately after they received the LT they self reported it. Two of the 30 had already crafted Xathenos so it was a duplicate troop for at least a few. Every single member thought they would do a rollback, the devs decided not to.
Literally comparing Exploiting guild guardians and receiving a Mythic LT is apples and oranges.
And it reads as a weak attempt to vent some ancient frustration.
I remember when I was 8… Tommy got the last red starburst and I was stuck with yellow. I feel your pain. Truly. In time maybe we can all move on from life’s injustices.
I can’t recall if I was on the forums yet or not. But no… any “uproar” must of been on private discord servers.
Other people getting things they don’t deserve, while those who do the right thing die poor, sick, and alone, is a fact of life. The only thing we can change about this is our own attitude and sense of entitlement. This is a big screw up, and one that would take a lot of timer and man hours the dev team doesn’t have to make right without hurting those that took a legitimate approach. There are more important problems with this game’s function and design to discuss than someone else getting six, useless troops to mythic.
10 char!
The function & design aspects won’t get sorted, we all know that as they don’t provide any kind of monetary incentive.
The Devs don’t need to hurt anyone who took a legitimate approach either, that’s not what this is about.
And to clarify yet again as I have no idea why this is so damn hard for some to understand, it’s not about having the troops themselves - it’s the fact that the majority of the rest of us still have 4-5 MONTHS grinding with a guild chest drop pool cut in half to legitimately ascend these troops to mythic & then never see them again, while restoring our drop pool to full functionality.
