I could not restrain myself, so I will give you my opinion on this. You won't like it.
It's not a matter if we don't like it, more about the way it is written in. As far as I can see your post is constructive criticism - and thats always welcome, IMHO
What is this all about? We had a inventory code rewrite. A bug was left in the code. That is to be expected and it will not be the last bug. It will most probably not even be the last money making bug.
I agree, it might not be the last bug, probably not even the last dupe bug, but the question is: do we want people to abuse bug for their own benefits?
The code runs on a public server, so people will use it and find the bug. So far so good. Because it is a public server, you will not only have your role playing friends trying the code but the complete mix of people who play with very different intentions.
I agree here too, many different people might find a bug. But there are ways to make them public: GM's (by petition or sending one a tell, saying you might have found a bug), Forum/IRC: not that hard to make a forum post, describing what problem you have found. those who don't have a forum account might contact the devs (and/or the tester team) on IRC. There are different IRC channels about planeshift, in case of a bug I suggest you to directly join the public dev channel: #planeshift-build on Freenode, because in this channel the chances are higher to find an official Dev or an official Tester. There is yet another way to make the problem known, probably the most welcomed way: the Bugtracker! At
http://bugs.hydlaa.com you can submit the bugs you have found, you can even reply to another bug report, saying you have experienced the same (or under different circumstances).
However, there are ways to make bugs known. and those ways have been IMPROVED very well recently![/quote]
The roleplayers are the people who you want to play with.
This is so absolutely not true!
The roleplayers prefer to play with other roleplayers but they also often play with non roleplayers. As for the team, some of them are pure coders and play the game by working on the code - but have never played on laanx. There are other team members (probably the biggest part of the team) who played for ages and/or still plays. Again, some of them prefer to play only with other roleplayers, others play with other players too. It's not only dumb to say that rp'ers are the only ones the devs want to play with, it is also wrong! (I am not calling you dumb, but the statement above, IMHO a big difference, don't feel attacked by it personally, please)
But there will always be the people who only play for the thrill of advancing their characters and even those who play to find and exploit bugs. They will always be here and it is completely wasted emotions if you feel hurt by their doings. Live with it. They will stay here longer than you.
And by the way, they are the best bug hunters, so you even want to keep them as testers. This is the way it is done in the security industry all the time.
Here I can agree once more. there are a lot of people playing the game for different reasons. There is also no problem when people find bugs and report them - not at all! There is a problem with people finding bugs, keeping them secretly or sharing them to their "friends" to have a small group of people that advances from this bug. This is not only unfair for other players who work hard to earn the tria and develop their characters, it also hinders the advancing of the game as a whole.
Now a money making bug has been found and exploited. As I said before that is neither surprising nor will it be the last time. What are the consequences? Lets look at what you can do with all the money: You can buy training but only if you have the necessary progress points, so you have solved only half of the problem. You may have billions of Tria but it won't help you much. Oh, you could buy a guild house. Well, that is another thing only half thought through and a problem I better not go into now. Probably the worst thing you can do with all the money is ruin the market for the few things that are traded in game. But that will equalize itself fast after the bug has been fixed. It is only a small shock for an economy that hardly was balanced in the past and will not be for a long time to come. So what is the point of all this excitement? Why even bother with a few cheaters?
I agree once more, not very surprising that a bug has been found, remember the game is still in development.
Tho, what can you do with money ingame? Lets see:
Buying training - With enough progression points and the abusage of this bug, you have your character maxed in all stats and can train on skills. You mention that we don't have the progression points yet? Let me tell you what: It costs less than an hours to gain 1000 progression points (even as a new character) if you know how to do it (and those who know how to abuse a bug, probably also know how to gain pp's very fast)
Buying Items - Recently the first 300Q swords have been produced (after the crafting bug got fixed), those are worth a lot of money, people have to work hard to produce these swords, people have to work hard to earn the money to effort such swords. Mr Cheater comes and gets it without any effort...think about it
Buying Guildhouses - I don't want to start another discussion about how the introducing of these has been handled, but let me tell you something you might not have remembered when you wrote your post: Guildhouses are expensive! People work hard to earn the money, spend ages in the gold mines, at the furnaces, fighting monsters and so far, for earning money...Mr Cheater comes, mass dupes trias and buys a house without any effort...fairness?
Now how is this problem handled? The server is shut down for fixing. That is surely the right thing(TM) to do. We are told, that there is a sure way to find the cheaters and that their accounts will be deleted. Well, this sounds like overreacting to me. A cheater will have a new account in no time and if this is his or her main intention in the game the deletion of the old account will only be a minor nuisance.
What has a cheater from cheating if he does not spend the money? Nothing but a sack full of money! Tho, Mr Cheater will buy training and train his character up, as for skills that takes some time, a lot of time. Now the character (NOT the account) will be deleted and Mr Cheater has to train again, without being able to produce tons of trias he will need more time now. - thats in my eyes some minor punishment, but it is a punishment. I think Mr cheater will try to abuse other bugs in the future too (as you mentioned, there are people whose intention it is to do so). The devs have found them one time and will find them again, thats for sure. And I am pretty sure if Mr Cheater gets caught twice, the punishment will be even harder: Banishment from the game.
This won't always work as it is easy to get a new email and create a new account. But how many email addresses you want to create until you find it boring? And one way or another way the persons will get caught with their new accounts and characters too - and then: ban-flag once more. Sure it is time consuming for the devs, but there are also honest players around who might report Mr cheater, or GM's notice them. But yes, you are right on the point that there will always be cheaters around, unfortunately.
If the way to determine cheaters is not absolutely foolproof and you cannot really separate them from people who found the bug and maybe never noticed, you will hurt only the people who you punish wrongly. Only think about all the guilds where large sums of money are currently collected for the guild treasure by members working day and night to get enough money to have perhaps a chance of aquiring a guild house! Punishing only one player wrongly will do more harm than anything you can gain by punishing the right people. I can only hope that you are totally aware of this.
That was exactly what I mentioned with my first post. No one is save from trapping into a bug and not noticing it and many people were worrying that they get punished now too. But if you had been around for the previous dupe bug you might know how it was handeled there: A money and item wipe, everyone suffered from it, many have complained about it, but at the end they moved on and kept playing (or left the game). The devs have heard these complaints and this is why they are handling it different this time.
Why don't you keep it behind the curtains? If you know who cheated you also have their mail addresses. Therefore you can handle the whole affair silently perhaps with the announcement that these people have been or will be dealt with.
As far as I can see the devs are handling it mostly behind the scenes, they do not have published a list of those they have caught. I wish they had published the list, so that those who have cheated get blamed publically for it and those who accidently trapped into the bug or are on the list because they have cheated money but did not cheat theirself, neither knew it was cheated money know about it and can send an email to the devs.
And now this abysmal thread. Who gave you the right to judge your players morally? Who gave you the right to start a witch hunt which brings forth - as you can already read in this thread - all the bad things in people even down to denouncing others? This is an outrage and completely unresponsible and being in a position of power you really should know better than this!
Who gives them the right to judge other players morally? I guess that questions is answered by itself: The moral gives the right for that. Tho the devs are not judging the players morally here, the players do (me included). Why? Simple! Most people play the game for joy, spend a lot of time with the game and the project as a whole, the devs spend their free time with the project and it not fair to ruin other peoples work this way. Tho I ask myself why YOU are asking who gives them the right, it sounds like you feel judged, it even sounds like you have something to hide and don't want it to become public. Do you?
P.S.: No, I don't like cheaters but I also know that they are unavoidable and the faster you learn this lesson the better you can sleep in the future.
They are unavoidable as a whole, but the individual cheater might get caught and it is way better to do this, than to punish all players by a mass wipe
(The mass wipe will come, tho. The question is just when it will come - and no one wants a wipe for such silly reasons, neither the players nor the devs)
Cebot
PS: I like your post, constructive cristicims - as mentioned before - is welcome.
