Ban/Rollback/Do Nothing

For Honor and Glory!
We fight to death.

Tonight we dine in Hell!​

 

As a database person, if they didn't, they should be shot. You should have a series of database backups that overlap. So yes, you may lose some data but not all. For example, backup every day for 7 days. Then backup once week for 4 weeks. Then backup once a month. (You get the idea). So if you catch an error in time (and we are still in time I believe... or close), you restore the data to the last good point in time. If you aren't within 7 days, try the backup for one week ago, then two weeks, etc. Eventually you will find a good backup and go forward from there.

Good practice on the database side is to restore the database from the last known good backup to a database with a different name and do that daily. Do some diagnostics. Check some records. Make sure it backs up correctly.

I cannot imagine that a company as big as BP wouldn't be doing this as a matter of course. If they aren't, they can contact me and we can chat about some best practices.

 

I agree, and im a dev myself. But knowing BP, they should have a complete mess there, taking into account new release, chinese version, db versioning, etl required to populated older data into newer scheme etc. Its insane amount of effort, not just a dumb one click rollback. And scientific research is even more complicated. Looks like they tried to query current DB ignoring older version. It is much more complicated than that. Also, no idea what DB4 is like in terms of Cursor and ETL overall.

 

For me, there are 2 problems with the ban (apart from the obvious that BP said they aren't able to do it, after "thorough consideration"):

1. What is a just measure of punishment for different "levels" of bug users? Would you want the ones who opened, say, 5 Pinatas at the jeweller "for testing" banned permanently in the same way as those who opened hundreds of Pinatas at Zumpe? If not, where is the limit? Should people who only MILDLY abused the bug and didn't make it too obvious get away with it?

(and no, I did NOT use the bug at all)

Real justice is hard to define in this case. Personally, I would have suggested to bill bug users with 200 andermants for every single truncheon they used in excess - and to block any accounts going to a minus by that, until they paid what they spent. This would be a fair solution accounting for the level of abusage, possibly promoting some additional spending to recover the costs of this tragic mistake. But it seems this is not technically feasible... And it has a second flaw, which is that it requires trust in the capability and fairness of the company!

2. The most important thing is not to actually remove every pity little bug user from the game. The important thing is to convince each and everyone of us that "100% sure" the effects of cheating have been reversed, in a fair way. With all our experience, would you trust BP if they just say they found a solution? (in the way they said before they banned bot users etc?). I would not.
They are not going to publish lists of banned users/characters... so the only proof for all of us would be if everyone was rolled back for 6 days. Only in this way, as a fair yet strong player you can be sure that you will not be accused of being an undetected bug user, in the future.

I am actually glad that BP admitted their inability to identify the bug users in the first place. Now the appeasement strategy of CLAIMING that they banned all bug users without actually doing it won't work any more! (Don't invite them to try it by still asking for it.... they are not competent for this solution, they said it themselves - why trust them with it?)

Personally, I don't really care about that bunch of newly born super heroes. I could enjoy some PvE playing even if PvP had been spoilt completely.
But I think BP's ignorance totally ruins any trust left towards them, and within the community - and THAT is gamebreaking! THAT is why I decided to cease playing until an acceptable solution has been implemented.

Sad regards,
Armando

 

Do you remember that now new owner are Chinese?
They have last word in case like this, I think.
And... own way of interpretation of... cheat.
If loss from banned of users will be biger than loss from this exploit used by... hmm 5% of players why they have to make decision which is way to close a game?
Your opinions, anger and feel of justice is nothing in this situation.
They told that it is impossible to find cheaters... well if is impossible than do nothing, roll without technical errors is bad option for common players and condition of company.
And maybe all this mess is a manipulation...
They rather will make a changes in game for take back money from players for this...

 

They should ALL be on their own database. *I* am not playing on the Chinese server, or even Tegan, for example. Every major change should require a backup prior to the change and one directly after the change. Isn''t that what the 30 minutes prior is for?

According to Myers/Briggs, I am a "J". For me, if you broke the rule, you pay. Come back with another account and start from scratch with the basics. Buidl your Toon like everyone else. If you dont' agree and can argue it, take it up with Support.

 

That's my point - it's not enough to punish those maybe 200 people who openly laughed at people filming them during their bug using.
EVERY bug user should be deprived of the advantage gained, but I doubt BP can do it without removing everyone's progress.

 

My starting point would be anyone who did more than 25 character switches returning to the same character and never leaving Kingshill in a single hour at any time during the event. If they did less than that, than my proposed "script" wouldn't catch them and it is probably for the best as those were the curios ones who meant no harm, and the advantage they got would be minimal. The ones I really want to see burn are the ones who ran this exploit 8-12 hours a day for the entire time they could. Past that 25 threshold, they are all equally guilty in my eyes because there is no way one of them said to themselves "This is fine. I'm sure that BigPoint intended that I do this and I'm sure that this isn't breaking any rules whatsoever." I don't care if it was 100 gems, or 5000 items from Zumpa, ban them all. It was like with the bot. According to RickTalrok, no one got banned for botting "just a little bit". I assume that means that if 10 min of bot use was detected, they did nothing, and I understand that because it is human nature to be curious. Hell, I was curious. So what did I do? I made a new toon, got out of the tutorial, spent my 600 andermant on 3 sticks and tested the bug to figure out drop rates, how fast the bug users could go, etc. I am begging for a ban because I have nothing to fear and I only tested the bug to test it with a toon that I used for an hour and will never use again.

Spoiler: My Test Toon That I Hope Gets Banned In The Next Week

As said, I played for a little bit. Tested the bug, and now plan to never see him again. It is my deepest hope that some day in the near future, I try to log into this guy and get a message that I was caught cheating and my account has received a permanent ban.

Basically, when/if the developers did ban people, we would have a huge outcry from the cheaters on the forums, similar in nature to the one we got from the bot users. They would lie and say they didn't do it. They would try to claim that it was just a little. They would claim that their friend was logged in (which breaks a different rule, ironically). They would try to offer money to get their toon unbanned. They would try and say "Do you know who I am?" as if the fact that they spend thousands on this game makes them entitled to special treatment... and so on. But just like with the bots, they would get no pity from those who actually abided by the rules.

Even though I totally disagree with you on just about every other point, this is 100% accurate. This is the reason I intend to leave if they don't take any action. I may prefer a ban because it doesn't punish the innocent and doesn't allow the cheaters to keep playing like nothing ever happened (like with a rollback), I would still rather see a rollback than nothing and a rollback would be enough to keep me playing (albeit in a somewhat grumpy mood).

 

Hello...

Exactly. This is precisely how the logs should be handled. This is how every IT shop on the planet (except possibly Hamburg) would do this.

Regards,

LooneyTed


Be kind.

 

Well, to have 5 level 3 jester stones of each kind, you need 3x5x3x3 level 1 ones - that is 135.
Given that the "bug event" (bug known, no fix) ran for some 40 hours at least, even with 16 hours of sleep in between, in the remaining 24 hours someone could have (theoretically) got some 400 jester stones without being detected by your roster. Even though Zumpe would for sure not drop a stone in every attempt, and those probably not in an equal distribution of their kind, I don't think this is a "minimal" advantage.
For me, anyone using the bug on Zumpe at ALL, even once, would have deserved a ban.

But the point is: of course it's possible to define a limit. Of course I don't want my friends banned who might have been stupid enough to "just test" the bug (I don't know it, but I wouldn't be sure of each and every one - they are just online acquaintances...).
Only it would lead to immense discussions what is fair and what is not, and whether BP actually caught everyone who deserved it. I believe that the "witchhunting" would continue anyway.

When I was thinking about the issue yesterday noon, I figured that this would be the only option for an individual to check on BP if they really did their job on banning - unfortunately too late. ^^ In your place, I would not have published the char name .

 

I vote for a rollback. Although it is not in my best interest, the reason is simple - it is a very quick, effective and safe solution. I fear the problems a ban wave can cause, especially with people avoiding it by either intent or chance.

A proper rollback should be coming with a fair compensation given to every active player of every server. BP needs to think about it - what would cost them more, 40% of the players getting every in-game item for free or a good compensation to every player of the server? I bet that only a dozen of the cheaters took items worth of one billion andermands each. Just divide that amount to the whole player base and you should still have a good compensation for everyone. You are going to lose a LOT more revenue by allowing half of the players/cheaters to have everything for free, without money and/or effort.

 

Permanent Ban, No Matter How Long It Takes!

Roll back is just to easy to pick up for a solution. DSO responsibility far more greater than that to players who invest their time and money.
Sure some players might judge DSO based on numbers of mistakes they did. But some players also judge DSO on numbers of tries and efforts to learn from mistakes.
This is the perfect time to show that high level of responsibility. Show it to the players, then might be DSO gain more respect and trust.

DSO T&Cs of Use:

"1.2 Subject Matter of the Contract, Usage of and Changes to the Games and Services
1.2.10 The use of programming bugs and/or errors to achieve personal gain is strictly prohibited.
8.3 Just grounds for termination
8.3.2 The User violates the prohibition of exploiting programming errors (bugs)"
As far as I can consider now with this situation, above term and condition of use only a plain text with no power in it.

Not end there. Work on better SOP to minimize bugs & minimize anything related to bad ingame experience.
In order to do so, must roll back the memory on when the game considered good enough, then patch the brain in order to maintain that condition.

For example..
Add 1 more step before setting the test server available to public.
The step which is Forum Discussion Group. The group consist of real players(in many background, payers and not, the more variety the better), exclude QA and DSO staffs.
Forum Discussion Group result will reflect some of these:
1. Is the updates is good enough in term of ingame playing experience
2. Is there is any hole for improvement
3. Finding bugs earlier
4. Finding potential exploit
and more..
When majority in group satisfied with the updates, then it is the time to set the test server to public.
This is the time for QA to make sure everything is fine for live server.
Even above process still can be tweak for better update result.

 

I have changed my mind to ban and rollback. Some lucky basta might survive ban wave if any. Gems and zumpe rollback has to be done no matter what.

 

Hey there people ,

We understand your frustration, feeling that all communities are sharing. Your social mobilisation is impressive!

Please, rest sure that we are doing the best that we can and we are passing your feedback to our Team, and surely some more resolutions may arrive in the next days due to your social mobilisation (like this one) that has a great power of change - we can write that

We are following your feelings carefully - here and in our social media - and, of course, they are being escalated to our Team . Are you not sure that this mobilisation that is taking place here can change the future?!


Exploiters are exploiters and that's not fair though - never forget this!


Cheers,

 

No big deal. I am a fan of transparency.

The key there is "Theoretically."Do you honestly believe that any of the people who were exploiting this bug (especially the spender/cheaters who would work Zumpa) did as little as 25 or less and kept the usage small because they thought that it would make a difference? I feel the chance of this is so small, it is negligible. The much more likely scenario is that just the curious ones would make it through this sort of sieve.

Like I said, if it is designed right, the only ones that might "survive" are the ones that weren't the real problem, but a roll back allows the cheaters to shrug their shoulders and say "Oh well, I only lost the stuff I cheated to get. At least I wasn't stupid enough to actually farm during this time."

 

I would just like to say I met a 2 handed mage in arena who obviously used the bug a ton because they had over 12k hp and was still doing really high damage and taking low damage XD ...... you wanna know something....... I didnt care XD I lost the 1v1 ..... wanna know why I didnt care guys......this little thing called its a game, calm down lol, I dont care if someone farmed the life out of the gems when I didnt, I dont care if someone has full top jester gems, its a game.

Oh its not fair what they did you say......were you told life was fair when you were growing up? Take the cards you are dealt and deal with it.
There wasnt such a big issue when q6 had a bug where the mobs were all really easy to kill lmao people got sooooooooooooo much from that lol.

To the devs I feel really sorry for you guys, nobody could really have seen this coming, however saying that DSO has always had issues with logging out, weather it has been farming bosses without having to move or resetting an event map without having to leave and come back.......this "logging" issue should really be looked at

There are 3 types of people when a bug comes out.
(1) Uses the bug
(2) Does not use the bug
(3) Grabs some popcorn and waits to see the aftermath in the forums. (This has been a fun one to watch)


Stay calm guys it is just a game
And as always good work devs (no sarcasm i promise XD)

 

What I meant is that I would have used that account for testing if a potential filter developed by BP is working properly, not if they are reading the forums - and manually banning "reported" accounts.

 

EXPLOiT RESOLUTION UPDATED ! Yes a step closer sooo everybody once again PEEEEEEEEERMANENT BAAAAAAAAN for bug users ! Baragain make it possible to vote twice DD !

 

Hey there people ,

As we've always told you, this mobilisation always give their fruits So, nothing is closed yet and further investigation is going on.

So, let's wait, once again, for the result and, please, be aware that result can take sometime, because it is not an easy this tool/activity/process. You are not alone and Bigpoint is watching out to all your comments. Trust us


Cheers,

 

or its the usual lip service to keep people quiet, play/spend more until we all stop complaining haha. similar think happens on the ask the cm's thread any time there issues, it goes strangely quiet from BP until people stop moaning about it