Development Team Letter - CLASS BALANCING

And that's what I said too.

I didn't say you're asking for a nerf. Just said that if BP wants to rebalance by nerfing, it is better to happen on the set instead of the skill.

 

Soooooo, everything wrong with your post. Lets begin.

First of all, before I even start quoting your stuff, you need to understand two things. First, DSO is a business... a piece of a much larger machine.
Second, they are dealing with programming and coding. To a layperson, saying "Fix the bug," or "Fix the exploit" is easy. In truth, this is like the old saying about a needle in a hay stack. I think I once heard that DSO's code is several million lines long, which is not an unreasonable estimate by a long shot.

Now, on to your post:

Right out of the gate, you are clueless. You see this as black and white. Either they are doing this on purpose so that they can ban more people or they are incompetent.

Lets look at the first of those two black and white statements. Remember how the first thing I said is that DSO is a business? They make money for BigPoint. If they don't make money for BigPoint, then BigPoint will shut down DSO and that team will be out of work. So, anything that hurts the bottom line is a threat to their job security. You really think they are doing this just to screw more players? What good does that do them? You think that they will just strip the stuff from the cheaters like they did for the piñata bug and the players will be forced to spend to recover. I find this much less likely due to the scale of this exploit vs the piñata cheaters. There are pets to strip, draken to strip, runes, crafted items (which may have then been crafted into uniques), or essence, or event items, or mounts, or costumes, or gem refiners and the gems refined by them, or clovers etc. Given the severity of the bug, they'd have a much easier time simply banning them with an uncompromising perma-ban like they will to the botters when they release R207. That will accomplish two things. First, it will help restore confidence that DSO and BP take cheating seriously and will act, and second, it sends a clear message to would be future cheaters about what they can expect if they don't play fair. To be honest, I'm shocked anyone still bots given that the ones caught in the past were gone for good. I guess they just got complacent since it's been so long since the last ban wave. And, even if they do just strip the ill gotten goods from these cheaters, but let them stay in the game, so what? You think it is a cash grab, but so what if it is? They are cheaters, and if they want to recover to where they were before they cheated instead of quitting, then I have no problem with BP making money off of them. They should just be thankful that their character wasn't banned.

Now, you second black/white. You think they are incompetent. While they are obviously not the most talented bunch of game developers on the planet, they have regularly proven to be at least competent. Remember what I said about a needle in a very large hay stack? It could very well be that they are still looking for a way to close this exploit in manner that won't leave lingering holes out there. Or, have you considered that they do know how to fix the bug, but haven't because they haven't figured out how to detect the cheaters with absolute certainty? If that were the case, they need to keep gathering data and looking for measurable patterns in their database so that when the raise the ban-hammer, there can be no question that they've hit all the cheaters... Or perhaps you'd like them to rush, screw it up, and upset us even more when they miss multiple known cheaters?

Here is my perspective. The team is working on the problem. It is not an easy fix, but they are working on it. People will keep cheating. DSO is not making them cheat by not fixing the exploit. Nor is this exploit the sort of thing that could happen accidentally. That means the cheaters know they are cheating and have made a conscious decision to do so. If they are willingly violating the T&C, that is their problem. When the time comes, they have no reason to complain since it is on their own head. If someone is speeding on the highway, they might get away with it for a time, but if a cop pulls them over, going 100 MPH in a 65 MPH area, they aren't going to be able to talk their way out of a ticket by saying "But I thought it was OK to drive 100 MPH since the car doesn't stop me."

What good does taking the daily deals off do? It stops people from exploiting this particular feature, but does nothing to address crafting, or people who still have the boxes on the side of their screen waiting to be claimed. Also, see above. Maybe they need more data before the can come up with an effective method of detecting the cheaters? There is a similar principal in network defense called a Honeypot. The network admin has a less heavily defended server that looks important, but is actually full of useless data. The hacker accesses this Honeypot and while they are looking around the Honeypot, the admins are gathering data on the infiltrator. Maybe the reason the DSO team hasn't fixed it or taken it off line is because they are letting known cheaters (there are plenty to be seen in the various videos) keep sticking their hands in the Honeypot while BP collects detailed information about their actions? If they are already 100% sure that someone is a cheater, that person will never get away with it, but they might be the key to taking down the rest of them. There are plenty of examples of this sort of behavior in all sorts of adversarial relationships. In law enforcement, you surveil a known drug dealer in hopes that he leads you to his supplier instead of simply immediately arresting the scumbag. That dealer is never going to get away with it, but by exercising patience, you can achieve a much larger goal. Do you have the patience to let the DSO team do what they need to do to resolve this?

No... just NO!

First of all, see the opening point I made about this being a business. Since introducing the daily deals, I'm sure that is has been good for business. Even now, I'm sure that it is still good business. We are acting like the exploit problem is some huge percentage of the player base when the truth is, many people who are not plugged in to social media or the forums probably don't even know there is an issue. Shutting down a significant money making feature to stop a fraction of a percent of the player base from cheating makes no sense.

Trakilaki gave the example of a business and you gave him a hard time. You are thinking too small, like a small corner store... And you talk like you see every one of these thefts as they happen. Think more like a large retail chain like Walmart. They literally lose millions of dollars a day to theft, but do you see them shutting their stores down to do a 100% inventory or doing any of the other things you seem to think make sense? The truth is, DSO would probably lose more by shutting down the daily deals or by shutting down the servers than they are currently losing to the cheaters. This goes back to before when I said that these cheaters make up a very small percentage of players and it just seems like more because everyone is so worked up over this. Then factor in all the people out there who don't even know there is an issue. Factor in that they are still building a net that should catch all the cheaters, even retroactively, and they aren't really losing anything except from players who lack the ability to think critically and say "I won't pay for anything until you fix this" when it is obvious that this is still up a the top of their to do list. Then factor in what I talked about regarding a Honeypot scenario. Once you take all of that into account, why would they shut down anything? It wouldn't help them, in fact, it may negatively impact their ability to track and punish the cheaters.

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One of the biggest problem I see in your post, and it isn't something that can be quoted, is that you are letting your emotions do your thinking for you. You are angry, and rightly so, that these cheaters have gotten away with it this long, but you are letting that cloud your judgement. The last time I reacted like that was with respect to Crafting 2.0.2 vs 2.0.3. Now, after the fact, I admit that it was a bit of an over reaction at the time. Not to say I was happy with that situation, but rather that if I stepped back and observed objectively, it had a logical foundation. Since then, I attempt to remove myself from the emotional root of an issue and look at it from the developer's perspective, the player's perspective, and a third party with no vested interest. I find that things in this game are never as bad as they seem when viewed from that perspective.

So, my recommendation to everybody is to calm down, exercise a little patience, and wait to see what BP comes up with. If they say "Sorry, we can't do anything" then you have justifiable reason to be mad at them. However, while they are actively working to fix this and have neither succeeded or failed, it is only fair to give them the benefit of the doubt. Judging from their success with the piñata exploit, and the wording of the latest bot ban announcement, I don't see any reason to doubt that they will find a fix and appropriately punish the cheaters.

So, is that more like it? Not such a small post that is all about trying to "to increase [my] total forum post count", but rather my usual well reasoned, fully thought out, properly punctuated, and generally grammatically correct argument that is based on logic instead of irrational emotion. The post you were referring to was trying to get you to think for yourself, but now I've done it for you.

 

About this...sure this is a business but let me add something that you dont see and the reason why ive suggested closing the daily deal until it gets fixed. This bug is like 4 months + old...agreed? During this period most likely few hundred already exploited it up to some extent and that was when this bug wasnt this well known.Nowadays thanks to the media its most likely that few people a day exploit it.If you check some dso trading groups on fb you will see people offering to sell maxed stats chars for a few euros.

You keep calling it a business without realising how much $ they lose each day because of this.You do realise that the main point of having a business is to make profit and not lose more than they make right? Also one thing that i dont understand yet is which side are u? Because i am against these daily exploiters and here you are trying to persuade me to be ok with it and wait until BP does something.Shouldnt you try to suggest some solutions to this problem instead of being against the ones that are being suggested despite the fact that they would actually help?

So i have proposed for these daily deals to be turned off until they are fixed.We have lived without the daily deals for 5-6 years..turning them off for 2-3 days will definitely not kill the game.This is a fact.Will turning these off for a few days do any good? Well no one will be able to exploit these further so the problem was partially solved, finding the exploiters being whats left to do.Besides, its not like players will use 0 ander because the daily deals are no more.They will still spend ander whether the daily deals are on or off.

You proposed that the daily deals are not turned off.What good will that do when it comes to solving this? Absolutely no good.Each day there will be more and more exploiters, until it will get out of hand.You can see for the fb posts that the majority is unhappy with how BP handles this.Unhappy customers dont pay for things anymore or as much as they used to.

If this was actually true then we would have bot scan waves weekly or daily.Botters do hurt them for instance because they gain stuff for free. If you were to bot for 1 year with deluxe you will have maxed gems and a lot of other goodies most likely.Yet you dont see BP doing much to prevent this.Have you ever considered that maybe they dont ban the botters on a weekly basis because this forces the fair players to pay in order to compete vs them?Its a possibility..you should not be so eager to drop it off the table.

Yes.What will you propose then? Sit and wait? You dont consider that 4 months since this bug was discoreved is not enough time? If we would be having this discussion 4 months ago and you'd be suggesting to sit and wait this is where we would be now.

Ive read what he told me but he talks to me about Walmart who lose tens of milions while they make billions a year.You should not compare DSO with wallmart when dso doesnt even make 1-2 mil a month and 1 single player can "steal" goods that are worth few tens of thousands of $. They make 1 mil a month and 10-20 exploiters gain stuff that are worth half that.

 

Did you even read his post at all?, and by "read", I mean reading and comprehending what you're being told, you went back to the exact same stupid arguments after being carefuly explained why are they stupid, twice.

 

Anyways i will drop this since i see that instead of working together on solutions, you guys are more interested in fighting me over the forums over 1 idea.Lets see what will sitting idle gives us.We have been sitting idle for the past 2 years since there was a bot ban wave and no other ban waves were done since then.Lately when people started to complain about botters on fb and forums and provide videos showing them at work, boom, ban wave.

When pinatas bug was available for a week what did BP do at first? Said "sorry but we have no way of tracking the exploiters".After that the rage on forums and complains made them take actions and ban them/remove the gems.

You 2 seem like a very old players and still you havent realised that BP doesnt really do things like these unless they have no choice but to do so because the community is pushing for them.Exploiters/ botters do some good in a way ..they buy premium / ander from time to time and they force the fair players to pay even more to catch up.For instance the botters farm with green or blue just 1st maps 24h a day, u can only farm for a few hours and if u wanna catch up with them u will have to pay for pink/red.This is great for BP because imagine how much the fair players will have to pay for essences in order to beat a botter in the leaderboards.Exploiters get maxed thingies and beat the crap out of u in arena, then u have to pay more to stand against them.If you havent noticed this and still think that staying idle is the solution despite how things went up till now then lets sit and wait.

Lets see how long it will take for this to be fixed and lets see when will the next bot ban wave take place after the one from patch 207 if not one will ever complain about botters/exploiters.

I bet 5 cents that 1 month from now when this post was created, they still wouldnt have found a way to get rid of those daily exploiters xD...Time will tell i guess.

 

From what i see old exploiters form last year can get a way clean if they have stooped doing the exploit last 3 months.I dont think they keep records more than 3 months.At pinata they have process the logs on the last week so was easy.Maybe they have some sort of archiving solution for older logs but i dont bet on that.

 

@_Baragain_ you make an excellent point and you are once again correct, but logic rarely overrides passion as you well know.

DSO has a long history of being slow and reactionary instead of being pro-active like some other games which leads to many of the frustrations that players experience.

While I agree that catching and fixing an exploit can at times be tricky, some have been known on the test server before being released yet still pushed through.

The lack of bot bans is frustrating because of their inaction. There is no excuse for waiting years between bans.

The problem as I see it is their zeal to push releases regardless of known issues.

 

Certain bugs and exploits are not needles in hay stackes, they are iron bars in hay stacks, it's impossible not to notice them and fix them, they are too gamebreaking

It's ridicolous, but they are good source of lulz, i thank them

 

As i said time will tell xD..The way i see things BP only reacted vs cheaters when they were pushed by the community..when they werent, the cheaters had their way(hence why we had 2 years between each bot ban waves).

LE: nvm about the rest

 

Trakilaki already posted it somewhere, but there’s bugs that are impossible to reproduce on TS and are noticed only after the releases hit on LS, they’re different environments and apparently have some core differences that cause this, unfortunate, yes, but they’d have to make some core changes to the TS to prevent this altogether, which I, personally, doubt will ever happen (unfortunately).

Gosh dang it, no, you dense brick, I myself came up with “silly” ideas back in the 5th anniversary exploit, which were going to affect legit players as well, and I was pretty savage against BP at the time, but they found an even more savage solution to it, yes, we had to push them, but they delivered even more than we all were expecting from them, so, yes, they were lax at first and their proposal was unacceptable, but this time around, instead of proposing stupid solutions like ban people based on their existing gems/runes or shutting down the daily deals, I decided to sit and wait, because they HAVE to deliver or me and my wallet are gone burgers from here, and I’ll drag as many people as I can if the worst comes to happen.

It’s easy to propose “ideas” out of anger and frustration, been there, done that, and things aren’t as simple as we’d like them to be, banning people based on their existing Royal gems or high tier runes that were obtained through massive cash transactions, or were grinded for with a lot of effort, aka, legit, would utterly destroy the game and its playerbase, closing off the daily deals hurts more players that are actively saving, purchasing or managing to get runes of enhancement, clovers, materi runes, pet group bonuses, etc., halting progress on legit players is NOT viable, did you read the part where Baragain explains about collecting data from security breachings?, really, did you?. Also, have you considered that due to the nature of the daily deal bug it was possible that it happened to some people by mere accident or coincidence?, have you made your research properly?, are those people deserving to be banned just as much as the lads with 500 runes of enhancement over an accident that happened once or twice?

We all get it, you’re pissed off, most of us are, but BP said it’s gonna take action, I don’t mind if it takes time, so long as they do it as right as they did in the 5th anniversary exploit. Throwing manure at them like a pissed off monkey ain’t helping no one.

Last but not least, you say “they’re losing more money because more people exploit day by day”, allow me to laugh, I didn’t see any sympathy in neither of the past bot ban waves or exploit punishments, if there’s people stupid enough to compromise their accounts that way they deserve whatever BP has in store for them.

 

In the case of the last people, it's not really a punishment,it's a way to save them, it's doing them a favour
Bp is saving them from their stupidity

 

Do you really think that if everyone kept quiet they wouldve done anything about those pinata warriors? You said it yourself that we had to push them to action.Their first reply then was something like " we have no way of tracking them because its been too long".Imagine how easy it will be now when its been months since this bug was first discovered.BP had to be pushed everytime when dealing with the cheaters, there wasnt 1 time when they did that because they really wanted it.If we simply nod and let the waters calm down this problem will be overlooked or it wouldve passed too long for them to be able to track those who exploited this.

Yes i have as i told you already, but you have to be really naive to bellieve that they were collecting data for the past months and still couldnt come up with a solution.Do you remember the exploit that allowed u to kill the blood mage as many times as u wanted without having to enter m1? How many players exploited the crap out of that bug and got nice speed runes now? Have you heard or seen BP doing anything about them? No they havent because we decided to stand still and hope they would..exactly what you are proposing now.Or is BP still collecting data from that security breach even now?

And yes you are right, i am upset because of this, many of us are and we have the right to be upset when we see that a solution still wasnt provided to us despite all this time.Anyways, i apologise if i have offended anyone, i got carried away indeed.

PS: i have not insulted you in any way and i would appreciate if you dont do it either.

 

@sargon234 and @Fugnuts are right. I read this forum on a daily basis and I also respect a lot players like @_Baragain_ or Trakilaki due to their commitment to this game. That doesn't mean they are always right. I actually dont post a lot or pretty much anything but.will try to be more active.

Still, simple example due to that analogy of iron bars vs needle in haystack: every item you have in in your inventory has a representation both in the code and in the database. Is it so hard to have a small flag that indicates how you earn it? 0 for drop, 1 for jesters, 2 for daily deals and so on. Filter the database by daily deal and in that query check per date who had more items that usual. I mean, if you don't control how I get my items that is is just poor implementation.

This is just an example/sugestion. Basically sitting tight and wait for BP to do something never proved to be efficient.

And yes, if the community doesn't push nothing is done. And on top of that, it is not acceptable this sort of bug and even lesser acceptable to have it for months. It is not, in any company that wants to make money it is not. And even in one that doesn't aim for profit.

Sorry for my English but I am on a mobile phone and not native in this language.

 

For me Bird of prey need some love because it usually hit a character that is in different place than bird animation is landing.

 

Exactly ... we are all people ... people make mistakes and can't be always right. I can't speak in Baragain's name but I can speak it in mine. In this particular case I am 99.99% right.

Whatever I say in this post ... don't take it personally ... because it is not.

Dude you have no clue what you are talking about.
Bare with me i will make the things easier for you.

You found out about the exploit recently and you have no idea whether this exploit is few days or few months old.
The truth is ... the exploit is more than few years old. The devs have been fixing it several times in the past ... however ... as I said "you can't have 100% security ... There will always be someone smart enough to break your security" . That means ... after the exploit has been fixed ... the exploiters were finding other way to exploit it.
Many players have been banned ... but that was not a ban wave ... it were rather manual actions after proving someone is cheating.
How do I know that? simple ... I was and i am still involved with those actions. Other players are involved too , but i can only speak in my name in this case. You know me as DSO Wiki contributor/admin and a forum poster/troll ... but you don't know what is happening behind the curtain. I am involved with this game 24/7 ... i would say more than the devs are.
Proving that someone is cheating is a hard thing to do ... so i have failed many times ... even if i had enough evidence .... those were rejected because ... as explained ... "they are not legit". Remember the gangsters ... like Al Capone ? everyone knows he is guilty ... the judge is releasing him of charges in the end ... because the court of law finds the evidence to be insufficient and the methods used to obtain the evidence illegal. That is the story we all know.
However that is not a ban wave but rather separate small cases ... managed separately.
So why there were no ban waves for all these botters and exploiters? the answer is simple and you all know it ... but you seem to have short memory.

That is it ... they are short on staff. This kind of campaign requires people ... more people means more expenses ... meaning more money. And the funds are limited and sometimes are not to depending on you ... sometimes someone else form above has to give a green light. And as i am reasoning even if they are separate entity with their own HQs in Berlin they are still dependent on the higher instances.

Now ... why hasn't been done anything to track the botters/exploiters? Who told you that? If there was no announcement that doesn't mean no one is working on the case. You think this 6th of March "raffle" came out of blue ... just by checking the data in the past 2 weeks? Like EhtovK would say "please allow me to laugh". This kind of "raffle" needs months and months of tracking and matching the data. Same will happen with the exploiters ... have no doubt about it. it is a business after all ... you don't have room for errors in business otherwise you get screwed up. Data needs to be processed and make sure there is no error in identifying the exploiters and separating them from the legal players ... otherwise it will do more harm than good.

So this whole conversation makes no sense ... since they will all get what they deserve.
You can all go play and let them do their job ... BTW there are new top50 Dragan event lists announced today ... let us see how many of those will be re-raffled on March 6th and beyond.

 

You're still a clown but in this post at least it seems we both know and think the same things about it.
I agree 100%.

 

If they are low on staff, perhaps they can hire more people?

 

This requires money.

 

And money requires a game to be online to play... Oh what a vicious circle.

 

I assume they have money, since the game is still operating

If they are bankrupt, they would have closed the game down