Report:
Spent some time hopping towns trying to wheedle some info from the people selling multiple armbraces. Most of them started to ignore me when I started to ask too many questions. Some of them would stop ignoring me and suddenly become very defensive when I suggested they used some sort of exploit. IMO, they didst protest too much. Didn't get any useful information other than that.
Also encountered a surprising number of people trying to sell one or two armbraces they had recently traded for. This makes me suspect that the masses of armbraces are real, and not figments of a display glitch.
Also saw an usually large number of people selling torment weapons, as well as people selling "armbraces or torment X." This leads me to suspect that at least some of the people responsible read the forums, are aware the world is on to them, and are now trying to lie low by selling the weapons instead of the armbraces.
Theory:
Here's what I hope is a systematic breakdown of possibilities:
- Display bug? - the armbraces aren't real. I think this is unlikely. There's too many "little people" selling one or two - plus that screenshot. Moreover, the sellers are offering single armbraces.
- Global item dupe bug? - anything can be duped. I think this is unlikely. First, if you could dupe any item at all, why armbraces? I'd expect them to be duping req9 ele swords, crystallines, etc. Second, given their apparent lack of self-control, I think it's more likely than not that we'd know if they were duping something else.
- Stackable item dupe bug? - anything stackable can be duped. I think this is also unlikely, for basically the same reasons. Why armbraces instead of ectos? If I assume that they would have gone just as hog-wild with ectos if they could, and it seems that they did not, that implies they could not.
- So that leaves something specific to armbraces Trying to look at the lifecycle of the armbrace one step at a time.
- Gemstone Farming? IMO, this is highly unlikely. Even if someone had an effect farm build (and fed it to a bot), the sheer volume of gemstones needed to get thousands of armbraces just isn't possible.
- DoA rewards chests bugged? This strikes me as unlikely. First, AFIAK other chests use the exact same code, just with different contents, and no one has found a way to exploit any of the other chests. Second, even if there was a chest exploit, doing the DoA quests to reach the exploit would be very time consuming.
- Mallyx quest reward bugged? This is a possibility. There's been bugs with quest rewards and full inventories since day 1. Perhaps it's as simple as having room to take less than 4 gems? Perhaps with partial stacks in your inventory that can accept some of the gems without registering that you accepted them? While it's true that Mallyx hasn't been beaten very much recently, it might only take one person with an un-cashed-in reward.
- Spirit of Truth bugged? This seems most likely. (I thank Shan for explaining the theory to me.) Perhaps there's some way to clear the gems from your inventory during the exchange, get an armbrace anyway, then reacquire the gems. I can imagine 4 possible ways to get an item declared "out" of your inventory: (1) stick it in the trade window, (2) actually trade it, (3) drop it on the ground (Spirit of Truth is in an explorable after all), and (4) drop it in the trashcan (without confirming). Any of these should be testable by trying them on any collector in an explorable zone. (I'll do so tomorrow if no one beats me to it.)
- Coffer bugged? Seems unlikely. This thread reports coffers are functioning normally. Also, I strong suspect that the contents of a coffer is set when it is created, so a rollback exploit (if it existed) wouldn't do any good.
What Now?
Unfortunately, this has been going on too long for a rollback. What else can a-net do?
Making the armbraces go poof is one possibility. The major bad thing about it is that, from my own observations, a fair number of people have innocently traded most valuable items they owned for an armbrace or two - for a-net to turn those armbraces to dust (or chitin fragments, or any other less-valuable object) would really hurt these folks. Another weakness is that it will have to be done very soon or not at all, because the people holding multitudes of armbraces appear to have already started converting them to torment items. If the armbraces aren't wiped out quickly, most of the wrongdoers' ill-gotten inventories will already have been laundered.
A second possibility that's been suggested is to make armbraces un-tradable. This reduces the harm to innocent buyers. (If they wanted a torment weapon, they are unhurt. And if they wanted to speculate on armbraces, at least they get a torment weapon.) However, this shares the same weakness as the above option - the multitudes of armbraces can just be converted to torment weapons and sold.
A third possibility is to do one of the above, and also make torment weapons un-tradeable. That would make the ill-gotten gains completely illiquid, albeit at the expense of ruining part of the economy.
A fourth option is to scan for accounts with unusually large numbers of armbraces and/or torment weapons, yank the logs, then ban.
Ultimately, I suggest a combination approach:
Make armbraces and torment weapons un-tradeable
TOMORROW. Now you have time to scan for accounts with unusually large numbers of these items, go through the logs, figure out how they did it, and ban them. If they're smart, they might delete their inventories before you scan them, but at least that gets rid of the items. Once a cycle of scan-and-ban is complete, armbraces and torment weapons can become tradeable again.
? XD
