ANet- Why not get exploiters on your side?

Well, ANet, you did what I was afraid you would do. Instead of just banning the dupers, you banned people who had received the duped items too - with the result that several innocent people were banned. Yes, those who knowingly received duped armbraces should be banned. But, because banning them would Inevitably lead to banning some innocents also, I cautioned you to let it go. Now you are in the position of having to undo your mistakes

The results? - just look at these boards: lessening trust in ANet, fear of trading in game, fear of playing with others in game, etc.

A post on another board called the duping "the last straw"

Now, I don't believe this individual incident is the last straw or the end of Guildwars.

But, it does show a trend that will eventually lead there if not stopped now. This event happened because ANet was simply too confident. They were not prepared to find this exploit early and were not prepared about how to handle it when it happened.

Here is the problem - with at least 2 years before GW2 arrives, ANet has to add now content and new features to keep the fans active. The more content and more features that are added, the greater the probability of exploits. If every exploit is handled like this one was, the percentage of unhappy players will continue to grow and the possibility of gaining new players through satisfied customers encouraging friends to join will shrink. The end result will be no more Guild Wars.

If you intend to keep Guild War strong and active, I suggest you become proactive instead of reactive.

First, realize you will not catch or foresee every exploit yourself. This duping thing caused as much damage as it did because you were too over confident. There WILL be exploits you can not prevent.

So I suggest that you get the exploiters on your side - just like companies who get hackers to work for them and pay people to find the security holes in their own software.

People use exploits for two reasons - an ingame advantage for themselves or the prestige of being smart enough or creative enough to trick the program.

Use this these motivations to your benefit.

Give an advantage and prestige to those who find exploits and turn them in to you.

For instance - give a minipet to the first player or guild to show you an exploit. Make it one that can only be obtained in this way. It would become an extreme status symbol or a source of a great deal of cash to the player/s who received it.

Or give a headgear that is specially designed and given only to those who showed you an exploit (make it like the heroes' headgear that gives +1 attribute bonus to whatever attribute rune is added to it - that would be a very visible status symbol)

Of course you could give ingame cash, a special title (like defender of the realm?), a unique weapon, a special lining on their guild cape

Or a combination of rewards.

Just be sure to make the rewards outstanding so that people WANTto tell you what exploits they find instead of using them in the game.

Add some rules, of course - they can not have used the exploit for any ingame advantage over and above what is needed to show the exploit is real and repeatable and they can not have told more players than would be reasonable to test the exploit.

By motivating people to tell you about the exploits instead of using them ingame you will be able to find the exploits earlier and shut them down before they harm the game with out causing ill will by banning people.

You have two choices - continue to be reactive - in which case exploits WILL happen and will affect the game. And you will be forced to react in ways that cause people to leave your game.

Or be proactive, deal with exploits in a positive fashion and create loyalty and enjoyment - and profit -for years to come.

May I suggest you try the latter for once?

Ive said it once and Ill say it again. Anet MAKES money when they ban. if the person does not repurchase an account, Anet has lost nothing. If the person repurchases a new account, Anet MAKES money.

Anet will use any excuse to ban. They love to ban. They could not care less about who is innocent and who is guilty. All they need is an excuse.

So you propose to keep a potential threat in the Guild Wars community
You cant expect them to be honest cheating in the first place is not somehtign you should promote as you do it right now
Game has a desighn and it sepose to folow the design Bugs are being fixed every day or so without help of these called HACKERS Having a enemy to the comunity on your side is like having a poison running in your blood it will get to your heart and eventualy kill you eh Hackers from the moment they exploit they di it for 1 sole reason to take unfair ILLEGAL advantege ove rother players. Its not matter to show how skillfull you are at HACKINg(ILLEGAL) but sole purpose as i meantioned before of an advantage

Rewards for doing your duty you are REQIERED to REPORTT bugs in the game for the sake of the community you are not entiteled to recieve another UNFAIR Advantage over the game why should a plyer 2 weeks into the game get a minipet through accidentaly finding the exploit and a person who was here for a year should recieve same minipet but through dedication?

Al this is just same thing about selfgain and not doing good for comunity i agree the actions were harsh but theu worked and inocents are being reinstated into the game

Haha you make me lough yopu think anet gets its money only from GW?
Lol you are as ignorant as a 1 month old child please who are you fooling anet has a backbone way harder then just to relly on GW its just somehting you dont think about hey hahaha make me laugh so hard

But anyhow what ever you sad is completely wrong they want to keep poeple in beocus eof the Expansion and possible costumer for GW2 your posts is completely unbased

Some and let me emphasise some meaning not all of the people who received duped items deserved the perma-bans.

Some trades were so rediculous the only explanation is a dupe or some kind of exploit.

I am disappointed in Anet for not perma banning the people who received insane numbers of armbraces.

@ Above

Your post fails because you dont know the facts Especially concerning banning innocent people...

Tom, you are on a worthless rant. I don't know how much you play the game, or how active you are on the boards, but A-net does a fantastic job at what they do. They are administering the game as they see fit to, they will not have the money to implement your team of exploit testers as long as they have to employ people to weed out crack-pot suggestions like yours. I don't approve of a lot of the changes they make to the game, but i haven't been tempted to leave the game for it (well, the SR nerf almost brought me to that). Most people will agree that A-Net lived up to their obligation to protect the GW society in their response to the Great Duping Fiasco, most people will agree that a swift, strong response by A-Net is what they want to see happen more when a problem comes to light. Maybe read the boards a little more closely. my 2 cents.

If you ban a player and that person stops buying Guild Wars franchise games, thats a loss. Youve lost a customer and all their possible future purchases.

And if you actually read it, when Anet bans you, they ban YOU, not your account. Buying the game again will not mean you can play again, cause they will ban you again when they find out its you.

If you think banning is about making money, you missed the point completely.

-

On topic, thats what alpha testers are for. They already get a reward, they get to play the game months ahead of everyone else.

I dont know what you talking about especialy when im on the side of unfairly banned players i dont see your reasoning for sain my posts are unbased go to anet website and see the products they offer and then judge my posts k

I think that ANet needs to take a hybrid approach to dealing with exploits, especially in the case of dupes.

First, they should ALWAYS ban accounts of people who actually dupe items.

Second, they should NOT ban anyone who gets duped items in trade, because there is no way to know if the receiving player really knew about the duping.

Third, and perhaps most important to the game economy, is to delete the duped items, removing them from circulation. Blizzard implemented this cleansing function in Diablo 2, known as a "Rust Storm" which periodically went through and auto-deleted duped items from all accounts. I find it hard to believe that ANet's systems cannot differentiate between a valid item and duped one. Afterall, Diablo 2 is many years old, and it could tell the difference...

I understand where you're coming from, but unfortunately there's a huge problem with this. One person can dupe, pass the item to his friend, and that's that. It would be nice if things were that easy and clear cut, but they're not. I've seen this exact scenario happen in other games. Most of these cases have to be investigated individually to see if there is any evidence of 2 people being in this sort of thing together.

A net company policy is to ban all those who violate the user agreement, banning you is just one extention of the many route they can take, since you agreeing to the contract is legal binding. If they wanted too, they could sue you, and who is to say if all those gold farmers who are selling the stuff on ebay are not being sued.

That being said, you as a player also have rights, however remenber to use common sense, if something seems to go to be true then most likely it is. Same thing in the real world, you buy stolen property not knowing it was stolen, you can still be prosicuted for the transaction.

Banning may not seem fair, but it could be worse, now for the people caught up in all of this, yes I think Anet should not ban a player who was indirectly involved, such as a player who bought a duped item, but they should be given a warning saying that next time they may not be so lucky.

Just remember if something seems suspect, best thing is to steer clear and report it to cover your ass. Oh and if you feel that you have been wrongfully banned, explain to Anet that you want it undone or you are will to take legal action to see that it is delt with correctly, because to ban someone with no reason or evidence is consumer fraud.

They did what the needed to do. They stopped the dup by shutting off the reconnect. They then “banned” “reviewed” “released some” and “stopped others”. Hind sight is 20/20. I am just glad they did it the way they did. They could have just shut down the whole game to review it.

Think about it. They had to ban people that received dupes in large quantities.

Step 1 - find how the dupe worked. (done, thanks to folks on this board.)

Step 2 - write a script that searches histories for characters/accounts actually used in the dupe and ban them (done. The speed at which the helpful guys that found and reported the process got banned seems a strong indication that this initial ban sweep was entirely script-based.)

Now, do you really suppose or expect people to believe that all of the dupers have only one account? All of the dupers were fool enough to dupe on their main account? Of course not! So ...

Step 3 - For every account banned because of duping, search through said account's trades. Flag every one-sided trade that account made (where they gave stuff to another account w/out anything significant in return.) Now, those accounts that got the goodies, you have to go through those and decide which ones are "obviously" intentional passing of ill-gotten booty to knowing parties.

There were innocent people caught in the first ban sweep; their accounts were restored. There's certainly the possibility that innocent people get caught in the second sweep. There's plenty of indication that those truly innocent of wrongdoing (duping or being dumb enough to flame ANet in their support request) can work with support to get the issue resolved.

It's not rocket science folks.

I'm sure there is the rare exception, but honestly, every thread someone starts here saying they were wrongly banned ... just looks to me like a duper trying to stir the pot. :/



And another thing, one-sided trading alone doesn't get you banned. I have a few accounts back from when that was the only way to get additional character slots. I pass stuff back and forth to my alternate accounts all the time. None of them are banned.

I stand corrected, you are absolutely right. In this latest version of the Eula, I think #14?, they ban you and not just your account. This is the opposite of what the first 10 Eula's and Eula rewrites said, and opposite of what I have from ANET in writing. However, in all fairness, what I have is from about 7 months ago.

So, I guess if you are banned, and buy a new account, you now have to go through the horribly difficult procedure of coming up with a new email address. Do you think Anet may actually suspect this "clever trick"?

And while we are on the subject, from what I hear, the duping process was simple. Where did it come from in the first place? Well, Anet created it themselves, didn't they?
Yes. It was designed into the game itself. So effectively, Anet is banning people for using the game the way it was designed, but they didnt realize they screwed up in a blatantly major way, so its the dupers fault. Thats the definiton of an exploit. Don't get me wrong, people make mistakes. But Anet promised duping was impossible. Anet was wrong. However, I agree, the dupers deserve to be banned, because they took advantage of Anets stupidity. And that is the definition of an exploit. Still, it was Anets stupidity.

wait... is Guild Wars some sort of utopia? No, it's a game, just a game. The people on this board don't represent the large portion of the population, so don't stretch the truth. Guild Wars isn't "dieing", people are still playing it now as we speak, if people keep playing the game, if people keep buying the game, it's cause they still like it. Incidents such as the item dupes are very bad, but people have a tendancy to forget and move on. Anet is not doing anything wrong, they are taking the precautious approach that, in their position, who be exemplary and just. They are trying to cure the problem, rather then taking any possibility of leaving a small chance of transgressors unbanned. If this means banning some innocent people, then it is a sacrifice that only strong people can make, which is what Anet has done, and we should respect it. Now they will not go back and apologize, and if they do, we should be grateful. They are taking the iniative to unban the people that judge fair, which is something correct, and that too shows a patience, from the part of Anet and the User.

Anet cannot perfect the game on its own, it needs help and support of the members that are enjoying its game. There will always be those willing to ruin it for the others to make profit for themselves, but sooner or later, they have what it is coming for them, and never has Anet failed in that case. Most people tend to beatdown on the Anet staff (and particularly Gaile Gray), yet we should be thanking them for the hours of fun they have provided. We are a selfish community.

1. they did that didn't they?

2. dupe on 1 account, transfer to another. anet have logs too, they can probably verify that they were perhaps using guildmates to store items. pretty sure they're only banning those who knowingly accepted dupe items, innocent ones are having their accounts reinstated

3. what about the people who traded stuff like their mini pandas and other limited + unique stuff for arm braces unknowingly? they lose their stuff because of exploiters? plz no, that'd just create even more whine threads on guru

Anet did not create the exploit. They added the reconnect feature that opened up the way for an exploit to be found. There is a difference and it has to do with intent.
You really think that intentionally disconnecting yourself, logging in to the same account from another computer, trading, and then logging back in on the disconnected one was how the reconnect function was designed? wow . .. there's bugs in all code and Anet's track record of major bugs is fairly good when you compare it to other large programs (ahem microsoft . ..). it definetely is the dupers' fault if they chose to take advantage of a hole in the code. I don't recall ever seeing Anet saying that duping was impossible, maybe harder since things are server side but impossible? When it comes to coding, pretty much nothing is impossible.

If you really think that it was Anet's stupidity, I would love to see you find a single program that isn't open source that has zero bugs in it. Should they have found this bug when testing? Sure since it was just a rehash of dupes from other games but most game programmers tend not to think of ways that get around their own code. The reconnect function worked as intended but some people found a way to use it in a way that was not intended.

That's the point. If ANet adds more features, which they must to keep the game alive, then there WILL be exploits. There is no way around that. All the Alpha/Beta tests in the world will not change this. I am not an never have blamed ANet that there are exploits - it's going to happen, as the current one shows.

People WILL use exploits for their own benefit. Not all the banning in the world nor all the EULAs in the world will stop that - just look at the continued presence of bots.

There are, therefore 2 choices.

Wait until the exploit leaks beyond the group of people who first discovered it and finally comes to the attention of someone who is altruistic enough to tell ANet - by which time it may have already had a tremendous affect on the game. One of those being that innocent people will be caught up in the following investigation - that this is a fact is being shown as innocent people's accounts are unblocked.

Or give incentives to players to make ANet the FIRST one who is informed about any exploit discovered. This gives ANet the chance to fix the exploit BEFORE it affects the game and BEFORE they have to do investigations that hurt the innocent as well as the guilty.

And people, please read - I did not say to give awards to every exploiter - only those who told ANet WITHOUT using it to their own advantage or telling others beyond what was necessary to prove that an exploit is present.

(I would like to say that the person should not use the exploit or tell anyone about it at all- but that is not always possible. In order to tell ANet how a dupe worked, someone would have to have another player involved in the testing. In an older exploit in which you could enter certain explorable areas with out being transported you would wind up getting at least a small portion of it mapped with no enemies before realizing that a glitch had happened. No, I'm NOT saying reward the person who duped 250 armbraces or who mapped an entire explorable area because of a glitch. Only reward those who used the exploit no more than was reasonably needed to give Anet the information they would need to fix it.)

In other words, I am encouraging rewarding the HONEST - not the cheaters.

In any case - here are some facts ANet has to deal with:

Fact 1: Exploits WILL be possible - this can not be questioned - it has happened
Fact 2: Exploits WILL be discovered by players (often by accident) - this can not be questioned - it has happened
Fact 3: Many Players WILL use exploits to benefit themselves - this can not be questioned - it has happened
Fact 4: Exploits that are not turned in to ANet immediately WILL negatively impact the game - it has happened and I believe we still do not know the full affect of the present one.

So you have 2 choices

1: Continue with the present system in which cheaters use an exploit until an altruistic person eventually gets wind of it and turns it in. (By the way, this is the view that coddles cheaters because it allows the cheater to continue until the situation finally comes to the attention of ANet. Do you honestly think ANet managed to get all the the exploiters or that many cheaters did not manage to get a great deal of money off of one account onto another before getting caught?)

Or 2: give incentives for the honest to remain honest and for the person who would become a cheater to chose the honest route instead.

Punishment following the crime seldom has as much impact as preventing the crime altogether.

To those of you who object to rewarding honest behavior, I have a question. Why do you want the exploits to remain in the game longer than absolutely necessary? Why do you want the exploit to be untouched until that rare honest and altruistic individual finds out about it and informs Anet for no reward? What do you stand to gain by ANet waiting that long? Why do you object to ANet offering a reward in order to get information sooner? Why are you coddling cheaters?

Skipped over the page, read a few words like Anet makes money from banning and innocent people got banned.

*closes thread*

Actually, when people are banned, they get pissed, then they leave the game.