FDev, you need to deal with the on-foot merit *exploit/cheat* quickly.

[galahad2069]

Yes, to many players the game is "make a number increase" rather than "have a good time".

To many others making a number increase is only a means to an end though. I, for example, was certainly trying to make the number increase as fast as possible. Now that I have unlocked the module that was locked behind that number, I'm just having a good time. Haven't even bothered to look at that number ever since.

 

[Rat Catcher]

I'm just having a good time

Without being too cringy...

That appears to be your attitude toward the game in general, which is refreshing!

A bit like the little gang I play with, have fun, even if it means Notoriety 10...

 

[Helmut Grokenberger]

playing a game to have fun is wrong. You play games to complete them...

 

[Vlad plus]

playing a game to have fun is wrong. You play games to complete them...

and suffer in the process!

 

[photomankc]

nah, it still pays less than Rare Trading and it is more boring too.

It is already fixed, until next rebalance...

You can’t aquire 90 merits per 10 secs rare trading. Boring isn’t going to matter.

 

[Chaines]

It would have been nice if Fdev communicated about this. Something along "this will be fixed and abusers punished" or "it will be fixed, you can abuse it until then"
Because it's infuriating trying to fight that the legit way.

 

[Koma Pahu]

Without being too cringy...

That appears to be your attitude toward the game in general, which is refreshing!

A bit like the little gang I play with, have fun, even if it means Notoriety 10...

Notoriety 10 is the biggest Notoriety number…

 

[Therinfluffs]

playing a game to have fun is wrong. You play games to complete them...

Natural merit progression is the most depression inducing thing in existence. People don't play games to suffer chronic depression either.

Gathering merits isn't fun, actively trying to collect them isn't fun, the amount you get for simply playing as you normally would isn't meaningful or fun, playing with the content they unlock, and freedom from having to grind them is.

I do not understand this argument that forced grind is fun.

If you need a perpetual carrot on a stick to keep you going, maybe you're just doing this to waste time rather than actually enjoying what you're doing.

 

[CMDR Vhi]

It would have been nice if Fdev communicated about this. Something along "this will be fixed and abusers punished" or "it will be fixed, you can abuse it until then"
Because it's infuriating trying to fight that the legit way.

Have they ever punished people for utilizing an exploit? I've been playing for a while now and I don't recall it ever happening.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Have they ever punished people for utilizing an exploit? I've been playing for a while now and I don't recall it ever happening.

Yes. It's very much depended on two things about the exploit:
1) Could you plausibly do it deliberately and not realise it was an exploit without a substantial amount of self-delusion?
2) Could you plausibly do it accidentally while not paying attention / being a beginner / etc?

In the cases where the answer to those is both "no", people have sometimes received punishments which go beyond "loss of things gained through the exploit" - the most infamous case was in the early days of engineering where people found a really obscure way to engineer modules without spending materials, and then carefully kept its existence out of public view for months: in that case, any use of the exploit, even once "to see if it worked", resulted in all your engineered modules however obtained being reverted to stock.

In cases where one or both is "yes", Frontier have tended to stick to just removing the gains (and sometimes not always that) rather than actual punishments.

In this case ... it's probably not necessary to do more than remove the merits gained through use from both system and personal accounts. Accidental users will lose a trivial number of merits and possibly not even notice. Deliberate users will lose a lot, and it's not worth pushing more than that and risking catching an accidental user who'd just lost track of which data ports they'd done yet. The deliberate users will still have wasted their time all week which could have been spent getting merits they'd keep, failed to do anything useful on a system level, and that's enough to get the point across.

 

[Elpapo]

Have they ever punished people for utilizing an exploit? I've been playing for a while now and I don't recall it ever happening.

Yes, they did. On few occasions actually. Most notable was this:

Back in the day, many years ago, when engineering was total RNG casino grind fest, nightshady from 13th legion revealed to public, a method to chesse G5 rolls wich where much, much more expensive compared to now, as said exploit allowed make G5 rolls in cost of G1. Now, within old system, there was thing known as "god rolls" wich on average happen once in about 500-1000 rolls, for example, dirty drives could go up to like 130%, but there was also "secondary rolls" wich could raise that up to 142% - and every module could have something like that.... things such as size 5 shields that could be mounted on cutter (with 10%+ extra optimal mass bonus) and some modules are even better than current ones, due of that. This allowed to combination of bonus stats, wich are now absent from many modules.

the most infamous case was in the early days of engineering where people found a really obscure way to engineer modules without spending materials, and then carefully kept its existence out of public view for months

Yup, I belive it was known for selected few PVP groups like 3-4 months before it went to public, but in end, all of them got punished.


Many major PVP groups and inviduals did that, to gain advantage vs others, and when Fdevs take care of it, they actually rolled back everyone who used exploit, they lost thier moduels gained that way, with lots of cmdrs had been even banned.

I was one of few who didnt do that (despite knowing about it few weeks before it went public), as I predicted back then, that it would be rolled back sooner or later wich eventually did..... and thus, my "God rolls" wich where obtained by my hard work, did not lost them, and was even able to have advantage for few weeks in PVP, before "punished" cmdrs managed to get decent bulids by farming like anyone else had.

 

[CMDR Vhi]

Yes. It's very much depended on two things about the exploit:
1) Could you plausibly do it deliberately and not realise it was an exploit without a substantial amount of self-delusion?
2) Could you plausibly do it accidentally while not paying attention / being a beginner / etc?

Yes, they did. On few occasions actually. Most notable was this:

Since then there's been more than just a few "gold rushes" that have obviously been unintended but FDev took a mea culpa stance about, and just fixed the bug and left it at that.

Hell, unless they've fixed them the last time I've cared to look, there's still exploits revolving around manipulating the BGS that haven't been addressed. I don't think FDev cares quite as much about this sort of thing than they did back, what, 7 years ago?

Though, with all that being said, they did recently undo the progress people made via dumping crazy amount of exploration data, so maybe they'll undo this progress too.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Since then there's been more than just a few "gold rushes" that have obviously been unintended but FDev took a mea culpa stance about, and just fixed the bug and left it at that.

"Gold rushes" are tricky because generally the thing which makes them a gold rush is not "doing it" but "being able to do it a lot faster than Frontier expected".

That's a balancing/design flaw but it's not an exploit as such because there's nothing illegitimate about doing it once (or even a few times a day). You probably weren't intended to be able to turkey-shoot Orthrus at Spire sites quite as efficiently as some people managed, but you certainly were supposed to go there, look around, and maybe shoot a few of them.

You weren't intended to be able to stack 20 missions up in a particular way in a particular system with a weird combination of circumstances ... but doing those missions or stacking three or four of them because you got lucky? Sure, go ahead.

So it's very hard for Frontier to do anything but fix and move on for those, because not all of the gains from that action were illegitimate

(There was a really broken one once involving selling a specific cargo back to the station it had just been bought from for a massive profit which passed the "you cannot possibly believe this was supposed to work this way" test and did get the earnings revoked, though.)

Hell, unless they've fixed them the last time I've cared to look, there's still exploits revolving around manipulating the BGS that haven't been addressed. I don't think FDev cares quite as much about this sort of thing than they did back, what, 7 years ago?

BGS manipulation is also tricky because, for the most part, such exploits just make it easier to put your chosen faction into control of a system. But if you're not playing the game with the purpose of doing that, you might accidentally or deliberately do the same thing at least sometimes. (And they don't necessarily give any personal profit that could be revoked, either)

So e.g. is it an exploit that you can stack up mission failures very rapidly by taking 20 passenger missions and then shooting the station while inside the docking bay? Sure, probably that's not intended behaviour. Have other people, at various points, stacked up 20 passenger missions, trusted auto-launch to do its job, and then found their Cutter irrevocably wedged in the mailslot? I expect so.

Also tricky of course in that the BGS has daily ticks [1] and everything depends on everything else, so it has to be a complete disaster for a rollback not to be a worse cure than the original problem [2] ... and ultimately "games players make up with the BGS" are all entirely unofficial, so is it actually a problem for Frontier if system control can be changed/maintained "too easily" if the actual 'background' purpose of it gets to carry on?


[1] That said, if this data point problem makes it past tonight (which is looking increasingly likely now), that's also going to be a problem for any rollback, because people will start planning their next week - and maybe getting assignments - based on what actually happened. So that will be fun...

[2] Has happened twice, I think, due to some ultra-serious bugs after a patch, and then only by a day or two at a time. Most exploits of the BGS sort take a lot longer to come to light than that.

 

[Elpapo]

Since then there's been more than just a few "gold rushes" that have obviously been unintended but FDev took a mea culpa stance about, and just fixed the bug and left it at that.

There was cases where cmdrs who gained credits in by wierd exploits, had taken thier credits away earned by exploit, like when there was cargo duplication, at very first months after relase. There bit more, but I cant really recall what it was, too long time ago. But yeah, mostly was just "fix" and those who gained anything by rush, didnt get penalized, for most of time.

Hell, unless they've fixed them the last time I've cared to look, there's still exploits revolving around manipulating the BGS that haven't been addressed. I don't think FDev cares quite as much about this sort of thing than they did back, what, 7 years ago?

Surely they been more proactive in past, with rolling back, thats for sure.

I think it was more about amount of complains and whenever exploit would affect others gameplay too much or not, in order for Fdevs do something more than usual "fix", atleast in past.

BGS dont directly affects other gameplay (not like using some kind of BGS bug, would cause your ship go boom), like mentioned exploit did.
If you can go into archive of this forums from time when nightshady revealed this method to public, You would find that forum went nuts, one of biggest outrages I ever saw there....

At time, when you had normal G5 bulid, and would meet fully "godrolled" other G5, diffrence in speed, firepower, defences, was quite obvious.... even if you where more skilled than the other, you still would lose against such... it was more than "unfair"...
Getting into competetive PVP was basically out of reach, to almost anyone who could not afford for months of grind or having godly luck, or connections within major PVP groups to be not wing ganked by them.

And many cmdrs complained about it, A lot. This also later caused re-design of old system to what we currently have, as even when exploit was "fixed" the mentioned diffrence of preformance of same ship, and amount of grind required to obtain just one, was subject of many complains about it for long time until that system was replaced.

Though, with all that being said, they did recently undo the progress people made via dumping crazy amount of exploration data, so maybe they'll undo this progress too.

They did? For real? Are you sure?

From what I heard, it was just simply nerfed merits gained so others would not able to repeat same trick.... but to outright delete merits? Now, this is highly controversial move from Fdevs, since technically, exploration data in large amount, its tons of work, given if really happen, to roll back gains from such data.

 

[CMDR Vhi]

They did? For real? Are you sure?

See below.

Greetings Commanders,

Following a review of the use of exploration data and trading on Powerplay 2.0 we will be making the following changes:

• We will be temporarily disabling the merit and system score gains for Exploration and Genetic Samples data for Powerplay 2.0
• You can continue to explore, gather and sell data but it will not count towards Powerplay 2.0
• We have a deployed a fix to balance Powerplay 2.0 trading - Trades will no longer result in excessive merit generation. We will continue to monitor and adjust as needed.
• We will be adjusting the Powerplay 2.0 ranks of Commanders who have excessively benefited from trading and exploration data
• Once our review is complete we will announce when exploration data will be eligible to count towards Powerplay 2.0

We thank you for your patience.

Adjusting the ranks is what I was referring to.

 

[Elpapo]

I see. Well, so Rollback did happen again, huh. Only small fraction of cmdrs was affected, but I am strongly on opinion, that given amount of work required to obtain such amounts of data, it should be rewarding, to say atleast. But that also proves, that any "grind" wich done before PP2.0, is simply invalid, and fact that Fdevs really wanna force its player base to grind again.

This is why probly why minined goods dont gives merits, if not from same system... as since more than few cmdrs, have carriers full of mined stuff, and they would surely use it to gain huge amount of merits.

 

[galahad2069]

(There was a really broken one once involving selling a specific cargo back to the station it had just been bought from for a massive profit which passed the "you cannot possibly believe this was supposed to work this way" test and did get the earnings revoked, though.)

That one was hilarious.

The commodity was called "Rockforth Fertiliser" or something like that.
There was a CG or some kind of a similar community event, you literally received a message ingame, encouraging you to go to a specific station to haul these fertilisers somewhere, in order to help a specific minor faction for reasons I cannot recall.

It did not take long before people discovered that the exact same station which sold these fertilisers was totally willing to buy them back for a higher price, thanks to a bug. In a matter of minutes the station was full of Cutters sitting on the landing pads for hours, buying and selling the thing, making giga billion credits of profit in the process.

It was a pretty obvious exploit (even though it was literally fdev who sent people there to deal in these commodities), so the next day fdev unmercifully deducted the sum these people made during the fertiliser business. They even took away ships and modules if it was necessary (if there was no longer sufficient liquid credits on your account). But they forgot to take NPC crew into account. If you had a hired SLF pilot, the sum that fdev deducted was more than the amount of money you actually made (because the NPC crew sucked away a certain percent of the fertiliser profit from you, as from any other income). If you were not very rich before the fertiliser trade and you made a very large sum of money using the exploit, you could happen to find yourself sidewindered the next day.

 

[Easy]

Have they ever punished people for utilizing an exploit? I've been playing for a while now and I don't recall it ever happening.

Didn't players get punished for an engineering exploit that was related to a UI glitch on the materials spent for upgrades?

Something about module removal? Long time ago.

 

[Ian Skippy]

In this case ... it's probably not necessary to do more than remove the merits gained through use from both system and personal accounts. Accidental users will lose a trivial number of merits and possibly not even notice. Deliberate users will lose a lot, and it's not worth pushing more than that and risking catching an accidental user who'd just lost track of which data ports they'd done yet. The deliberate users will still have wasted their time all week which could have been spent getting merits they'd keep, failed to do anything useful on a system level, and that's enough to get the point across.

Counterpoint: You can easily set a threshold. Nobody got 25k merits per hour on foot legit. Nobody got 25k merits per hour by accident. And this was intentionally done to screw over the work of countless other people.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Natural merit progression is the most depression inducing thing in existence. People don't play games to suffer chronic depression either.

Gathering merits isn't fun, actively trying to collect them isn't fun, the amount you get for simply playing as you normally would isn't meaningful or fun, playing with the content they unlock, and freedom from having to grind them is.

I do not understand this argument that forced grind is fun.

If you need a perpetual carrot on a stick to keep you going, maybe you're just doing this to waste time rather than actually enjoying what you're doing.

Forced grind has always been at the core of the game. You need to get through it to get to the fun.