I disagree with this hard line. I understand the emotion that leads to it, just don't entirely sympathise.
(...)
But do I blame those that took advantage of the sloppy code? No. It's not great, and I agree it's not very sports-like of people to take advantage of such a feature, but I've long since given up of the idea of honour in sports & games. If people can exploit, many will - that is life - we shouldn't allow them to exploit.
I would just be happy if they levelled things out without unnecessary reprisals or recriminations. None of us are perfect.
i agree with some parts of your post.... FD have been so lax with other exploits you can imagine why some thought they would get away with this one too.
Yes. I honestly think the way forwards is for Frontier - somehow - to level the playing field and so far as possible attempt to heal the game and the fractures in the community. It's obvious that following the video report of February 2017, Frontier made a serious mistake in letting this thing continue. The player base do not by any means bear all of the blame here.
I think the calls for punishment are understandable yet wrong. They lack context. What has taken place here is the inevitable product of how ED has been developed. That development has led to a firm expectation amongst a section of the player base that it is foolish to handicap yourself by refraining from exploiting, and that you had better play a different game if that’s your thing.
After some 2.5 years of Live, the expectation amongst longstanding Open-world PvP-ers is that Frontier will with each patch introduce a number of gaping holes which they will not fix for months, if ever, even when those are not just identified and reported to them multiple times but even form the basis of videos and complaint threads. And that when (or if) fixed the fix will be prospective only – nobody loses their stuff.
This expectation is not just reasonable it is demonstrably correct. Basically inevitable. Witness:
(A)
The Cargo Scan Exploit (2014 to early 2015). This is actually the only exploit, beyond the RNG g1/g5 one, actually worthy of that name. But it infected the very birth of ED’s Open World PvP because – let’s finally admit it – much of the ‘golden age of PvP’ around Leesti in 1.0 to 1.2 was directly funded by the cargo scan exploit, which enabled several PvP groups to amass infinite credits and hence focus entirely on building their skills. All those creds, still in game.
(B)
Robigo Money Printing (late 2015 to early 2016). This was certainly not an exploit because Frontier actually supported it, via implementing an in-game system of fines for doing it. Cmdr Sundae of SDC actually put a video guide to it on these forums. Tragi-comically, most users didn’t bother watching his video and replied with non-sequitur posts about smuggling, never even realising that it was a guide to making 50,000,000 creds/hr without leaving the station. All creds, still in game.
(C)
Thermal Cascade Bug. Frontier have so far failed to fix or even mention thermal cascade even though it behaves completely inconsistently with their stated objectives. Innumerable posts on subject. Still in game.
(D)
Premium Ammo Bug. Took over a year to fix. Why?
(E)
Combat Loggers. I’m not talking about the isolated examples here, but the aggressive bottom-feeders with thousands of sidey-kills. All still in game, except for one guy who was also accused of hacking.
(F)
RNG g1/g5 exploit. Allegedly reported in Beta 2.1. Definitely reported in February 2017. Definitely video of it provided in February 2017. Nothing happened.
Now, against that history, let’s consider what players were reasonably going to believe.
I’m going to use the example of Smiling Dog Crew here, not for controversy, but because afaik they are the only group to have had the candour to have a senior member actually put a timeline on this thing (it’s been publicly confirmed on reddit that they learned of the RNG exploit in March 2017). What they did with that knowledge is not for me to say. Although I would like to thank them for their constructive proposals about solutions.
But, against the true history of this game, if your whole ED is apex Open-world PvP, what would you do? You know it’s been reported, with video. You didn’t invent it, you just learned of it. You know others have learned of it and are already farming it. You know Frontier have done nothing. You know that Frontier never do anything. You know that everyone always gets to keep their stuff.
Against that backdrop, I’d go so far as to say that your choice would be simple: exploit up, 24/7, production line style, for as long as you can stand it, until your fleet is tip-top, or leave. Because the only things you would feel sure about would be that everyone else will be setting up production lines, and that they will be keeping everything their god roll factory can make, even after the patch – if any – ever comes.
) we really do need to know that they ( the exploiters) are no longer profiting from the exploit by being allowed to keep modules, again no names needed but we need to know those modules are gone.
![[VR] Mad Mike](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/27/27910.jpg?1553527108){kind=avatar}
