These cheats clearly don't realize how lightly they've gotten off. A lot of MMOs would have perma-banned them, instead they just need to grind their modules the same the rest of us did.
Can't really stress that enough. One of the moans we hear a lot from pvp-focused players (not entirely without justification to be honest) is that some players who play in open don't seem to grasp (or would prefer to ignore) some of the core concepts of the MMO experience, such as not being able to dictate other player's behaviour within the rules of the game and so on.
Thing is, it cuts both ways and in most MMOs you would have an entirely reasonable expectation of just getting your account deleted for flagrant abuse of an exploit which allowed you to obtain top-tier gear and the resulting pvp advantages without paying the required in-game resources to do so. It's as textbook a case as you're likely to see.
FDev have in my opinion been pretty lenient here, not to mention that from what a few players have said in passing comment it took some 'encouragement' even to bring them to the point of doing what they did.
I actually think that if FDev treated this as a high water mark for people being able to get away with things and began to be more robust in applying sanctions to some of the things the more pvp-focused players have complained about during the time I've played (combat logging being the obvious one) the game may move forward in a more positive way for everybody from this.
Much of the salt being thrown around at the moment is due to players feeling that certain actions are being punished whilst others aren't and I have to be honest and say the overall impression I have of FDev's approach to punishing exploiters, notwithstanding their excellent response to this particular incident, is not really that positive.
I'm sure someone will ask how I can say that with no evidence and that FDev do in fact punish loads of people, it's just that mysteriously none of them ever then complain on reddit or other gaming forums about those punishments unliike with pretty much every game out there, also that all the anecdotal evidence of people repeatedly reporting people and yet still seeing them in game ban-free are fictitious, which is fine but know what? I just don't believe it. Sorry and all that.
I would actually like to see FDev publish the numbers of bans and other sanctions they hand out by broad category, enough to give an idea of the type of transgression at least. It's not a big job to do it say once a month or every couple of months, it doesn't breach any data handling requirements because they're not giving out personal information, or even player account information, just numbers. What it would help with is addressing the perception that they are soft on cheating because really, if you look around the internet you will see that said about this game and that's honestly not a look that any game company should want.
Especially not one which is about to launch an expansion onto a new platform.
Going along with that, we could do with a bit less hand-sitting and trying to please everybody in terms of whether certain actions are bannable or otherwise punishable. You can't please everybody and trying to do it is the best way to ensure you please nobody.
I struggle to think of another game where it's almost impossible to get a simple straight answer to 'is X an exploit' for example, with the best we get sometimes being a member of the dev team giving a personal opinion, which is nice from an engagement point of view for sure but worthless in terms of defining what people can and cannot do.
If the expansions after 2.4 are intended to flesh out the existing content, that is a critical aspect of it that shouldn't be ignored - flesh out your rules, remove ambiguity, provide clarity. That way, you give yourselves a clearer mandate to take action and remove much of the bickering about those topics on the forums.
If I'm wrong and there are in fact players getting banned all the time for transgressions, show us that's the case. If I'm not wrong though, I'd challenge FDev to learn the very important lesson that this thread should provide - you
can't be too harsh on cheats because they poison games and taking action against them (all of them) is something that the vast majority of your players will always support, as long as the rules themselves are clearly defined first.
