Good job frontier! Engineer exploit fixed in 24 hours!

[Saool]

Still no official followup from Frontier, one locked sticky in support.

I'm a big supporter of FDEV, but not a blind one. This seems to be one of the examples of where they have handled the situation very poorly. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I fear the people who knowingly and willingly used the exploit will have been let off the hook and have gotten away with it. Exactly as they had a arrogance to predict in this very thread.

FDEV just look weak coming out of this with the sounds of balls being dropped all over the place.

 

[Vasco Sapien]

I'm a big supporter of FDEV, but not a blind one. This seems to be one of the examples of where they have handled the situation very poorly. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I fear the people who knowingly and willingly used the exploit will have been let off the hook and have gotten away with it. Exactly as they had a arrogance to predict in this very thread.

FDEV just look weak coming out of this with the sounds of balls being dropped all over the place.

Tin foil hat on.

I sometimes wonder how many people at Fdev play Elite and sometimes i wonder if these cheats, exploits, bugs etc are in the game on purpose for these players to use.

 

[Kaocraft]

Tin foil hat.

I sometimes wonder how many people at Fdev play Elite and sometimes i wonder if these cheats, exploits, bugs etc are in the game on purpose for these players to use.

What? As in for the FDEV employees to use? Surely they can just "give" themselves any item or credit quantity or engineers roll that they want to without needing to use a bug or exploit?

 

[Vasco Sapien]

What? As in for the FDEV employees to use? Surely they can just "give" themselves any item or credit quantity or engineers roll that they want to without needing to use a bug or exploit?

You have development access when working on the game. But when out of the office and playing the game at home with a standard client like the rest of us. With their friends, factions and communities in tow.

I did say Tin Foil hat on.

Would be a good reason to not act publicly or at all.

 

[-Denali-]

You have development access when working on the game. But when out of the office and playing the game at home with a standard client like the rest of us. With their friends, factions and communities in tow.

I did say Tin Foil hat on.

Don't know many devs that spend all day building a game and then spend all night playing it. It's probably too much of a time wall for them to bother.

 

[Tono Kopec]

Though as you can imagine and as other already guessed, its not all they had, better yet... the "fix" didn't fix the exploit, it only made it worse. oh and why I am at it... there are groups in this game and many of you here respect but tell me something, how respectful would you be if you knew of the "methods" they had.

As I have said countless times, this exploit is the least of your worries.

Interesting claims from a poster on Ziljan's thread in the Engineering subforum.

 

[Weps]

Still no official followup from Frontier, one locked sticky in support.

If I ever come back to this game, which I'm starting to doubt will happen, given the recent developer attitude towards their customers - I mean lacking dev updates is one thing, but dry answers to serious issues and locked threads is a different story, but I digress... as I was saying... if I ever come back to this game, it's going to have to be all private group.

This coming from a player who has played almost exclusively in Open, had an almost 2-year never-undock-your-ship-unless-in-Open streak and has argued many times in favor of Open as being "the intended mode" for this game.

I guess those guys with their Open PvE concept were right all along, huh..... Who woulda thought!

 

[ozrix84]

if fd won't do anything, they're sending out a clear signal that they don't care about cheating...

 

[Schmack]

Interesting claims from a poster on Ziljan's thread in the Engineering subforum.

Multiply that comment by every multiplayer game in existence with clans/factions and it becomes obvious and a bit nihilistic that appearing to be good is only slightly less desirable than being good. Had this same discussion 20+ years ago regarding exploits and such within groups with good/great reputations. Hell, the US cycling team had a cheater for many years, a couple in fact.

Just another in the endless list of reasons why offline mode was so important to this game and why solo/private is really the only thing that saves it now for many.

 

[Schmack]

Tin foil hat on.

I sometimes wonder how many people at Fdev play Elite and sometimes i wonder if these cheats, exploits, bugs etc are in the game on purpose for these players to use.

I'd say emphatically no. You don't corrupt your own product so you can get some lulz time at home. There would be much much easier, less detectable ways to become a superuser for a developer than to build in a glitch for engineering mods.

 

[Schmack]

I'm a big supporter of FDEV, but not a blind one. This seems to be one of the examples of where they have handled the situation very poorly. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I fear the people who knowingly and willingly used the exploit will have been let off the hook and have gotten away with it. Exactly as they had a arrogance to predict in this very thread.

FDEV just look weak coming out of this with the sounds of balls being dropped all over the place.

I'm a bit of a pessimist myself but FDEV cannot just drop an axe across the project and users without gathering data and building filters to determine which is the baby and which the bathwater. Long term the justice has to be meted out with gameplay in mind, not just a reckoning, as much as we'd like to see that. I'd hate to see someone who legitimately ground their way to a really great roll have their results nullified. You'd need game logs from everyone with X % and above rolls, so they'd offer a bit of a truce: offer up your game logs and if you're not guilty we'll not institute a scorched Earth policy on you.

 

[Gunnet]

Since we have our tinfoil hats on; I'd be very interested to know the identity of 'patient zero' in this case. I don't buy for a second that Frontier would deliberately place a bug like this in the game, but I could buy knowledge of an existing bug leaking. It's not like only a few people are going to have access to the bug tracking system.

I'm a bit of a pessimist myself but FDEV cannot just drop an axe across the project and users without gathering data and building filters to determine which is the baby and which the bathwater. Long term the justice has to be meted out with gameplay in mind, not just a reckoning, as much as we'd like to see that. I'd hate to see someone who legitimately ground their way to a really great roll have their results nullified. You'd need game logs from everyone with X % and above rolls, so they'd offer a bit of a truce: offer up your game logs and if you're not guilty we'll not institute a scorched Earth policy on you.

Engineering rolls are server-side, or at least the exploit's dependence on latency (and common sense security) would suggest so. Unless the server logging is terribly inadequate they should be able to ID cheaters without getting client logs.

 

[Nidhöggr]

Since we have our tinfoil hats on; I'd be very interested to know the identity of 'patient zero' in this case. I don't buy for a second that Frontier would deliberately place a bug like this in the game, but I could buy knowledge of an existing bug leaking. It's not like only a few people are going to have access to the bug tracking system.

usualy exploits go from it's founder to his very close friends/clan. and from there to other close friends and so on, until it reaches someone who don't like this or has an urgent need for attention, then it becomes public and/or get's reported.


actualy i think fdev isn't able to really find out who used it, or only for a short time span, otherwise their logging would explode.

 

[Split]

Would it be useful to "trim" or cap the statistical value of ALL modules currently in the player base?

If Frontier were to cap all engineered values, as a one-time exercise, to a maximum that allows normal play to continue, they will have eliminated the "monster" values without having to throw out all engineer mods, or writing years of code. Call it "the big trim".

I would expect that there would, quite rightly, be an initial uproar from players who had legitimately earned their values, but the data base will be clear of "exploit" ships and, given a bit of time for the grieving process, everyone would be glad to have gotten rid of the exploit ships in the end and get on with having fun.

Alternatively, let the insurance screen take care of it. Instead of replacing every "god-rolled" module with an identical replacement, replace lost modules with a "trimmed" value. Not quite "back to standard", but perhaps a reasonable max value. This will allow attrition to eliminate the problem without having to adjudicate the validity of every module.

Flame suit on, off to the bunker...

 

[tomalus]

This just cements OPEN as closed for me.Gankers got it easy anyway even without exploits, but max rolled (BIS) mods? thats the same as cheating in the best rolled RNG gear in an aarpg.

They should launch a new game mode and make it OPEN ONLY,everyone starts fresh.

 

[tomalus]

Would it be useful to "trim" or cap the statistical value of ALL modules currently in the player base?

If Frontier were to cap all engineered values, as a one-time exercise, to a maximum that allows normal play to continue, they will have eliminated the "monster" values without having to throw out all engineer mods, or writing years of code. Call it "the big trim".

I would expect that there would, quite rightly, be an initial uproar from players who had legitimately earned their values, but the data base will be clear of "exploit" ships and, given a bit of time for the grieving process, everyone would be glad to have gotten rid of the exploit ships in the end and get on with having fun.

Alternatively, let the insurance screen take care of it. Instead of replacing every "god-rolled" module with an identical replacement, replace lost modules with a "trimmed" value. Not quite "back to standard", but perhaps a reasonable max value. This will allow attrition to eliminate the problem without having to adjudicate the validity of every module.

Flame suit on, off to the bunker...

banning 500 acounts would result in minimal cheaters&exploiters next time.But then they would lose alot of regular player %

 

[Blaize Meduenin]

banning 500 acounts would result in minimal cheaters&exploiters next time.But then they would lose alot of regular player %

a loss of 500 cheater accounts would not even be a noticeable loss since they have sold well over 1 million. Thats without even comparing the loss from banning to the loss of people because they let cheaters get away with it.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

a loss of 500 cheater accounts would not even be a noticeable loss since they have sold well over 1 million. Thats without even comparing the loss from banning to the loss of people because they let cheaters get away with it.

FD wont account ban the cheaters imo, not permanently...... Dont get me wrong, part of me would love to see it, I DO believe that in an ideal world one should be able to go to bed with the house unlocked and not get blamed by the police if you get burgled in the night.

but at the end of the day, FD have to take part of the responsibility.

They KNEW about the exploit for 12 months
They have historically been V V lax on other exploits which have been running in the game

It is understandable - tho not excusable - that some folk saw this ENG exploit as just another crack train / mode swapping, mission stacking / instant travel using wing beacon type of exploit.

The 1st port of call HAS to be getting these cheated mods out of the game.
The 2nd port of call needs to be curtailing the "legit" ones left.


then in an ideal world there would be an ingame punishment written into the lore, make it something interesting for everyone to read, making it clear that future indiscretions will not be tolerated. (not mentioning CMDR names however as not wanting to make celebrities out of them)