Perma-Kill all Exploiters

[Hallo]

Sean and I are both in the office working on sorting out yesterday's issues - The negative attack units, messed up data and various other bugs. It's likely that this will take us at least the rest of the day.

Let me make it known that ALL of those people who thought it would be good olde fun to exploit a bug... have now caused utopia to be down for an entire day.

NO, it is NOT the devs fault for letting the bug exist. It is YOUR FAULT for using it. YOU need to realize that YOU are accountable for YOUR OWN ACTIONS! The devs are not only fixing the bug... but ALL OF THE PROBLEMS YOU created by exploiting.

We, as a community, should specifically target ANYONE who does not get deleted who exploited this bug and did not promptly submit an error report in regards to it.

THEY are the reason we're not playing Utopia now. NOT the developers, NOT the faulty program... but people who INTENTIONALLY CHEATED and screwed the game up for everyone.



For those who do not know what Perma-Kill is. It's an MMO term that is used to describe what happens when a character is "killed" and can no be resurrected or recreated. The character is "permanently killed."

[VT2]

So you're saying that if 200 people hadn't 'abused' this most obvious of bugs, the game would somehow be up now?

[Care]

yes.

[pmyraje]

obviously it would.

[VT2]

You must live in the most perfect world ever, with unicorns, popcorn growing on trees, less than 1% of all players using a simple, obvious bug somehow 'destroying' games, and OMAC managing to make things work.

Let's see if I understand this.

You're saying that if 200 people hadn't 'abused' this bug, shooting themselves up to a gazillion networth during the first day of the age, the game would be up and running?
So the bug wouldn't be here, in other words. Maybe it would still be here, but there'd be some kind of understanding between all people that you cannot do braindead things, like attempt to send negative army, because the game doesn't let you a) attack, b) op, c) spell?

Get over yourselves, and get out of here.

[TommyB]

Even with all those CAPS, I'm still of the opinion that the age *should* be reset.

It is also my belief that many who "abused the bug" did so to ensure a reset would have to happen, in contrast to attacking / stealing getting fixed at some unkown time - giving a huge advantage to those happening to be around at that time, not to mention the huge advantage to explorers outgrowing their kingdoms etc. etc. etc.

Just try to keep that in mind once in a while instead of just calling them "bug abusers". This whole discussion is mightily skewed towards puishing evil bug abusers now with no consideration of how messed up OOP really was.

[pmyraje]

Stopping people sending negative troops is a bug fix that takes at most 2 minutes. Fixing the other problems with attacking, thievery and aid can't be all that difficult either unless they really screwed up. So yes, I do believe the game would be up and running now. Not bug-free obviously, certainly not moron-free, but it never is either of those things.

[Shade]

Hallo have you got some Irish in you?

Your constant sycophant like defense of everything the developers do and don't do makes me want to throw up.

So they've decided to restart the Age, which is going to take x amount of hours, because their code runs perfectly and is now bug free?

Me thinks not.

They had the number/location of exploiters by late last night, perhaps if you weren't so busy offering them sexual favours they could have got it up and running by now.

[VT2]

For some reason, I don't think having 200 people with obvious super networth is as bad as 2000 people with super science.

[redskullvw]

They should be deleted because they knew that they were obviously cheating. I don't mind losing to a player who is simply better or has more luck. I don't even mind losing when a province takes advantage of better teamwork and strategy with other kingdom members. But if you are simply cheating for the sake of cheating - in this case exploiting an obvious code error- your personal sense of honor and ability to compete fairly is shown to be so deficient that you really don't fit in with the rest of the honest players who used to be the majority in Utopia.

Was this a pretty simple error in how the game was coded? Yep. But is it the coder's fault that a bunch of you decided to cheat for the heck of it? Nope. Part of the problem right now is people going out of their way to find and abuse code errors for personal advantage. Instead of finding the code error by chance, players are actively looking for the errors so they can gain advantage and also decry the skills of the coders when the exploit becomes public.

We really dont need players like that.

So thanks for ruining my start and that of my kingdomates.

[Landro]

Hallo, are you sure perma-killing them is enough? Why not track down all their living relatives and slowly torture them to death while you're at it?

Even without the bug exploits, there will still many people who saw their strategy fail because they could not grab land, plunder, steal resource or send aid. Do you really blame them for getting frustrated? (I suppose you do) then ofcourse there are the many DE's who didn't plan on NM getting neutered but couldn't reset their race/personality in time.

A full server reset might not be a perfect solution, but it helps more people than just the people who (ab)used the bug.

To end this post, let me say you're a hypocrite. In this post http://forums.joltonline.com/showthr...1#post15030213 you told to Bijo that deletion of cheaters should be looked at on a case by case base rather than to kill them all. I guess some "cheaters" can get away with more than others.

[VT2]

The biggest question is how you're gonna kill someone with 20,000 elites.

"Was this a pretty simple error in how the game was coded? Yep. But is it the coder's fault that a bunch of you decided to cheat for the heck of it?"

Yes.
It's their fault. They gave us a product that didn't work.
Stop pretending it's the users' fault that the game is broken, because it isn't.

We play, they program.
They don't know how to program, so the game doesn't work.

[Hallo]

I happen to know for a FACT that there is a high likelihood that the original exploiter made his initial attack once oop began, thus ruining the game for everyone!


But also, do note, there is absolutely no reason anyone should be exploiting a bug. If you're testing it by doing what 229 people before you did, you're not "testing" you're exploiting [with -10 units it's not for "gain" but for "enjoyment" (satisfy curiosity)].


I do believe that the most serious of these offenders (especially those who kept the numbers low enough to go under the radar) should be removed from the game. We don't need them here.

[pmyraje]

When the players all act like they are in kindergarten the devs have to know that if they don't produce bug-free software, something that never gets done in any software, then the kiddies will exploit it and cheat. So yes, I guess you are right, it is the devs fault for not realising they are programming something for 13 year olds rather than for intelligent adults.

[defunkt]

Let me make it known that ALL of those people who thought it would be good olde fun to exploit a bug... have now caused utopia to be down for an entire day.

NO, it is NOT the devs fault for letting the bug exist. It is YOUR FAULT for using it. YOU need to realize that YOU are accountable for YOUR OWN ACTIONS! The devs are not only fixing the bug... but ALL OF THE PROBLEMS YOU created by exploiting.

We, as a community, should specifically target ANYONE who does not get deleted who exploited this bug and did not promptly submit an error report in regards to it.

THEY are the reason we're not playing Utopia now. NOT the developers, NOT the faulty program... but people who INTENTIONALLY CHEATED and screwed the game up for everyone.

Wow, great logic there buddy. So it is not the developers' fault they left a HUGE, game ruining bug in the code? Let me ask you a question, then: do you think it would be better if those who first found about this bug would not massively distribute it, but rather keep it quiet and start abusing it in the middle of the age, whereas by that time restarting the age would cause a massive leaving of players?

Are you also that naive to think the reset happened only due to this bug? Just in case you happened to miss the other bugs, I'll list some of them:
1. you were not able to successfully attack
2. you were not able to send aid
3. game crashed randomly

These resulted in plans of many KDs getting thrashed (straight out-of-oop wars/waves etc), along with some people who for one reason or another starved and were not able to receive aid from their kd mates, thus losing lots of troops.

You should probably be thankful the bug was found now and not later in the age.