Operation: Hostile Mergers Leaderboard Information

[Geraaltix]

4 minutes ago, Gabbynaru said:

That would work only if the game was stagnating, which it isn't. Plus, since this is a free to play game, it's very easy to just make a new account, level it up and sabotage the next leaderboard. VPNs are commonly accessible, so banning those people completely is outright impossible.

I'm not sure I really believe people won't eventually get bored of creating new accounts just to exploit their way to the top of leaderboards, just to get taken down again. I'm certain the vast majority will cut it out, even if a few diehard scumbags keep going at it.

 

Especially if it's only a handful of clans notorious for this kind of behavior.

[DeMonkey]

2 minutes ago, KelvinM6 said:

so I feel a lot of players will find their accounts banned

The worst that has happened at the most is that their accounts have been temporarily suspended until June 3rd from what I read, that is not the same as a ban.

It is explicitly stated that a ban will follow if the same account is found doing similar things in future events. Anyone suspended at this time just needs to be careful in the future, and use basic common sense to determine what's intended game design and what isn't.

Glitching enemies out of the map "on tiles with a bugged teleport volume resulting in insta-death" is absolutely not going to be intended. These are the only threat to the mission, insta killing them ad infinitum is so blatantly not intended that people only have themselves to blame. 

[(XBOX)The Neko Otaku]

I assume these exploits will be fixed for the console build

[MaxCrazyDude]

43 minutes ago, Gabbynaru said:

Stop doing leaderboards and competitive stuff. Competition always brings the worst in people and they'll always try to cheat to get ahead. Always. This is supposed to be a co-op game, so why not encourage more cooperative gameplay rather than competitive?

Could not agree more.

[-AG-Nums]

Finally! Thanks to the dev team, gottem it totally right on this one. Competitive events are hard, specially if you stopped doing them for a while. Hopefully this sets a solid precedent and we can have more comp event that are engaging, rewarding and have a sense of fairness to them. Massive move by the dev team.

[Aeon94]

14 minutes ago, Takkov said:

And where is the exploit there? If you can throw an enemy into a pit to kill it, that makes sense from any point of view I can imagine. In fact, that's what you are supposed to do in quite a couple of games I played in the first place. See: Divinity Original Sin 1/2, Nioh, Dark Souls, Pathfinder (Pen&Paper)

None of those games have competition between players / clans. They are co-op / singleplayer ( barring Dark Souls invasion pvp ).

Throwing enemies into pit ( and instantly kill them ) allowed them to complete distruption consoles at ease in a short time and gave them upper hand in event leaderboard.

[KelvinM6]

1 minute ago, DeMonkey said:

and use basic common sense to determine what's intended game design and what isn't.

I could tell it wasn't intended, just like how not every legitimate tactic or strategy is intended, this isn't automatically worth a ban, or the suspension that is also a ban that isn't permanent, hence why I called it a ban.

 

2 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Glitching enemies out of the map "on tiles with a bugged teleport volume resulting in insta-death" is absolutely not going to be intended

If you read my post, my biggest point was that this thing going on under the hood wasn't 100% apparent.

[Lance_Lionroar]

43 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Voltage's knickers will turn inside out though, and then we have to see ranting about it on every event patch note. 

*Looks at leaderboard*

ARE YOU HAPPY NOW VOLTAGE? IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?

 

[LULAWS]

So using in-game mechanics and doing things that wouldn't happen if you guys had designed and tested it properly is a bannable offense. Gotcha.

[Takkov]

1 minute ago, DeMonkey said:

Glitching enemies out of the map "on tiles with a bugged teleport volume resulting in insta-death" is absolutely not going to be intended. These are the only threat to the mission, insta killing them ad infinitum is so blatantly not intended that people only have themselves to blame. 

Enemies dying for falling is expected, I as a player dont know that such a thing is now counted as an exploit. If you go this route you can also say that building monster farms in minecraft is exploiting for the very same reason.

[DeMonkey]

1 minute ago, KelvinM6 said:

I could tell it wasn't intended, just like how not every legitimate tactic or strategy is intended, this isn't automatically worth a ban, or the suspension that is also a ban that isn't permanent, hence why I called it a ban.

To clarify for you, a suspension is something put in place with the intent to undo, much like the suspension some accounts will have received. A ban is more severe, there is generally no intention to undo a ban down the line. No accounts have been banned at this point.

Calling a suspension a ban is exaggerating, you can do better.

2 minutes ago, Takkov said:

Enemies dying for falling is expected, I as a player dont know that such a thing is now counted as an exploit.

The only threat to a mission being able to be insta-killed is not expected. Don't make me laugh.

3 minutes ago, Takkov said:

If you go this route you can also say that building monster farms in minecraft is exploiting for the very same reason.

Oh look, you made me laugh.

[Kaidorak]

I just made plans to go to 20k with some friends since my small clan of 4 is unavailable right now. But I guess I'll just cancel those plans... I don't want to get set back to 0.😣

[KelvinM6]

Just now, DeMonkey said:

Calling a suspension a ban is exaggerating, you can do better.

Then the commonly used term ''perma-ban'' is redundant, isn't it? In all my experiences suspensions were called bans, it's not an intended exaggeration, but none of this is relevant, my point is merely that a suspension is too much.

[Takkov]

4 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Oh look, you made me laugh.

Glad I did so, laughing is always good.

[-DG-Jericho]

Fine work DE, can we expect any comment on that other frame that kind of breaks the demolyst?
🦀

[Harkster]

Thank you! Only thing I could have asked for was a tweet or something acknowledging it earlier in the week. 

[Eldirian]

58 minutes ago, Voltage said:

What determines an illicit score? I was in a run for 33,000 that used Valkyr, Valkyr, Nova, and Banshee and I had no Loki, no Rivens (to my knowledge since I don't see other's inventories), and no Hydroid. My best friend is now at 0 and this is seriously aggravating.

Of course DE during their review must've done this by mistake. 🤣

[MikeVodka]

The overall message you're putting forth is clear. Master the aspects of the game, get tradebanned for two weeks. Find clever ways around lazy difficulty, get locked out of the operation. Put forth issues that plague this game, get ignored. Use said issues to make a point, get 2035'd.

gotcha

[Aerinx]

Thank you. The answer is perfect even if it came a bit late. I hope this will make people less inclined to cheat in future events.

[-AG-Nums]

2 minutes ago, MikeVodka said:

The overall message you're putting forth is clear. Master the aspects of the game, get tradebanned for two weeks. Find clever ways around lazy difficulty, get locked out of the operation. Put forth issues that plague this game, get ignored. Use said issues to make a point, get 2035'd.

gotcha

Now say it without crying

[LSG501]

I think we kind of need to be careful with the definition of illicit actions and the actions taken when they're found in the game....

 

While I'm not saying what has been done isn't exploiting an unintended bug it could also be seen as a lack of QC or testing from DE (when you think about it without any bias).

Loki's teleporting an 'enemy' from point a to point b is a valid and acceptable method of approach for fighting the razorback, not to mention the basis for that ability, so it's logical that that approach may be applied to other game modes, as such it should be tested for bugs/exploits before release, why wasn't it?. 

If there's issues with the map having 'holes' in it, shouldn't that have also been picked up in QC?

The riven mod 'bug' is using something in the wrong way, so yes you can call it an exploit, but at the same time you could argue it should not have been there in the first place....so once again QC/testing comes into question.  While not many people are going to take a neg damage stat it should have been tested thoroughly because it was a stat that can turn up due to the rng nature of the rivens and anybody who knows about coding knows that negative values can sometimes give 'weird outcomes'.

 

Slightly different but we've also just had the 'powers that be' decide after several years of acceptable use that farming squads needed nerfing for essentially no other reason than 'we don't like double dipping now' instead of just fixing the 'exploit' which popped up during nightwave I.... what's to say 'a change of opinion on what is acceptabie' won't happen mid event and cause something to become 'illicit' that was fine just the day before, it's not like we got any warning to the change to nekros/hydroid/khora synergy.

 

Now yes you could say that the players who find an obvious exploitable bug in game should report it for DE to fix, while avoiding it themselves, but the problem with this is that we do often report bugs, or unintended interactions, and in a some cases they're still in game months if not years later and this can often lead to the situation where players are like, well maybe it's not a bug or it's actually meant to work like this because DE haven't done anything about it.... so who's at fault when DE doesn't actually fix the reported bug(s) until it's all of a sudden found, 'months later', that it can be used in a way that DE doesn't like for a 'new game mode', DE for not fixing it or the players for assuming DE didn't think it was a bug as they hadn't fixed it several 'months later'?

 

And before people saying anything about me being affected I haven't even bothered with the event yet (I'm just seriously not that motivated by the new game mode and am going to have to force myself to do it to get the weapons) but this thread does raise some questions over the way 'bugs' are being dealt with and arguably the way that QC/testing is being done (imo it's not enough like how us players play) because some of the bugs or issues that pop up are being found within minutes of a new update by players just playing the game 'like normal' so you have to ask, why didn't the QC team pick up on them if the players can find them that quickly...

 

Note: I'm not having a go at the team, it's more a case of an external perspective.

[AvPCelticPredator]

49 minutes ago, Takkov said:

I mean, Loki just did what he always did, I dont see where the exploit in that is in the first place. All my runs were with Inaros anyhow, but if an ability just does exactly what it is supposed to be, where is the exploit? Mainly asking for clarification, as it doesnt make any sense to me from a logical point of view.

For DEVS have sense even if is not exploit, they will turn over that it is.

Words are words, but I wish that they can show us exactly on what they meaning with videos. 🤔

[Aerinx]

1 minute ago, MikeVodka said:

The overall message you're putting forth is clear. Master the aspects of the game, get tradebanned for two weeks. Find clever ways around lazy difficulty, get locked out of the operation. Put forth issues that plague this game, get ignored. Use said issues to make a point, get 2035'd.

gotcha

There are many ways cheaters justify cheating, and that is a topic that I find very interesting. Calling exploits a "clever way" and blaming devs saying it like that, while not something new and something I've seen many times I never saw expressed like that, thank you for that new perspective on a cheater's mind, I always find that interesting.

[Firetrucksrule]

1 hour ago, Gabbynaru said:

Stop doing leaderboards and competitive stuff.

Myself and a large number of players have been requesting more leaderboard integrations for years. If like over 90% of players you don't care then don't look at them. For players that do care it's a fun way to challenge yourself. There's nothing wrong with friendly competition in a cooperative environment. Nobody is being punished for not doing better and people who want to compete have the option. 

[DeMonkey]

1 minute ago, KelvinM6 said:

Then the commonly used term ''perma-ban'' is redundant, isn't it?

To my knowledge the implication there is that nothing will undo the ban, whilst your average ban could be undone if you provide a good case as to why it should be undone. Not something I could actually see happening however.

Take the classic 2035 "ban", despite that effectively being a suspension, there's no guarantee that the game will exist or that your account will hold any value come 2035. For all intents this is a ban, however it's not a "perma-ban". The account will reactivate... eventually, but after such a significant amount of time that both it and the game may not even be relevant anymore.

There is certainly room however to say that the accounts have been banned from taking part in the event, and they certainly have, but there's a big difference between "banned from taking part during an event" and claiming people have had their "account banned". One refers to the users inability to access their account during this specified short period, the other is the users inability to access their account for a large period of time.

That's all I'm getting at, your wording made out that it was the latter. It is not, it it is a temporary suspension of the account with the intention of returning it within a reasonable amount of time.