Banned For Making Too Much Silver

[Fleur-de-me]

Remember when people were selling firewheel flowers to the pawnshop? Once it was noticed the item was, let’s say patched to not be pawnable. The resummoning in the throne room with no intent on completion case is hard to reason is not GMA. There are similar mechanics in the necropolis to resummon the lich and collect loot although it was 30 minutes and per character (if I remember correctly. In the case of Reim there was an an abusable mechanic to resummon that was allowed to exist to allow everyone who attempted the quest multiple opportunities to win in this case, or at least that was the intent. Retser was aware of this and communicated this to the players testing reim at the time. I think it remained this way to allow all players to be able to finish the bosses even if they were defeated in the throne room and it was not widely abused. Now it has to be addressed and reim will be loot capped. The juxtaposition on how this was handled is evident in these examples. In hindsight monitoring of this event could have alleviated this result entirely. It could keep the mechanic the way it was to allow players to finish reim and prevent it from being exploited to this degree. Waiting this long and after that much silver has been farmed sends mixed messages.

I find it disingenuous at best to think they didn't realize or notice this was going on much earlier than we are lead to believe. They didn't notice one account pulling that much silver, psh...doubt it. I also don't believe he was the only exploiting it either IF they really didnt notice.

[Ramrod]

The normal thing to do would be to pull him aside and have a chat, and maybe take off anything earned that was deemed excessive. This is really in that grey area between true GMA and clever use of mechanics. When I think of GMA I think of infinite scrip glitches that we had, and silver ones, things like that. This is more convoluted, and more akin to creative farming. The fact that they had to have internal discussions about it in itself shows that it was really more in that grey area. Naturally they could have ultimately decided to clamp down, and that's fine, but it could have been handled in a much better way. I don't know why they so often default to the position that the customer is their enemy and needs to be punished. I'm pretty sure had they just had a normal conversation with him and told him to cut it off, and took some of that silver off, that would've been the end of it.

100% this.

I'm sure Simu will sign up enough new customers to make up for losing this one. /s

[Ramrod]

My favorite part is how the guy is obviously exploiting but everyone acts all incredulous.

Like, we basically have a pretty good playground here and RMT is allowed to exist... But everyone is always trying to get away with the dumbest shit at all times. If you are trying to have your characters contributions be an actual income source IRL, yeah, you are going to have a very hard time and rightly so.... It's a video game and other players are trying to have fun also...

....I await people picking apart my comment regarding how it's anectodical and this isn't about monetizing but fuck that, you know what I mean and it's true, you brainlets.

As far as GMA goes, this is like speeding ticket level. It's not duping items or abusing the pawn shop. The punishment never fit the crime and the position that he should have kept up with announcements is ridiculous.

[peam]

My favorite part is how the guy is obviously exploiting but everyone acts all incredulous.

They're the same shitheels that would've been doing it too if they knew about it. This is clear-cut mechanics abuse and to pretend it's on the low end of that spectrum is (purposefully?) ignorant.

[Winter]

They're the same shitheels that would've been doing it too if they knew about it.

I don't believe that at all, there are significantly bigger ways to abuse mechanics that have been in the game for well over a decade for example any capped Elf that lives in the nations will know about and I'm assuming nobody has abused that or we'd all of heard about it and that's been possible since the nations went live. It's possible for a capped Elf with capped trading skill and influence to sell back something they bought for MORE than the vendor sold it for. That would potentially generate billions in a day just buying and reselling the same item to the pawnshop and forking the economy to kingdom come in the same way Duskruin does. I've reported this more than once over the years along with other broken spells that nobody seems bothered to fix so people do know.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should and it's been my experience that most people here get that, this place has always run on goodwill of the players since it's inception.

[SonoftheNorth]

*spends 13k on reim orbs because he obviously found a scam*

oh i didn't know i was doing anything wrong!!!!



GemStone IV Player Policy: Bug Abuse

Attempts to gain an unfair advantage which circumvents the letter or spirit of the rules presented in the documentation and version notes, as judged solely by Simutronics, are a violation of policy. Types of abuse range from sending special characters or signals to the software to obtain an unusual result, to using normal game mechanics in ways they are clearly not intended.

Examples of serious bug abuse: Disconnecting from the merchant manager to avoid paying the purchase price of an item; finding a "feedback loop" with spells or mana points, which allows spells to be cast multiple times with little or no cost; repeatedly injuring yourself (or another character) in order to generate experience for an empath or cleric; finding a special circumstance in which to use a potion whereby its quantity is not decremented when it is used; abusing game mechanics to cause duplication of items or silver.

Abusing bugs disrupts the balance of GemStone IV and reduces its effectiveness to remain an entertaining product. Sometimes there will be a great temptation to abuse a bug for personal gain because the negative effect is not readily apparent. Therefore, Simutronics will exercise no tolerance whatsoever for anyone participating in this type of activity.

Bugs should *always* be reported. Serious bugs should be REPORTed and BUGged, while minor ones should be BUGged. If you observe someone else abusing a serious bug, or discussing a plan to abuse one, and fail to report it, you are subject to the same penalties as they are. Serious bugs should be reported through GemStone IV Feedback.

Benefits obtained from bug abuse may be confiscated. Failure to cooperate with Simutronics as to the extent or nature of a bug, or failure to be honest about the benefits obtained from bug abuse, is grounds for immediate lock-out from GemStone IV.

[peam]

Elf that lives in the nations

Exploiting this would require you to both play an elf and visit EN. No sensible player is doing that.

[SorcGoods101]

100% this.

I'm sure Simu will sign up enough new customers to make up for losing this one. /s

You can read my original comments, I admitted in the first email that I can see this from their viewpoint. With that said, they knew about this issue, reviewed it and implemented a "fix" or publicly let players know at the time what not to do. Where is that posted? If you implement a 10 minute timer, then expect that to be the standard by which the royals can be resummoned. It took them all of two days to close the "loophole". Developers have responsibilities to do things correctly.

Further, my issue all along was how they handled this. Switching what I guilty of, watching me for months and then using the loot cap as way to justify punishment, and then the excessive penalty. If they came a said "knock it off" and took back 200M silver, this would be over. At the end of day, we are all customers. I would never treat mine this way.

[Ramrod]

You can read my original comments, I admitted in the first email that I can see this from their viewpoint. With that said, they knew about this issue, reviewed it and implemented a "fix" or publicly let players know at the time what not to do. Where is that posted? If you implement a 10 minute timer, then expect that to be the standard by which the royals can be resummoned. It took them all of two days to close the "loophole". Developers have responsibilities to do things correctly.

Further, my issue all along was how they handled this. Switching what I guilty of, watching me for months and then using the loot cap as way to justify punishment, and then the excessive penalty. If they came a said "knock it off" and took back 200M silver, this would be over. At the end of day, we are all customers. I would never treat mine this way.

Yep, 100% agree.

After all these years though, none of this should come as a surprise. I would just think that given how profit driven they are now they would try harder to maintain customers.

[Dud]

You can read my original comments, I admitted in the first email that I can see this from their viewpoint. With that said, they knew about this issue, reviewed it and implemented a "fix" or publicly let players know at the time what not to do. Where is that posted? If you implement a 10 minute timer, then expect that to be the standard by which the royals can be resummoned. It took them all of two days to close the "loophole". Developers have responsibilities to do things correctly.

Further, my issue all along was how they handled this. Switching what I guilty of, watching me for months and then using the loot cap as way to justify punishment, and then the excessive penalty. If they came a said "knock it off" and took back 200M silver, this would be over. At the end of day, we are all customers. I would never treat mine this way.

I agree, this should've been a take back the silver and "knock it off" resolution. But this was obviously sketchy and detrimental to the game - I don't believe you actually thought this was okay to do? I am surprised you didn't just take your punishment and move on.